Strutting into the minds of music listeners around the world in her iconic mini dresses and white go-go boots, American singer Sabrina Carpenter is the name on the tips of the tongues of fans. Gaining fame for her main role on Disney Channel series “Girl Meets World,” Carpenter has been acting for 13 years but recently found a new title: global pop-star .
On Aug. 23, Carpenter released her sixth studio album, Short n’ Sweet. Carpenter’s name gained fame within the music scene after opening for 15 of Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour concerts in Latin America, Australia and Singapore. At age 25, she has become a major influence within the pop industry today. The album is 36 minutes and consists of 12 tracks.
Carpenter’s overall sound across the album is both comfortable and experimental, allowing her recognizable vocals to blend smoothly with unfamiliar sounds. The instrumentals on the album easily mix with her soft soprano voice. The album has a sound you find yourself bumping your head to when you think of it.
Carpenter thrives in her ability to create fun songs to jam out to. Her first two singles from the album, “Espresso” and “Please Please Please,” are synthy-pop commercial successes peaking on the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 3 and No. 1, respectively.
Other songs on the album continue to keep the upbeat synth-pop vibe going with songs “Taste,” Juno” and “Bed Chem.” Carpenter also dabbles in a more of a country twang sound through her song “Slim Pickens,” adding interest and uniqueness to the album’s sound.
Despite her catchy pop tracks on the album, Carpenter allows herself to be vulnerable in songs such as “Dumb & Poetic,” “Lie To Girls” and “Don’t Smile” in which she brings in a slower melody where she lets emotion control her beautiful vocals playing in harmonies displaying her soprano talent.
Aside from the album’s instrumentals, Carpenter’s lyrics and themes drive the album forward. The songs on the album revolve around Carpenter’s romantic relationships. Despite the redundant themes, Carpenter does a good job at creating a relatively new sound for each song revolving around the same story. There are five overall themes in the songs: love, anxiety, heartbreak, moved on and incompatibility.
Despite being in the music industry for nine years, Carpenter is only now taken seriously and praised for catchy melodies, people finally paying attention to her talent in songwriting and the beauty behind her words.
This is specifically present in my album favorites, “Dumb & Poetic,” “Lie To Girls” and “Don’t Smile.” I appreciate her emotion and vulnerability throughout these songs. They claim the title of my favorites because of their rawness and contrast to her other songs, allowing her to showcase her talents vocally and lyrically. Carpenter’s use of harmonies, vibratos and riffs display her skill and technique in singing.
Her lyrics in “Dumb & Poetic” show the realization that no matter how “in touch with his feminine side a man is,” that does not make them a good person, showcasing this at the end of the chorus in the lyrics “Just ’cause you talk like one/doesn’t make you a man.”
In “Don’t Smile” Carpenter speaks to an ex-boyfriend who has moved on to a new girl and sings in her lyrics “Oh, you’re supposed to think about me/Every time you hold her/(I want you to miss me).”
Her lyrics in the chorus of “Lie To Girls,” “You don’t have to lie to girls/If they like you, they’ll just lie to themselves,” demonstrating the cycle of lying, that the girls he dates make up excuses in order to keep a romantic facade of a relationship to keep it going.
I am excited to see how Carpenter continues with her music. She has shown much potential to redefine pop music today and was named an important influence in the music industry. Short n’ Sweet is just the beginning of people taking notice of her. “Espresso” is her first song to reach a billion streams on Spotify, her first Billboard Top 10 of which both her singles remained for weeks and this is the first time she is truly being seen as a singer and not just as an ex-Disney kid trying to make a name for herself in the music industry. She shows her maturity and uses the album.
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