Switched on Pop - Sabrina Carpenter is more than Short n' Sweet

Episode Date: September 3, 2024

On her sixth studio album, Short n' Sweet, Sabrina Carpenter moves seamlessly between pop, country, folk and R&B. For Carpenter, genre is merely a musical tool to help construct a song. Listen to how she bends genre to her will. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you're tired of endless scrolling to figure out where to eat, same. I'm Stephanie Wu, editor-in-chief of Eater. We've just launched the new-ish and way better Eater app. It has all the restaurants we love, gives you personalized picks wherever you are, and serves up smarter search results just for you. You can find my list of the best places for martinis and fries in New York City. And save your favorite spots, share lists, follow editors, and book right in the app. the eater app at eaterapp.com. It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switched-on Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding.

And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. Nate, if you have to describe your personality in two words, how would you do it? Professorial, vivacious. I like it. Do you mind if I give it a try? Yeah, let's hear it. I call you tall and tempered. Oh. You're tall in stature and in integrity and in talent. you're tempered in attitude, always even handed, you're an always reliable friend. You can weather any kind of problem. I like that. It makes me think of Bach's well-tempered clavier, too, so...

No, this is a much more contemporary pop reference. I'm calling you tall and tempered because Sabrina Carpenter has just released her much-anticipated sixth studio album called Short and Sweet. Oh, I leave quite an impression. I have his clothes when missing my bar. That's Taste the third single off of Short and Sweet by Sabrina Carpenter, the 25-year-old former Disney Star turned mega pop sensation.

Short and Sweet is the album title because, as she says at the beginning of Taste, she is of short stature. Four, eleven, or five feet have both been reported. I guess Four Eleven didn't quite roll off the tongue lyrically in the same way. She told Zane Lowe in an interview about this album that it also describes her attitude Oftentimes she is sweet, but sometimes she can be short with people. And I also think that short and sweet is a perfect encapsulation of this album because it's 12 quick songs that come in at just 36 minutes.

So the album's short and sweet. Is it seriously worth our time? This is a much anticipated album because Sabrina Carpenter had two of the biggest hits of this year, espresso. And please, please, please, please. Please. Two hits that have taken this bubbling under Pop Star to a whole new level in her career. And so this album marks a very important crossroads. And it might be called short and sweet, but I think this thing has got depth.

We're not just two things, Nate. We contain multitudes and as does this album, specifically in the world of genre. If you listen down short and sweet, it doesn't stay in one Sonic lane. You're going to hear more of that indie pop espresso sound on songs like Juno. She takes us back in time into the world of 90s R&B on a song like Good Graces. She cools off the vibe with some folk pop on songs like Dumb and Poetic. You're so dumb and poetic. And I kid you not, she even goes country on Slim Pickens.

Now my inner critic thought, whoa, slow down. I can't handle so many different sounds. Come on, just do one thing and do it well. And then I realized that I loved listening to this album just 36 minutes long. It kept replaying over and over. I was like, I like this song even more. Have I heard this yet? And I'm like, I'm on my third lesson already.

And I started to embrace this multi-genre approach of creating. Because I think that this generation of pop stars thinks about genre kind of like other markers of identity. Genre can be fluid. Genre, especially when we're looking at sort of the big tent genres of mass-produced, commoditized pop, you know, we consume this music voraciously. and we also can create voraciously across different genres. I think that trying on different genres is like trying on different modes of expression. And so what I want to do today is look at how Sabrina Carpenter uses these different genres

to help express the emotion of some of the best songs on this album. All right, I'm here for it, Charlie. Okay, let's start with the genre of indie pop and go back to the first song that we heard, Taste. Yeah, indie pop feels like a good description here. The vocal melody feels very pop to me. It's ridiculously catchy. It's sung in this kind of bright way. But lyrically, it's got a sort of depth and darkness.

It's got this great central conceit of, you know, tasting someone's X when you kiss them. Sweet revenge. And musically, I feel like it's got other indie hallmarks. It's got, you know, acoustic guitars. and crunchy rock-style drums. Yeah, I think there's a pleasant mix of some disparate elements here. And I feel like it's the right genre for the message of this song.

It kind of plays on the trope of the other woman narrative. But this is not Dolly Parton singing about Jolene. This is a kind of sweet revenge. You can taste me when you're kissing him. I have to say this album is pretty funny. Oh, yeah. I mean, there's a lot of turns of phrase on this album that you kind of do a double take. And you're like, that was very clever.

A lot of that double take has to do with innuendo. Pins you down on the carpet, makes paintings with his tongue, and then what does she do? Does a little vocalese, la la la la la. Mm-hmm. Like painting pictures. I didn't even pick that up. Yeah, yeah, okay. That's good.

