After a hugely talked about album rollout, where one could find a million different think pieces on the internet about the cover of “Man’s Best Friend”, Sabrina Carpenter’s twelve-track album was finally released last Friday. The cover, which features Carpenter herself on all fours being pulled by her hair like a dog, has been a controversial topic on the internet for weeks. Many feminist critics have accused Carpenter of setting women back decades for implying that it is somehow cute or funny to have a man dragging her around like a dog. Others have expressed that Carpenter’s music is neither deep or meaningful enough to warrant such a controversial album cover.
“Manchild” is the lead single on this album–a fun pop song with a catchy hook about men’s shortcomings. I’ll admit that it took a while for this song to grow on me, as I didn’t feel that Carpenter had anything new to say for this new era of music. This expectation can be partly blamed on the standard artists like Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande have set for each musical “era” to be uniquely different, representing a new chapter in one’s life. Instead of seeing this new album as an extension of her previous album “Short n’ Sweet”, I see it more as the aftermath.
Carpenter is a strong lyricist in the sense that she’s got a smart and witty sense of humor and knows how to say what she really means. I think there’s something to be said about artists who can sing about situations exactly as they are, rather than strictly speaking in metaphors(which she also does beautifully). Her humor shines on songs like “Go Go Juice” and “Never Getting Laid”, where she’s speaking as bluntly as possible, but at the same time giving us some wordplay. “Go Go Juice” features a line pointing to “John, Larry, or the one that rhymes with villain” –an indirect callout to former romantic interests Shawn Mendes, Barry Keoghan and Dylan O’Brien. The concept of just drinking to call someone…very relatable.
There are several songs on the album that are just pure fun. “House Tour”, an allegory for Sabrina’s body, is reminiscent of the 2023 Barbie era when everyone wore pink and danced around with their girlfriends. “Tears” is another big hit for me. This song is classic Sabrina Carpenter cheekiness: “A little respect for women can get you very very far” –Carpenter is poking fun at men by romanticizing the bare minimum. The “Tears” music video features the iconic Coleman Domingo in drag among other queens, with inspiration drawn from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”. In a time where the LGBTQ+ community is being repeatedly attacked by the government, I can appreciate the message being sent here.
There are a few songs where I wish she had gone just a bit farther. The themes of embracing one’s sexuality and letting men think they have control over you when you are in fact the one in control are compelling, but I wish she had delved deeper into those ideas. The songs on the album where Carpenter is being vulnerable about her role in these doomed relationships are the most interesting to me. “Don’t Worry I’ll Make You Worry” is a beautiful example of Carpenter being vulnerable about how she can be immature and unclear in her relationships–“I’ll leave you feeling like a shell of a man.” “We Almost Broke Up Again Last Night” is another song where Carpenter is particularly vulnerable, exploring the idea of not being able to commit to ending a relationship with lyrics like “When I reach to pull the plug I swear it starts working out.”
Overall, I rate the album as a whole a 7/10. Something I loved about “Short n’ Sweet” and even “Emails I Can’t Send” was that Sabrina used her raunchy humor sparingly to really add that extra punch to a song when she felt it was necessary. She uses it more on this album which is fine, but ultimately the humor becomes less effective and teeters the line between clever and corny.
