After ruling the airwaves all summer long with “Espresso” and “Please Please Please,” Sabrina Carpenter is capping off the season — and satiating our thirst for more witty, sparkling pop — with her newly released sixth album, Short n’ Sweet. Throughout its speedy 12-track duration, the 25-year-old wields confidence and authenticity like it’s a Marc Jacobs bag, honestly referencing A-list relationships past and present, and stretching the limits of innuendo. Having had “full creative control” over Short n’ Sweet and “being a full-fledged adult” during its recording process, Carpenter told Variety that the record feels like her “second ‘big girl’ album.”
This freshly honed artistic identity is front and center on the opening track and third single “Taste,” which arrived alongside a Dave Meyers-directed visual inspired by Death Becomes Her and co-starring Jenna Ortega on Aug. 23. Co-written by Carpenter, Julia Michaels, Amy Allen, John Ryan, and Ian Kirkpatrick, the deceptively sweet tune sets the tone for the record’s often sardonic and sensual point of view.
Don’t let its title fool you — “Taste” is not aimed at a lover but the other woman, aka his on-again, off-again girlfriend. Although the track seemingly finds Carpenter post-breakup, she can’t help but emphasize the impact she made on her ex during a short-lived fling. “Oh, I leave quite an impression / Five feet to be exact,” its opening line states before she makes her presence further known: “You’re wonderin’ why half his clothes went missin’ / My body’s where they’re at.”
In the breezy and addictive chorus, she sets her thesis: “I heard you’re back together and if that’s true / You’ll just have to taste me when he’s kissin’ you.” Despite current standings, Carpenter explains that her time with this man and the feelings he harbored for her cannot be erased. In the second verse, she offers another piece of evidence: “He’s funny, now all his jokes hit different / Guess who he learned that from?”
Still, the bridge — delivered in a breathy stream of consciousness — hammers the point home. After decreeing that when this girl “feels his lips, you’re feelin’ mine,” Carpenter begins to lay down her weapons, resolving that “you can have him if you like.” But just when you think she’s done, the singer issues another thwack via an allusion to what might be the highly publicized 2020 love triangle between her, Olivia Rodrigo, and Joshua Bassett. “I know I’ve been known to share,” she sings with a wink.
But who is the man on the sidelines of “Taste?” The internet is speculating that Carpenter’s rumored relationship with Shawn Mendes might be the song’s inspiration. The two singers were spotted together multiple times in early 2023 before things quickly fizzled out.
It’s a strong theory, considering Carpenter recently told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe that the album title wasn’t a reference to her “vertically challenged” height. “I thought about some of these relationships and how some of them were the shortest I’ve ever had, and they affected me the most,” she said. Short and sweet indeed.
The “graphic violence” warning that appears at the beginning of Sabrina Carpenter‘s video for her brand-new single “Taste — from her just-released sixth album “Short n’ Sweet” — has one thinking at first that the playful revenge fantasies of the two previous videos have gotten serious. But strange as it might sound, the murder weapons, amputations and buckets of blood that she and Jenna Ortega spill in the hilariously Tarantino-ish clip with references to the 1992 film “Death Becomes Her” are more like a cartoon.
As they fight over a boyfriend (played by fellow “Halloween” actor Rohan Campbell), Ortega sets Carpenter on fire, cuts her arm off, throws her out of a window and impales her on a white picket fence, and electrocutes her — and it’s actually hilarious, and of course Carpenter gives as good as she gets. Spoiler alert: The pair end up comparing notes on the boyfriend as they walk away from his funeral together, sipping coffees.
Carpenter is credited as a songwriter for “Taste” alongside Julia Michaels and Amy Allen, while John Ryan and Ian Kirkpatrick are credited as producers. The tracklist for “Short n’ Sweet” (out Friday) also includes top five singles “Please Please Please” and “Espresso,” along with unreleased songs “Sharpest Tools,” “Coincidence,” “Good Graces,” “Slim Pickins,” “Juno,” “Lie to Girls,” “Bed Chem,” “Dumb & Poetic,” and “Don’t Smile.”