The whole thing is incredibly playful. And I think it pulls off this great balance of, you know, this other woman narrative, which can be blamie. It can be, you know, a serious topic. But it takes it in an incredibly lighthearted way. And, yeah, I think it does so by having this right balance of coy silliness. It's presented with very common language and perfectly executed, often slant rind. instead of lots of perfect rhymes. Like, take, for example, the pre-chorus.

Very plainly spoken, now I'm gone, but you're still laying next to me one degree of separation. It doesn't have any clear rhyme. It's clever. It's this idea of sort of a ghostly presence of the previous relationship. Right. And it's said in this way where it doesn't seem like there's a rhyme there, but there is a hidden sort of buried rhyme. that carries over from the end of the second verse. He's funny, now all his jokes hit different.

Guess who he learned that from. Now I'm gone, but you're still laying next to me one degree of separation. So we have a rhyme scheme that's happening across the verse into the pre-chorus, rhyming from with separation. It's a really nice slant rhyme, and it's evidence of, I think, really strong pop writing by some sort of by Sabrina Carpenter and her co-writers. Throughout the album, Amy Allen co-writes every song.

Many songs are co-written with Julia Michaels, who's been on the show before, and all of her co-producers also get songwriting credits. John Ryan and Julian Bonetta, who've written extensively with One Direction, Jack Antonoff, Ian Kirkpatrick, a bunch of great producers and songwriters. And so I think with this team,

she has assembled some of the best writers who are able to help execute these very fun, sometimes silly messages with just the right words, just the right rhymes. When you talked about a sort of ghostly presence in this relationship, it made me think of the vocal harmonies on the song. Oftentimes there's a high harmony above Sabrina Carpenter's voice on this track. And I think it's a great musical effect, but I was always a little curious about it. But now I'm thinking maybe that is sort of the ghostly presence that you were,

alluding to in the track. Guess who we learned that from when she's singing it? There's a second voice in there, bringing herself into the relationship. Very fun. The Ghost at the Feast. Okay, so there's something supernatural going on here within a style of writing that feels very natural. I think one of the ways that she gets that very natural quality across as well is that

this song, like many of the songs on this album, have a spoken section, which seems to have become a real trend in recent years. We hear it on songs like Taylor Swift's Cool Summer. Of course, Olivia Rodriguez has copied that style on multiple songs. You can hear it on her last album, the song Bad Idea Right. This is the sound of right now. It's on Chaparron's Hot to Go. Sabrina Carpenter is following this trend in a way that I think is very fitting to this song in the bridge of taste. It's like she's reaching directly out to this other woman and saying, hey, I'm right here whispering in your ear, speaking to you that I've been known to share and then gives us a little giggle at the end.

You can really tell that Sabrina Carveter is an actor when you listen to some of these tracks. And that's true of Olivia Rodriguez as well. I think these are real performances. There's a lot of theater here in a way that I think matches the verbosity and the playfulness of the lyrics. It's funny. You mentioned Olivia, of course, you know that they're connected, right? They're the, right, they're the love triangle that birthed driver's license and Sabrina's last album, yeah. And you're probably with that blonde girl who always made me eat out. Maybe you didn't mean it.

Maybe blonde was the only rhyme. The only rhyme. Sabrina Carpenter of the blonde girl. We're not here to speculate. There is lots of gossip about, you know, who are all the various boyfriends? This is an effective way to build a media narrative around an album for sure. But I like the way in which she is using these different genres to tell the stories that people are trying to unpack.

And you talked about her being an actor. She evokes film directly within the next indie pop song that I want to discuss, Juno. Juno is a movie from the 2000s in which a teenager gets pregnant. So I think she's saying, she wants to be knocked up. Basically.

I have some clums. I mean, I haven't seen this movie since it came out in theaters, but I remember it being a very, you know, funny but complicated narrative of teen pregnancy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Seems a slightly weird to be so flippant about it. I think she's using this metaphor in a flippant manner, frankly. Like, this song is lighthearted and silly. There's a reason why it's an indie pop song and not the 90s song. Okay.

And not the 90s. 90s R&B that we hear later because if it were 90s R&B, it might be literally two baby-making music. And so I think by keeping it within the genre of indie pop, we can handle this sort of illusion to what might happen if romance happens. And the song is truly playful throughout. Take, for example, the verse. We begin the song. talking about this guy's hot ass, how he's got the whole package. Yeah.

