Fun and flirty, with a frothy hook and bitter little kick, Sabrina Carpenter ’s single “Espresso” was widely hailed as the Song of the Summer. Its follow-up “Please, Please, Please” delivered an equally bittersweet umami, as the 25-year-old Disney graduate slipped from her sugariest tone to a menacing growl, warning her liability of an actor-boyfriend: “Don’t embarrass me, m*****f*****”. Given the astounding commercial success of its two lead singles , this record has a lot riding on it.
I’m happy to report that those punchy little song-shots aren’t the only cool moments on an album that confidently hair-flips its way between TikTok pop, yacht rock, country and R&B without breaking stride or losing identity. The aptly named record – Carpenter is shy of 5ft tall and the track-list is only 12 songs-long – is actually the singer’s sixth album. She was just 10 years old when she began posting videos of herself online covering tracks by Adele and Taylor Swift (whom she opened for earlier this year) and only 15 when she released her debut EP, Can’t Blame a Girl for Trying , while also starring in the Disney TV series Girl Meets World .
There followed a range of teen bop and some experimental ukulele jams before Carpenter left Disney’s Hollywood Record for Island, on which she released her first “grown up” album Emails I Can’t Send in 2022. That album saw Carpenter make sharp, fizzy lemonade from the lemons of a tabloid kerfuffle around her person.