Carpenter recently teased the album to Variety, describing the album as “the hot older sister” of “Emails.” “It’s my second ‘big girl’ album,” she said. “It’s a companion but it’s not the same. When it comes to having full creative control and being a full-fledged adult, I would consider this a sophomore album.”
The “Sweet n’ Sour” tour will begin with a North American leg on Sept. 23 in Columbus, Ohio, before moving through the UK and Europe in 2025. Carpenter has already sold out a run of 33 arena shows in North America, including dates in New York’s Madison Square Garden and the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. Amaarae, Griff and Declan McKenna will be supporting Carpenter on the North American tour, while Rachel Chinouriri will be joining her as the support act on the new run of international dates.
Sabrina Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet is finally here, and so is the vicious video for her latest single, “Taste,” which also stars Jenna Ortega. The clip finds Carpenter and Ortega feuding over a boy and coming up with increasingly gruesome (and, frankly, hilarious) ways to murder each other. There are knives and shotguns, voodoo dolls, chainsaws, and even excessive shocks from a defibrillator. Despite the maniacal violence, the clip ends with Carpenter and Ortega deciding it’s probably best to put aside their differences and find common ground: Actually, it was the boyfriend who sucked.
Carpenter teased the clip earlier this week, sharing a short clip of her perusing a selection of knives and other sharp objects before selecting her weapon of choice. She then marches into a mansion and barges in on Ortega and a lover in the middle of a shower, in a scene that recalls the famous stabbing in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.
“Taste” marks the third single off Short n’ Sweet, following Carpenter’s two summer smash hits, “Espresso” and “Please Please Please.” The eagerly-anticipated album finally arrived today, Aug. 23: It’s Carpenter’s sixth LP, following 2022’s Emails I Can’t Send, and it features songwriting and production contributions from Jack Antonoff, Julia Michaels, Amy Allen, John Ryan, Julian Bunetta, and Ian Kirkpatrick.
In an interview with Rolling Stone earlier this year, Carpenter said Short n’ Sweet contained some of her most honest songwriting to date, and spoke about why she felt compelled to be so open with her audience. “I hope they find whatever they need to guide them through their life through my mistakes,” Carpenter said. “Because I think the more open I am with my experiences, the more that other people are like, ‘Oh, maybe that’s OK that that happened to me. It’s not the end of the world.’”
Carpenter will hit the road next month in support of Short n’ Sweet, with the tour kicking off Sept. 23 at the Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio, and wrapping Nov. 15 at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles.
Just a few hours after the release of her new album Short n’ Sweet, Sabrina Carpenter dropped the music video to “Taste” Friday (Aug. 23) — but there’s nothing sweet about the Death Becomes Her-inspired bloodbath that ensues in the visual, unless you count the unlikely friendship she forms at the end.
The video opens with Carpenter singing a creepy lullaby: “Rock-a-bye baby, snug in your bed/ Right now you are sleeping, and soon you’ll be dead.”
She then sneaks into her ex-boyfriend’s house to hack his new girlfriend — played by Jenna Ortega — to bits with a machete, before realizing that the Wednesday actress had set up a decoy in the bed. Ortega jumps out from hiding and starts shooting Carpenter with a rifle, sending her falling out the second-story window, with the singer impaled on the fence below.
Such begins a gory cat fight between the two ladies who keep coming back from the dead — à la the 1992 Oscar-winning film starring Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn — involving weaponized hospital defibrillators, voodoo dolls and Ortega chopping off Carpenter’s arm after the latter bursts in on the former and her nameless beau in the shower. It all culminates with the “Nonsense” singer and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice star having a steamy makeout sesh by the pool, before Ortega mistakenly murders their shared boy toy with a chainsaw.
“I heard you’re back together and if that’s true/ You’ll just have to taste me when he’s kissin’ you,” Carpenter sings. “If you want forever, I bet you do/ Just know you’ll taste me too.”
At the funeral for their late love, the girls realize they’re better off as friends than as enemies. “Very insecure,” Ortega complains of her lover-turned-murder-victim, to which Carpenter responds, cackling, “Very insecure! You kill me.”