And God bless his dad's genetics. There's another one of those lines that you have to hear twice to make sure you heard it correctly. She has an uncanny ability to deliver these incredibly dirty lyrics in a very sort of sweet and innocent way. Yeah, and she finds these creative rhymes. It's like, this is what you want from a song. It's like you've coined a term that you feel like has been said. a million times, but has never been said, oh yeah, you just get it. Rhymes with God bless your dad's genetics. No one's ever done that before. And she continues this really playful and creative lyric

writing in the pre-chorus. Name one other moment in history when the line, Want to Make You Fall in Love has been said. Yeah, I can probably only think of six billion examples. So, okay, yes, right. Now, how about rhyming it with, want to try out my fuzzy pink handcuffs? rhymes with make you fall in love fall in love pink handcuffs it's uh is it making you feel uncomfortable the only uncomfortability uncomfortability uncomfortableness i feel is the extremity of this of this slant rhyme but you know she she pulls it off so who might acquibble i don't want to get you know locked up if this song is making you feel a little bit flush right now yeah i don't know if you can handle the bridge.

Oh, boy. I feel like we're having a role reversal, Charlie. I feel like you're usually the one blushing, but here I am. Scratching your neck, unbting your shirt. Okay, hey. Sweating it out right now. There's a reason this is an audio medium. But I will say when you played some of those other artists earlier,

Chappel Rhone, Olivia Rodriguez, it makes me think of how we are in this moment where there's more leeway for female pop stars to express their desire and sexuality, then I don't know, maybe at any other time in pop history. I feel like that's true in the world of hip hop as well. Yeah. We cover this a bit in our episode we called the Imperfect Feminine. You know, there's a little bit more runway to be your full self, kind of like you were saying at the beginning, you know, to be the kaleidos.

version of your desire, your heartbreak, your empowerment, and your depression. It's all for the taking. You can contain multitudes. You can go from indie pop and then experiment with country because you want to try on a whole new sound and express a different part of your identity. Attention Spotify. Has arrived on the new Good Girl Jasmine Absolute of Caroline Herrera, a fragrance intense with character Gourman and addicive.

Imagine a jasmine emvolventy, Toffee caramelized, and Tonka-Torferral. toastada. A combination that seduce from the first instant and he has a wheyeroyerisd. Good Girl Jasmine Absolute, hypnotic, irresistible. Discoveringlaoil and let you turn to move over your sensia. Convierre your passion in a

business with Shopify and batte records of ventas with the form of Pago with a better conversion of the world. Has heard of the world? The incredible system

of Pago of Shopify facilita the company on your site web, in the social and in That's music for your ears. No, you'll be

more whiltas. Your negotiation will be a super-exit with Shopify. Empea your period of per year in Shopify.

orgs. Immigration may be Donald Trump's signature issue. President Trump is now targeting predominantly Democratic cities

for ice raids and deportations. Dozens of protesters clashing with immigration and customs enforcement agents

in Minneapolis Tuesday. We will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came. But what we want to do in this space is talk about America and politics beyond the current president.

So what do most Americans think about deportation and border security, period? I think that Americans are definitely against the kind of violent displays that we've seen in the street from ICE. When it comes to the question of deportation, the answer is more complicated. My sense is that people want border at the border. They don't like the idea of having no idea who's coming into the United States at any given time. The view on immigration from the bottom up instead of the top down. That's this week on America Actually. Every Saturday in your audio and video feeds.

So let's get into the country of it all. We heard a little bit of twang on her number one single, Please, Please, Please, which we discussed previously on the show. Her nasal delivery in the strategically placed curse word, Yeah. Is giving us this hint that maybe she's going to go down south, but she really pulls it off on the song Slim Pickens that I think is basically full Nashville. Look at that driving train drum rhythm, acoustic guitars, banjo.

This life alone, I'm not dramatic these are just the thoughts that pass right through me. All the douchebags in my phone like a slot machine. If they're winning, I'm just loose. Once again, some really killer writing. This has that sort of self-deprecating and humorous country writing that we might associate with like a Casey Musgraves. I was just going to say, Casey walks so Sabrina could run on these tracks. That's some of the breathy vocal delivery.

But I'm hearing the casiness of it all in the way that she takes a traditional sound country and marries it with very contemporary lyrics. Rhyming, guess I'll end this life alone with all the douchebags in my phone. Hank wouldn't write it that way. I'm sorry. But this isn't just some alt-modern country song for public radio.

In the chorus, it really gets twangy. I love this track. you listen to just the music, I feel like you would expect a really melancholy kind of lyric, like a true ballad. But the lyric is kind of sad in its way, I guess, because it's about how hard it is to find someone. But again, there's that sense of humor and playfulness throughout that just keeps it from being ever like morose or predictable. It's right there in the concept, in the title. Slim Pickens.

