fruitcake by Sabrina Carpenter // green vinyl + EP review
Sabrina Carpenter's Fruitcake is equal parts naughty and nice - two traits that she has always embodied so well in her music. Every single song on this EP is so much fun to listen to, I absolutely love it. It has been so long since there was a really great original holiday album like this, I can truly see so many of these songs becoming annual Christmas classics.
This EP is full of glittering and cheeky holiday anthems that fit really well into the rest of Sabrina's discography. It is especially akin to emails i can't send and Short n' Sweet, which are her two best albums. So much of her personality and charm is all over this music much in the same way as those two albums. Fruitcake features six songs, five of them are original holiday tracks that she wrote with her frequent collaborators; John Ryan, Steph Jones, Amy Allen, and Julien Bunetta. The closing song on the EP is called "white xmas", a beautiful rendition of the holiday classic which also interpolates "Jingle Bells" at the end. Fruitcake runs just over 15 minutes long, so it is quite short (but still so sweet, of course).
"I've wanted to make a holiday EP for so many years and then it would get to November and I would be like 'Fuck I didn't make it'...so this year I did in time for the deadline," she told Variety in 2023.
This EP originally came out in 2023, a year after the first track, "A Nonsense Christmas" was released in late 2022. The song is a festive reimagining of her hit "Nonsense", in which she basically takes the original and reworks it line by line with hilarious holiday inspired lyrics. "Think I only want you under my mistletoe, I might change your contact to 'Has a Huge North Pole,'" she sings in the opening lines of the song. Lyrics like "I need that Charles Dickens" and "Baby, my tongue goes numb, sounds like, 'Ho, ho, ho, ho'" are two more very funny moments of "A Nonsense Christmas" too.
"I just had so many Christmas lyrics for that song that initially I just made a music video with my sister and my best friend for it without telling anyone," Sabrina said in an interview with KISS 108 Jingle Ball in 2023. "No one from my label knew until I showed them the video and I was like, 'Hey, guys, I just did this thing' 'cause I was just, not bored particularly but there's just really funny lyrics to this version and they were the ones that were like, 'Well, did you write a full version,' and I was like, 'No, but I could,' and then, yeah, it just happened very quickly."
Sabrina's personality and charm is all over this EP, especially on some of the fun poppy songs like "buy me presents" and "is it new year's yet?". It kind of reminds me of Ariana Grande's Christmas music in that way, which are some of my favorite holiday songs ever. Sabrina and her collaborators took that same recipe for the perfect pop holiday song, and made it all her own. I honestly love to listen to Ariana's Christmas music year-round, and my love for some of the songs from Fruitcake is definitely very similar in that regard!
"buy me presents" is especially so fun to listen to, I love how cheerful the melody is and how funny the lyrics are. "If you were a wise man, baby, you would drop every other ho, ho, ho and put me on top," she sings in the opening lines. Basically if her boyfriend isn't going to treat her right, she's going to find someone else who will. She goes on to describe her dream man in the funny second verse - the traits may sound a bit familiar! "Hе's a little bit older, got a bit of a dad bod," she sings. "From a city that's colder, but damn it, he's so hot, he knows when I'm sleepin' and he knows when I'm not, I haven't, like, seen him in a while, he's probably just busy at his workshop".
"is it new years yet?" is one of my favorites from the EP, it's kind of like an anti-Christmas song so it is different than the other five songs in that regard. She sings about being alone over the holidays and just wants to get all of the festivities over with, "Santa, Santa, boy, you're the worst, it's the 25th, I wish it was the 1st, couples all around me, damn, it hurts, wanna push 'em in the fireplace and watch 'em burn," she sings in the second verse. I love how fast-paced and clever it's written, she really shines during songs like this. I also love the irony of the lyric "fruitcake just makes me sick" - since she literally named this entire project after it!
"cindy lou who" is perhaps the brightest shining moment of Fruitcake. It is a melancholic holiday ballad that features some of the most gorgeous vocals of the entire EP. "There's red and green everywhere, but I'm so blue", she sings in the opening verse. Sabrina takes the classic Whoville character from How The Grinch Stole Christmas and makes her representative of her ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend. "The boy who I love is now in love with you, Cindy Lou Who," she sings in the final lines of the song. It feels very connected to the same narrative of songs like "Dumb and Poetic" or "Sharpest Tool", which were to come less than a year later with the release of Short n' Sweet.
Fruitcake was re-released in late 2024 on several physical formats, including this special indie exclusive green vinyl! The sage green shade is so beautiful and perfectly matches the album's color scheme. I bought this from my local indie record store and am so happy to add it to my collection.
I love the design of the entire packaging; the vintage aesthetics are so beautiful and suit the EP so well. The lacy details throughout are so cute and I love how the back cover and insert looks like a page from a recipe book. The inner label on Side A features a photo of an actual fruitcake too, it's such a creative tie-in to the title.
The EP was first sold on vinyl in 2023 with a limited physical release only on her webstore. It now received a wider re-release available mostly anywhere vinyl is sold. The repress coincides with her incredible holiday Netflix special, A Nonsense Christmas with Sabrina Carpenter, that was released this year too. I loved getting to hear her perform most of the songs from this EP along with other Christmas classics, plus many special guests were featured throughout. It is so fun and I highly recommend checking it out!
My Sabrina vinyl collection grew so much this year and this is a great addition to it! I also love collecting holiday records too and I have been spinning Fruitcake all season long! Funny enough, most of the vinyl I have in my collection by Sabrina was all bought in her hometown in Pennsylvania - as it is also where I live too! It's very cool that we have that in common and I have loved seeing her career and artistry blossom over the years. Sabrina is so talented and is so worth all of the hype and all of the success!
Thanks for reading! If you would like to read more about Sabrina Carpenter's music, check out my full review of Short n' Sweet here - many more are linked below. This post is apart of a new series on my blog focusing on a few of my favorite holiday vinyl records, I'd love for you to read about more of them here. I have so much more exciting new music content to come, I hope you'll come back soon to check it out!
I hope you are having a wonderful holiday season! Merry Christmas! 🎄
All photos are my own!
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