The Short & Sweet Cinematic Universe | Graphic by Aiden Robillard | The Wright State Guardian
Pop sensation Sabrina Carpenter released “Espresso”, which many called the song of the summer, in April of this year as a preview for her album, “Short n’ Sweet", which dropped in full on Aug. 23. The no-skip, twelve-song album has blessed fans with three music videos, which happen to fit together into an aesthetic and cohesive story.
Espresso
The first video of the series is for “Espresso”.
When we first see Carpenter, she is looking out at the sea, in color for only a moment before she fades into black and white. The next shot shows her on a boat, riding with some man in the back of the boat.
She takes a sharp turn, singing “switch it up like Nintendo,” letting the man fly off the boat. She then picks up his wallet and pulls out his bright orange credit card. As she looks at it and smiles, everything else comes back into the vivid color palette that is on-brand for her and this album.
The rest of the music video is a montage of Carpenter and her friends being pampered on the beach as she pays using the stolen orange card. They dance, get massages and ogle at shirtless guys.
Then the police show up with the man from the boat, and he points them in her direction. She resists, but the cops handcuff and arrest her, putting her in the back of their car.
The song and music video was released as a single in April and quickly became a charting hit. In fact, Billboard proclaimed the global song as the song of summer 2024.
“‘Espresso’ buzzed to No. 1 on the Global 200 chart in June and spent all 14 weeks of the summer tracking span in the top three, the only song with such a perfect record in that stretch, and more than twice the total of any other hit,” the article states.
Fans were in agreement with Billboard’s assessment.
“She literally ate, devoured, left no crumbs, effortlessly made THE summer pop anthem,” Alex Oliver commented on Youtube.
Carpenter gained lots of attention from this video and long time fans were very happy about it.
“I'm so happy she’s finally getting the success she deserved,” said a fan on Youtube.
Please Please Please
The video for the second single of the album begins with Carpenter bored as she is sitting and waiting in a jail cell, which is a continuation of the story line from the “Expresso” video.
An officer tells her she has been bailed out, and she leaves to collect her belongings: lipstick and sunglasses.
She rounds the corner and sees actor Barry Keoghan, her real-life boyfriend, being brought into a cell by officers. The two exchange a knowing glance, implying that he committed a crime so he could get her free.
That’s when the song actually starts.
“I know I have good judgment, I know I have good taste. It’s funny and It's ironic that only I feel that way,” Carpenter sings.
He drags Carpenter along for his crimes, from robbing banks to fist-fighting a group of men by himself, and she rolls her eyes and gets increasingly annoyed with Keoghan’s antics as the video plays on.
Despite this, he remains as much a gentleman as he was at the start, opening the car door for her every time she bails him out of jail.
The video ends when Carpenter handcuffs Keoghan to a chair, puts duct tape over his mouth, then kisses the duct tape, leaving a lipstick stain. Barry is left to think about what he has done and to stare into the camera as she leaves him there.
Fans instantly loved the song and raved about her including her boyfriend in the music video.
“Creating a song warning your boyfriend not to mess up and then having him star in it is just legendary,” one fan commented on YouTube.
Taste
After the content warning, the latest video in the Short n’ Sweet music video opens with a shot of Carpenter’s bed, made neatly and covered in an array of weapons. The camera zooms in on a teddy bear wearing the same piece of lipstick-stained duct tape that Keoghan wore at the end of the last video.
Carpenter considers her weapons, singing a lullaby, but eventually plucks a tube of lipstick off the bed. She then grabs a knife to use as her mirror for applying it, and then she is on her way to run her errands for the day.
Of course, those errands consist of breaking into her ex-boyfriend’s house and attempting to murder his new girlfriend with a machete. However, this girl, played by actress Jenna Ortega, has other plans.
“Now I’m gone but you’re still layin’. Next to me, one degree of separation,” she sings while standing over the bed. “(I) heard you’re back together and if that’s true, you’ll just have to taste me when he’s kissing you.”
In the lyrics, Carpenter is alluding to popular themes in music media, love triangles, situationships and heartbreak.
When Carpenter breaks in, Ortega is waiting with a shotgun, and shoots Carpenter, sending her falling from the second floor onto a fence. This is the first of many comically fatal injuries that the two women sustain, all of which they recover from with ease.
The rest of the video shows the two women going after each other until one day Ortega is kissing her boyfriend– Carpenter’s ex– and she hallucinates that she is kissing Carpenter instead. As a result, she pulls out a Louis Vuitton chainsaw and runs it through Carpenter, smiling as the blonde falls into the pool.
However, the real Carpenter shows up next to her, and Ortega realizes that in actuality, she killed the boy. The video concludes with the two girls standing at his funeral, and then walking off together, laughing about what a bad boyfriend he had been to both of them.
The video is a vibrant depiction of dark fantasies, but has hints of empowerment and girlhood.
“GENIUS! All the excessive violence really shows how love can make you crazy and go to the extreme, but portraying it in an almost funny way gives levity to it. Like they are already healed, over it," one fan commented on the music video.
Fans really loved this one too with praise for both the song and the creativity of the music video.
Narrative
All in all, the Short n’ Sweet music videos tell a cohesive story, wherein Sabrina Carpenter, happily dating Barry Keoghan, cons a random man, stealing his credit to have a fun day.
She is then arrested for this con, but Keoghan bails her out. She uses her freedom to be an accessory to his crimes, until she finally has enough, and kidnaps him.
The duct tape piece found on the teddy bear at the beginning of Taste could be interpreted as Carpenter having let him go, or as Carpenter having gotten rid of him permanently, but either way, she leaves, and heads off to murder her ex’s new girl.
Her attempts are unsuccessful, but make her happy anyway, and she runs away with a new friend, or potentially even lover, in Jenna Ortega.
Fans really loved finding all the connections and easter eggs in each video.
“The kiss on the duct tape from ‘Please Please Please’ and the lipstick from ‘Espresso’ !!! The Sabrinaverse is really coming together,” Gaby Rodriguez commented on Taste’s music video.
This is a cohesive, funny story, with some room for interpretation. All of the songs and visuals are beautiful, standing out within the music industry already.