What a great line. It's an onomatopoeia. It has all these plucky banjos, muted guitars. They are slim pickin, and they're talking about, you know, this very real lived experience.

This is like Tinder dating culture. There's no one good out there. All the good guys are gone. It's slim pickens. And you might be thinking, wait a minute, who made this song? Like, did you go to Nashville?

No. This is Jack Antonoff. And you might not remember that Jack Antonoff once had a band called Steel Train. The hit songwriter behind many of Taylor Swift's biggest songs had a sort of country jam band. And so in many ways, this song was Sabrina Carpenter is going back to his roots,

bringing in all those plucky instruments that you associate with natural songwriting. That snare drum played with the brushes in this kind of light-percussive way. That's cool. You know, when I first saw this song title, I thought it might be an ode to the American actor and former professional bull writer Slim Pickens

who famously rode the atomic bomb at the end of the film, Dr. Strangelove. Really? But I think appropriately it's the more general use of that term. I mean, that is dark, but perhaps the desperation of her romantic experience in this song is truly explosive. I don't know. I tried to read it as an allegory of, you know, nuclear disarmament, but I don't think it really holds up.

That's a reach. I think you're getting a little poetic on us, and speaking of which, I want to move into the genre of folk pop and the song, dumb and poetic. You're so dumb and poetic. It's just what I fall for. I like the aesthetic.

I think every self-help book you've already read it. Cherry-pick lines like there are words you invented. I think this is the best sucker punch of an insult song. It is so sincere in the folk tradition, just acoustic guitar and vocal. Let me tell you what's really going on my mind. How insulting. You're dumb and poetic. She just falls for that aesthetic.

Love the rhyme. He's a self-help book kind of guy, and worst of all, he likes dumb quotations and misuses the work of great folk stars. If you thought rhyming love and pink handcuffs was surprising, that you never saw jacking off to lyrics by Leonard Cohen coming. You know, Leonard Cohen is having a little bit of a little bit of a little

You know, Boy Genius wrote about him and his poeticism and perversion in their song, Leonard Cohen. Huh. Let him go in one set. There's a crack in Atkinson. And I am not a distantial crisis at a Buddhist monastery writing horny poetry. That's got to be a Lucy Dacus song. Oh, yeah. Can I submit to you for evidence a Leonard Cohen.

poem written at a Zen monastery. I'm going to send it to you, and I'd like you to recite it for us. Early morning at Mount Baldi. Alarm awakened me at 2.30 a.m. gotten to my robes, kimono, and Hakama, modeled after the 12th century archer's costume. On top of this, the Karoma, all in all, about 20 pounds of clothing, which I put on quickly at 2.30 a.m. Over my enormous hard on. How convenient that you had me read that, Charlie. And if I mispronounce any of the terms of these clothing,

I apologize. But I think the final line of this poem is what Charlie's most interested in. Well, I think it's what the song is most interested. Okay, fair. This is all sure the song, quote-unquote song, yeah. When I heard the Sabrina Carpenter line, the first thing that came to mind was the way in which Leonard Cohen's probably most famous song, Hallelujah, I think, has been totally bastardized because it is kind of the go-to bro learned the acoustic guitar and is sitting around a campfire

and wants to put his arm around somebody song. Hallelujah, I think, is the go-to to quote Sabrina Carpenter, douchebag, Campfire song. And so this line just rings so true. What a powerful insult. As self-deprecating as Sabrina Carpenter is across this album, every male character in the album is so much worse. Oh, they're so worse. They're just, there's no redeeming them here.

It is just a cavalcade of terrible men, which seems entirely appropriate. You know, a lesser writer might just deploy insult, insult, insult. But I love that Sabrina Carpenter holds on to this Leonard Cohen metaphor. in the next verse. She's specifically calling out a kind of sensitive new age guy who, like, Leonard Cohen, loves to sit in floor meditation, save all his breath for his meditation, save all his breath for his meditation, not for communication, and calls him out with a really biting criticism of spiritual bypass using meditation and psychedelics like mushrooms to try to change your life without actually

having to do the actual work on yourself. Ouch. This song feels like more of a continuation from her last album, emails I can't send, which in turn makes the rest of short and sweet feel like a real evolution. I guess I had a time machine so I could see what you did October 13th at 10.15 Were you really asleep? Were you lying to me and the family? I guess what I'm saying is that emails I can't send

