The Kenneth Williams of modern pop, ooh-matroning over breezy hooks and Dolly Parton riffs, Sabrina Carpenter could hardly be accused of not knowing who she is. Yes, her 2024 breakthrough Short n’ Sweet – album six in her discography, but the first to take her stratospheric – was sonically all over the place, a grab-bag of R&B, country-pop and disco as indebted to Abba as it was to Doja Cat. But Carpenter’s pen served as the connective tissue: tales of pretty boys with nothing but air in their heads; disappointing men who are – for better or worse – really good in bed; sex as a silly lark.
Man’s Best Friend, squeezed out almost exactly one year later, strays little further. There are the same “Am I right, ladies?” punchlines to its lyrics, the same “Oops, did I just say that?” swears and barbs, and overall the same production flourishes. Glittery synth lines. Soft snare drums. Warmed-over grooves. It makes sense that, after years on the lower rungs of pop stardom, Carpenter would take advantage of her newfound success and keep the new material coming. But it’s worth wondering whether she would benefit from keeping her songs in the oven a little longer. There are incredible highs here, but too much that feels like a first draft.
With Carpenter circling many of the same themes in her lyrics, the hit rate on Man’s Best Friend is largely dependent on its song-by-song production, which is credited to Carpenter, John Ryan and the ubiquitous Jack Antonoff (both of whom are carried over from Short n’ Sweet). “House Tour” is sensational, a chugging slice of Eighties power-pop so instantly catchy that you’re able to forgive it holding some of the album’s biggest lyrical clunkers (“I just want you to come inside/ But never enter through the back door”). An end-of-track chant (“My house is on Pretty Girl Avenue/ My house was especially built for you”) has shades of Prince and Sheila E, and will inevitably become a big, live-show singalong moment when Carpenter tours again.
Elsewhere, “Nobody’s Son” sounds a bit like Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmastime” if it was a horny kiss-off – a frankly absurd collection of sounds that nonetheless works immaculately. “Don’t Worry I’ll Make You Worry” is a pretty and mournful pivot into shoegaze (coupled with Chappell Roan’s heavenly “The Subway”, it suggests the next big sound in pop is Stuff That Sounds Like The Cranberries). There’s also a blissful, almost Hall & Oates quality to the blue-eyed soul of “Sugar Talking”, with Carpenter cooing about a disrespectful lover (“A heart only breaks so many times/ Save your money and stop making me cry”). It’s a song that best exemplifies a key Carpenter strength: she has a lovely way of taking sentences that are unwieldy on paper and turning them into pretty melodies that dance across the eardrum. “Yeah, OK, OK, he’s on his big journey to find,” she sings on the pastiche country ditty “My Man on Willpower”. “A little zest of life, a new sense of purpose, but why?”
Too much of the rest, though, struggles for lift-off. “When Did You Get Hot?” – a painfully literal celebration of the masculine glow-up – rides a squelchy bassline hook reminiscent of Ginuwine’s “Pony”, but feels too much like Thank U, Next-era Ariana Grande cosplay to properly hit. “Go Go Juice”, with its jarring fiddle breaks and performative hoedown of a chorus, is more of a chore than a pleasure. The singles “Manchild” and “Tears”, meanwhile, are a little too rote in their apeing of Short n’ Sweet’s biggest hits, albeit rescued by their respective music videos – the former is a ludicrously busy dazzle of action set pieces and costume changes as Carpenter breezes through a montage of flings; the latter a Rocky Horror spoof filled with evil drag queens, cornfield stripper poles, and Colman Domingo in fishnets.
Carpenter is above all a brilliant aesthete, her videos and album artwork uniformly inspired. And, yes, I’m including in that Man’s Best Friend’s undeniably attention-grabbing cover art, even if the sight of Carpenter crawling on her knees for a faceless man grabbing at her hair suggests a level of sonic provocation that the album itself couldn’t possibly live up to. Still, it’s hard to deny that she’s a pop star worth investing in.