The Dave Meyers-directed project marks the third music video in Carpenter’s Short n’ Sweet era, following visuals for smash hit “Espresso” and Billboard Hot 100 chart-topper “Please Please Please,” which starred her boyfriend, actor Barry Keoghan. The new album marks the musician’s sixth studio album, following 2022’s Emails I Can’t Send, which reached No. 23 on the Billboard 200.
Sabrina Carpenter, we see what you’re trying to do here. To follow up her bloody, unholy “Feather” video, the Short n’ Sweet singer is back with an even bloodier “Taste.” And she’s got help this time, from Scream queen Jenna Ortega. Isn’t it obvious now how badly Carpenter wants to be cast in a slasher? Sure, the “Taste” video is more along the lines of Death Becomes Her, between Carpenter getting a hole in her stomach and the scene of her and Ortega falling down that fancy staircase. But we see how Carpenter looks at that set of knives at the beginning of the video, or just how well she plays the blood-splattered blonde bombshell. Scream 7 casting directors, are you getting this? We hear you have a five-foot-one(ish) hole to fill in your next film.
Pop star Sabrina Carpenter teamed up with “Wednesday” actress Jenna Ortega for the new music video for her song “Taste.” The Dave Meyers-directed clip debuted online Friday, the same day Carpenter's “Short n’ Sweet” album dropped.
In the music video, Carpenter and Ortega fight over a guy -- their “beloved boyfriend,” played by “Halloween Ends” actor Rohan Campbell -- and kill each other over and over in ways inspired by iconic movies like “Death Becomes Her,” “Psycho” and more.
At the end, the two eventually realize maybe they aren't enemies and their ex -- now dead -- actually sucked. “Clingy, lots of trauma,” Carpenter says of their former beau as the two leave his funeral with smoothies in hand, while Ortega adds, “Very insecure.”
Sabrina Carpenter’s sixth studio album Short n’ Sweet is here and the singer has already punctuated the occasion with a gore-y visual co-starring the Scream Queen herself: Jenna Ortega. The duo teamed up for Carpenter’s “Taste” music video, which finds them fighting over a boy and, naturally, plotting out ways to murder one another in hopes of gaining his affection.
The visual is gruesome, at times funny, and, seemingly, references some of the most campy slasher movies in memory. “[The video] was inspired by one of my favorite films and [Jenna] was a huge fan of the film,” Carpenter told Jimmy Fallon, adding “I’m so excited for you guys to see this video, you have no idea. I think it’s my favorite one I’ve ever done.”
Below, all the references from Sabrina Carpenter’s “Taste” music video.
It’s likely that the “favorite” movie Carpenter referred to is the 1992 cult classic Death Becomes Her starring Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn. Of course, the film follows a similar narrative to Carpenter’s “Taste” visual, with two women, who are unable to dyie, fighting for the attention of one man. Carpenter and Ortega even wear similar funeral attire to Streep and Hawn.
The “Espresso” singer donned an off-the-shoulder black gown and waves à la Streep while Ortega channeled Hawn in a pouff sleeve gown and a matching face veil. At one point towards the beginning of the video, Ortega fires a gun shot at Carpenter that propels her over a balcony and onto a white picket fence. The singer is impaled by the fence, but that doesn't stop her from throwing a knife at Ortega which lands in the actress’s eye. The scene is reminiscent of the lesser known Ginger Snaps—a 2000 Canadian horror film about two sisters who start to transform into werewolves.
Carpenter’s fall includes a visit the hospital where she is seen by her nemesis, Ortega, who is posing as her caretaker. The Beetlejuice Beetlejuice actress is quite aggressive with her patient, all the while wearing a nurse’s costume inspired by the Kill Bill character Elle Driver.
After Ortega successfully wins the affection of the boy, Carpenter stages a surprise knife attack on the actress while the two are showering. The whole thing is reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock’s landmark film Psycho—well, aside from the fact that Ortega chops off Carpenter’s entire arm with a machete.
