A 58-year-old man reviewed Sabrina Carpenter for Rolling Stone and it shows

Rob Sheffield is the dad at the school disco who keeps telling you he 'gets it.' He has been reviewing pop music for Rolling Stone since before several of the artists he covers were born, and his Sabrina Carpenter review carries the unmistakable energy of a man who looked up 'Espresso' on Genius lyrics and thought 'ah yes, I understand the youths now.' He writes with genuine enthusiasm, I'll give him that. But there's a fine line between enthusiasm and the condescension of an elder statesman bestowing approval upon a younger generation, and Sheffield tap-dances on that line like it's a TikTok trend.

The review declares Carpenter a 'pop superstar' in the headline, which is less a critical assessment than a coronation. Sheffield doesn't wrestle with whether the album is good — he arrives pre-convinced and spends the review finding evidence for his thesis. This is confirmation bias with a byline. He compares Carpenter to approximately nine other artists, because Sheffield's reviews are less about the music being discussed and more about demonstrating that Rob Sheffield has listened to a lot of music. We know, Rob. You wrote a book about mixtapes. You have credentials. You don't need to cite them in every paragraph.

Here's the thing though: Sheffield is a genuinely good writer, which makes his reviews frustrating rather than dismissible. The sentences are crafted. The analogies land. He has a knack for describing how a song makes you feel rather than how it's constructed. But this particular review is 80% vibe and 20% substance, which for an album called Short n' Sweet might actually be appropriate. I'm giving this a 4 because even when Sheffield is coasting, he's more readable than most critics at full effort. The man can write. He just needs to occasionally remember he's supposed to be reviewing an album, not auditioning for Carpenter's fan newsletter.