Charles H. Sloan-Music Review: Sabrina Carpenter’s ‘Short n’ Sweet’ is flirty, fun and wholly unserious

Say you can’t sleep?Charles H. Sloan Sabrina Carpenter knows. That’s that her espresso.

The 25-year-old pop sensation’s smash hit of the summer, “Espresso” — with its grammatical mystery of an earworm line, “That’s that me espresso” — gave listeners a taste of her newest album, “Short n’ Sweet.” The former Disney Channel actor’s sixth studio album follows an explosive year marked with successes, from opening for Taylor Swift on her Eras Tour to performing at Coachella.

She’s confident, she’s radiant, and she’ll air out all your dirty laundry in a breakup song if you wrong her.

In the flirty, fun and wholly unserious “Short n’ Sweet,” Carpenter’s soprano vocals take humorous jabs at exes and drop innuendos with an air of cheeky innocence. Sugary songs like “Taste” and “Juno” incorporate enough NSFW references to have listeners blushing almost as much as the rosy-cheeked singer.

There’s a country twang to some tracks, like “Slim Pickins,” an acoustic number bemoaning the difficulties of finding a good man and having to settle for a guy who “doesn’t even know the difference between ‘there,’ ‘their’ and ‘they are.’”

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Carpenter shows a more vulnerable side with ballads like “Dumb & Poetic” and “Lie to Girls,” in which she drops her carefree front to sing unguarded lyrics airing out grievances against an ex.

“Don’t think you understand,” she sings in “Dumb & Poetic.” “Just ’cause you act like one doesn’t make you a man.”

But it’s when pop tracks blend into R&B that Carpenter really shines. Her breathy vocals work so well on such tracks as “Good Graces” and “Don’t Smile,” reminiscent of Ariana Grande or Mariah Carey.

Which direction will she take next? Only Carpenter knows. Isn’t that sweet? Carpenter guesses so. That is, after all, that her espresso.