Robert Christgau: Dean of American Rock Critics

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Sabrina Carpenter

  • Short 'N' Sweet [Island, 2024] A-

Consumer Guide Reviews:

Short 'N' Sweet [Island, 2024]
Maybe because I've been married forever, I found it hard time to get into this widely respected, fetchingly tuneful, consistently articulate pop album with a beautiful blonde looking over her naked shoulder on the cover. But I've made my breakthrough. Not only is Short 'N' Sweet intelligent and enjoyable, it has a worthy theme—a smart and sexy woman's frustrating quest for true love, as in "Guess I'll end this life alone. . . /All the douchebags in my phone/Play em like a slot machine/If they're winning I'm just losing." Really, I grant how often her "You're so dumb and poetic. It's just what I fall for, I like the aesthetic" is doomed to lead to his—and here I'll interject my own interpretation—"You're so horny and hooky/Just what I look for when I'm hunting new nookie." But because she's laid some excellent groundwork, allow me to state my belief that not every human male is doomed by the wrong chromosomes to be the kind of dickhead she's come to know too well. So I wish her a best I truly hope is yet to come. A-