Album Review: Sabrina Carpenter - ‘Man’s Best Friend’
Pop’s sharpest trickster, Sabrina Carpenter, bares her teeth, with a wink and a kiss-off.
A year on from her rocket-fuelled rise with Short N’ Sweet, Sabrina Carpenter returns with her seventh studio album, Man’s Best Friend. At just 26, the Grammy-winning singer has already mastered the pop sphere with an irreverent sense of humour and a knack for devastatingly sharp hooks. If her last outing made her a star, Man’s Best Friend solidifies her as pop’s most self-aware provocateur.
Working once again with Jack Antonoff, John Ryan and Amy Allen, Carpenter sharpens her weaponry: wit, sensuality, heartbreak and a refusal to sugarcoat. The result is 12 tracks in under 40 minutes that feel like a cocktail of glossy disco-pop, twangy country inflexions, and Carpenter’s signature sarcasm.
Lead single ‘Manchild’ sets the tone, a country-laced pop anthem that swaggers with the same smirk Carpenter’s perfected. Its follow-up, ‘Tears’, catapults her into disco-ball delirium, pairing glitter-drenched grooves with some of her raunchiest lyrics to date. The track’s outrageousness, not least its Rocky Horror-inspired video featuring Coleman Domingo in drag, shows Carpenter’s understanding of pop spectacle.
Much of Man’s Best Friend pivots on this tension between sincerity and satire. On ‘My Man on Willpower’, sugary harmonies mask an aching admission of romantic neglect. ‘We Almost Broke Up Again Last Night’ offers one of the record’s most vulnerable moments, though even here Carpenter punctuates her heartbreak with a cheeky wink. Tracks like ‘Nobody’s Son’ and ‘Never Getting Laid’ lean into the fallout of failed relationships, lacing bitterness with devastating one-liners.
There are dips, ‘Sugar Talking’ struggles to stand out when sandwiched between bigger, brasher tracks, but they are fleeting. The album’s middle stretch, ‘When Did You Get Hot?’, ‘Go Go Juice’, bursts with playful energy, Carpenter delivering Alanis-style venom one moment and tongue-in-cheek country twang the next.
It’s the closing run, however, where she stakes her claim as one of pop’s sharpest storytellers. ‘Don’t Worry I’ll Make You Worry’ finds her weaponising ambiguity, while ‘House Tour’ is pure Carpenter mischief, a groove-heavy innuendo-fest that dares you not to grin. Closer ‘Goodbye’ signs off with a multilingual kiss-off, bitter, hilarious, and brilliantly on brand.
Man’s Best Friend isn’t for pearl-clutchers, and Carpenter knows it. Cheeky, provocative, and relentless in its hooks, the album cements her place in the lineage of pop stars who know exactly how to play with fire, and who look dazzling while doing it.
Words by Danielle Holian
