“The album is not for any pearl clutchers,” Sabrina Carpenter said of her latest record, ‘Man’s Best Friend’, ahead of its release. Indeed, even before the pop superstar’s seventh record dropped, its artwork was the source of countless think pieces and endless commentary. Unfairly deemed as regressive or misogynistic, the blowback ignored decades of satirical pop music that has seen women challenging typical expectations of them as artists, and the fact that Carpenter could be unapologetically creating the record she wanted to.
‘Man’s Best Friend’ is sex-positive, seductive and – at times – brilliantly silly. It’s at its best when Carpenter’s winning personality-fuelled pop is front and centre, the winning formula perfected on career-making sixth record ‘Short n’ Sweet‘ remains (Carpenter released her first album in 2015 as a fresh-faced Disney channel star, with breakout fifth record ‘Emails I Can’t Send’ coming in 2022). Here, she skewers deeply disappointing men (‘Manchild’), wishes an ex “a lifetime full of happiness” and a “forever of never getting laid” (‘Never Getting Laid’), and layers tracks in deliciously winking innuendo (‘House Tour’, which boasts lines like: “I spent a little fortune on the waxed floors”).
All tracks are run over a sonic palette of sugar-rush pop, disco, and lilting country, produced by Carpenter herself, alongside regular collaborators Jack Antonoff and John Ryan. You’d be hard-pressed to find another tune both quite as catchy and funny as ‘Tears’ this year. Over shimmying, foot-tapping ‘80s disco we see Carpenter celebrate the attractiveness of assembling IKEA furniture, before delivering the filthy refrain of: “I get wet at the thought of you/being a responsible guy”. If you weren’t sure what she meant, Sabrina then adds: “Treating me like you’re supposed to do/tears roll down my thigh”.
Meanwhile, on the slinky ‘When Did You Get Hot?’, a campy, R&B-infused belter Carpenter asserts “I bet your light rod’s, like, bigger than Zeus’s”, later warning the audience “big riff coming I need a minute…wait, I need a minute”, before clearing her throat and belting.
The ABBA-indebted ‘Goodbye’, and country-twang of ‘Go Go Juice’ (an ode to drunk dialling), are catchy too – albeit not hitting the megawatt level of smash like ‘Espresso’ or ‘Nonsense’ from Carpenter’s previous records; but sleepier numbers like ‘Sugar Talking’ and ‘We Almost Broke Up Again Last Night’ see momentum stutter, running into each other and getting lost. ‘My Man on Willpower’ too – which sees Carpenter bemoaning a partner whose dedication his “new sense of purpose” means “suddenly the least sought after girl in the land” is lyrically a riot but doesn’t hit the stratospheric heights of previous Carpenter cuts.
Largely, though, ’Man’s Best Friend’ cements Carpenter’s place as a pop megastar. Flirty, phenomenally catchy and actually, genuinely funny; it’s a delight that’s set to shine in Carpenter’s live show.
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