“Short n’ Sweet” hits the beat

Jealousy: a bleached-blonde-haired woman watching from the third perspective as her best friend pulled an Uno reverse card on her and dated her ex-boyfriend. Breaking girl code got redefined as a guilt-tripping, vengeance-seeking art bathed in an essence of light-hearted sarcasm in Sabrina Carpenter’s top song, “Taste,” on her new album, “Short n’ Sweet.”  

Carpenter has the world wrapped around her finger with her new album that radiates the passionate, angsty teenager phase everyone has been through, pulling the world in like moths to a bright light. More than a collection of songs, the “Sabrinaverse,” as fans like to call it, has expanded to a full plot, the album serving almost like a soundtrack. Just recently released on Aug. 23, Carpenter’s album is available to listen to on most platforms for free, particularly Spotify. 

“Cause no one’s more amazing at turnin’ lovin’ into hatred,” the album tackled two contradicting emotions everyone experiences throughout a relationship: the “honeymoon phase” and then the “I’m over it” era that masks the hurt and betrayal. With songs like “Espresso,” “Good Graces,” and “Juno,” the almost carefree tone she expressed engulfed the singer in an aura of regalness, like a princess of superiority.

 “Don’t smile because it happened baby, cry because it’s over,” shrouded the audience in a cloud of melancholy and tragedy. The words in her song, “Don’t Smile,” seeped out from this cloud-like tiny raindrop splashing on the side of the audience’s faces, so much so that the impact of her words was felt by her audience.  

Each of her songs has its deep meaning associated with them but Carpenter’s chronological synthesis of “Espresso,” “Please Please Please,” and “Taste,” have the audience’s brain tickling with the satisfaction of a mini plot inside these interconnected songs. 

“Now he’s thinking about me, every night, oh, isn’t that sweet, I guess so,” Carpenter’s most listened to song, “Espresso,” kicked off the start of the story, setting the scene on a palm tree-filled beach. The positive vibe of the setting matched the cunning, “I know I’m so cool” energy as Carpenter bragged about successfully making a guy obsessed with her. 

The music video hinted at the thickening plot in “Please Please Please,” where a small clip of it is played at the end. In this turn of events, the audience has previously seen her feel so enlightened but now she shows vulnerability in her doubts about a relationship by highlighting past experiences. 

Her character arc is finally completed (for now) in “Taste,” where the beginning of the music video shows Carpenter applying the same lipstick used in “Espresso,” as well as pans in on the kiss-stained duct tape in “Please, Please, Please.” 

Two girls trying to kill each other over a guy, “Taste,” represented the after-effects of a relationship gone wrong disguised as an obsession. All the doubts in “Please, Please, Please,” come alive as emotions, making the audience feel angry with Carpenter. In a way, she is a puppeteer of emotions, manipulating the beats and rhythms in each song to match a specific emotion, and then changing them to capture a new feeling.

Just like that, the world’s most popular blonde seized the world with her songs, her biggest hits scratching the itch for closure the audience didn’t know they needed to reconnect with her words.