Sabrina Carpenter’s new record, Short N’ Sweet, may live up to the title in terms of its run time, but not when it comes to the number of details fans have been dissecting from Carpenter’s lyrics.
Upon the full release of the album, fans quickly picked up the distinct focus on love triangles in the album’s lyrics. It’s most clearly seen on the first track of the record “Taste”, with the chorus “I heard you’re back together, and if that’s true, / You’ll just have to taste me when he’s kissing you.” Later on in the record, Carpenter goes into more specific details in “Sharpest Tool” saying, “We never talked about how you / Found God at your ex’s house,” or in “Coincidence” when she says, “And even without her bein’ here, she’s back in your life / Now she’s in the same damn city on the same damn night.” The love triangle theme was further emphasized with the new music video for “Taste” featuring Jenna Ortega starring opposite Carpenter, where they fight it out for a man before realizing they both are better off without him.
Even though he was predominantly featured in the “Please Please Please” music video, and the subject of that song, Carpenter’s most recent boyfriend, Barry Keoghan is likely not the focus of Short N’ Sweet’s love-triangle lyrics. However, rumors have been surfacing of a possible split between Keoghan and Carpenter for the last few weeks. However, when you consider how far in advance music has to be mixed and mastered, among other things it’s unlikely that Carpenter wrote all of these lyrics in a week or so.
Looking further back into Carpenter’s relationship timeline, we get better ideas of who may have inspired the lyrics of this record. Her most famous relationship, outside of Keoghan is with Joshua Basset. This relationship was the subject of many songs, most notably, a heartbreak anthem from Joshua’s ex, Olivia Rodrigo, and her breakthrough hit “Driver’s License”. While it’s possible that Basset inspired some of Short N’ Sweet, there’s another one of Carpenter’s relationships that’s much more one-to-one with the lyrics of the album: her recent fling with Shawn Mendes
Mendes and Carpenter were first spotted in February 2023. Despite Mendes denying it, they were spotted together often through the early parts of last year. Later on in the year, Mendes reignited his relationship with his ex, Camilla Cabello. This back-and-forth between Cabello and Carpenter seems to be the main reason fans think the record is centered around Mendes. Fans have also interpreted some lines to be references to hyper-specific details of Cabello and Mendes’s relationship.
This includes the lyrics, “Your car drove itself from L.A. to her thighs / Palm Springs looks nice, but who’s by your side? / Damn it, she looks kinda like the girl you outgrew / Least that’s what you said.” Fans believe the location referenced in the lyrics points to how Mendes and Cabello re-sparked their romance at Coachella 2023. Lyrics about “every self-help book you’ve read it” and “the mushrooms aren’t helping your life” also line up with comments Mendes has made in the past about using both of these things.
In response to the speculation, Cabello lip-synced on her TikTok to a track from her recent album C,XOXO called “June Gloom.” The track’s lyrics, “She’s cool, I heard / Won’t act surprised, I saw the pictures, we’re a / House fire, for sure / Hope it’ll burn out, but it just gets bigger,” seem to mirror what Carpenter has been talking about on Short N’ Sweet. While nothing has been confirmed, the theories that Carpenter is talking about Mendes is the subject of the record, are the most plausible. Whether we get a confirmation of any of this, there’s no way to tell, but fans will continue to do what fans do and pick away at the layers of Short N’ Sweet as the album has more time to breathe.
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