was a little sadder, like a little more morose, a little more sort of hyperverbal. Short and sweet takes some of that, same sadness, but puts it in this bright poppy sheen and gives it this playfulness and sense of humor that we've been talking about that makes the whole album feel more accessible and more like a really profound statement in a way. Yeah, she's pulling off profound pop. And I think one of the ways she's doing that is by shifting genres depending on what the message of the song is. If she needs to make fun of a guy who is misappropriating or mimicking Leonard Cohen,

depending on how you see it, then if on the other side you actually do want to write a let's get down and make some baby songs, you're going to switch over to 90s R&B, like on the song, Bedchem. Earlier in Juno, indie pop song, you're sort of joking about getting knocked up. But now in a song that is about, you know, romance, desire, she moves from a sincerity towards innuendo. Said you're not in my time is on what you want to be. Where art thou? Why not upon with me? See it in my mind.

Let's fuck. Oh, my goodness. Where art thou? Shakespearean. This also feels in the world of espresso, too, where we're just kind of playing with language, coining new phrases. It's very inventive.

I agree. Carpenter is so good. at coining terms that are memeable, whether it's that's that me espresso, or it's the innuendo that we've heard throughout the album, which continues on another R&B song called Good Graces. I feel like now I'm starting to blush. I don't think I can repeat some of the things that she's saying. They're too funny. Well, yeah, here's another highly charged. and very tongue-and-cheek song, but why does this get the R&B treatment, do you think?

Well, I think she's using a genre trope of a specific kind of 90s R&B, the empowerment anthem, to make a statement about what she needs in a relationship. In the song, Please, Please, Please, she had talked about wanting the guy to not embarrass her in front of other people. Good Grace is the song that follows, please, please, please, please,

she's saying, if you want to keep this relationship going, you just got to stay in my good graces. Because if you don't, I'm going to turn on you. So this is an empowerment anthem R&B kind of song. This is not the baby-making music. And she claims allegiance to that style. I think with some very specific sonic choices that you can hear at the very beginning of the song.

I hear acoustic guitar, maybe even more specific. Is it like nylon string? guitar played in this like finger style uh very almost reminiscent of like flamenco or something that's funny that you hear that uh tony brachston one of the big stars of 90s r and b had a song called spanish guitar what the nylon style guitar but that was really a follow-up sound to her big hit unbreak my heart featuring the same instrument so brachson uses the spanish flameniccan guitar in this ballad to say hey, like, unbreak my heart. You really messed this thing up.

And other R&B stars in the 90s also use this sound as a way of reclaiming back power from a relationship, like Destiny's Child. Say my name. And so when Sabrina Carbender opens Good Graces with the same kind of sound, it establishes it in the tradition

of a 90s R&B empowerment anthem. One thing I've been willing, wondering about ever since you first introduced this album and how it hops from genre to genre was this question, how does Sabrina Carpenter maintain continuity over this and make it a sort of seamless listening experience? And I feel like the answer might be it's the attitude that remains constant, even as the genres flip from indie pop to R&B to country. There's this attitude of comical defiance and sort of taking the lows of your romantic life and spinning them into entertainment that gives this record its identity,

even as the sonic world of the record is constantly shifting. I love that choosing the title short and sweet is a bit of a misdirection. It's not just short and sweet. It's this multitudinous album of genres and emotions. and really clever songwriting. It makes me wonder, Nate, if she's short and sweet, maybe you're not tall and tempered. Maybe you're tall and tender.

And if you're tall and tender, but contain multitudes. If you were four genres, Nate, what genres would be on your tall and tender album? Tall and tender. We definitely have some big band jazz, some Bossa Nova maybe some Randy Newman in there oh yeah

I feel like that's a genre unto itself and I mean Klesmer I'm gonna be real there's gonna be some Klesmer on there Charles I'm not saying it's a good mix of genres but I gotta be real

Sabrina short and sweet I'm tall and tender you're wide and white oh this episode is over Roll credits. Switched-on Pop is produced by Rana Cruz, edited by Art Chung, engineered by Brandon McFarland, illustrations by Ariz Gottlieb.

Our executive producer is Nishak Kerwa, a member of the Vox Media Podcast Network, and a production of Vulture, which is part of New York Magazine. You can subscribe at nymag.com slash pod. Talk to us on social media at Switched on Pop and tell us what you're hearing on Sabrina Carpenter's short and sweet. We'll be back next week with Branden, new episode that will find us trying to learn to love one of the more controversial rock bands of

the 21st century. And don't forget that first on Friday, we have the final installment in our newcomer series. We're talking about the new release by Porter Robinson with Porter Robinson on the show. And until then, thanks for listening.