There was a certain cohort of online puritans that lost their tiny minds over a pint-sized Sabrina Carpenter striking sexy poses during her Short N Sweet tour. Well, thoughts and prayers to them — and the parents of pre-teens who are going to need to explain the birds, the bees and vaginal lubrication after Man’s Best Friend hits playgrounds everywhere.
In her seventh studio album, Carpenter doubles down on deconstructing her Disney channel star appeal, applying her dirty mind and innuendo expertise to another crop of raunchy and hilarious tunes. Seriously, try not bopping along to these retro-inflected diss tracks dedicated to just how badly men fumble the bag.
Consider the lyrics to Tears, the second track on Man’s Best Friend, a fabulous disco about having a competence kink activated watching someone assemble Ikea furniture. “I get wet at the thought of you/ Being a responsible guy/ Treating me like you’re supposed to/ I get tears running down my thighs”. Oh, you thought this would be a song about crying over a man? And the music video is a vampy campy Rocky Horror Show tribute with Colman Domingo as the Frankenfurter to Carpenter’s Janet pole-dancing in a corn field.
Seriously, Carpenter’s way with double entendre needs to be studied in a lab. House Tour is all cute Barbie’s dream house until you realise she’s making a floor plan sound like the Karma Sutra (“I want you to come inside/ But never enter through the back door”). There’s also plenty more disco on the album, along with a dollop of country and even some RnB on When Did You Get Hot, which has more than a little Nineties Missy Elliott to it. Goodbye is pure ABBA, A-ha’s an all, with a multi-lingual kiss-off.
Nothing Carpenter does is for the quote-unquote male gaze, but she does a brilliant send-up of how dumb women feel when they realise they’ve been had by heterosexual dating. “A girl who knows her liquor is a girl who’s been dumped,” she giggles on Go Go Juice, as she pantomimes drunk dialling her famous ex’s.
Country pop tunes like Go Go Juice and Sugar Talking are clear tributes to the legend that is Dolly Parton, breathy trills and twang all the way down. This isn’t a criticism. Parton wrote the book on dissing idiot men with a hospitality smile and some honkey tonk. And given their recent collaboration on Please, Please, Please (minus the swears, because Parton doesn’t curse) we know that Carpenter has the full blessing of Parton to take up her sequinned mantle.
While the endless nostalgia-cycling of fashion is getting tiresome, Carpenter’s whole shtick is retro a-go-go and you can’t begrudge her flitting between the eras when she brings such knowing camp to it all. I think we could all benefit with artists taking Jack Antonoff off speed dial, however. He may be the best in the biz, but it creates an unfortunate samey-ness when he’s also working with Charli, Taylor, Lorde and Lana. Man’s Best Friend is a fun romp, but it probably won’t have the cultural impact of Short N Sweet with hits like Espresso and Taste.
Man’s Best Friend is out now with Island Records.
