There’s no pleading on Man’s Best Friend. While ‘Please Please Please’ – one of three ubiquitous No. 1 singles from Sabrina Carpenter’s 2024 album Short’n’Sweet – was all about the first person, the singer begging not to be proven right about a (not-so-standup) guy, the new album delights in her newly prolific hatred. It’s far from an emotionless record, but it’s more about you (the guy) and the specific feeling of wanting to punch you every other minute. Sound familiar? Well, so does much of Man’s Best Friend, which reunites Carpenter with Jack Antonoff, Amy Allen and John Ryan and comfortably surveys radio-friendly pop from various eras, sounding generally more vibrant than its predecessor. It’s richly rendered and doggedly funny in ways that insist that even if you’ve heard the story a million times before, you can make it sound distinct. The Life of a Showgirl is on the horizon, but there’s nothing quite like Man’s Best Friend in the pop world right now.
1. Manchild
Man’s Best Friend stomps out in full country mode with its fantastic lead single, ‘Manchild’, a song with so many hooks it’s not hard to find something new to appreciate each time. The first time, for me, it was Carpenter’s summation of the immature men that constitute the album’s subject matter: “Why so sexy if so dumb? And how survive the Earth so long?” Then it was the decision to rhyme the title with “Fuck my life,” belting it out so that we could all scream along in the car. It’s a pop song that makes seemingly no sense, which makes it all the more fun – not hard to get so much as just sneakily complex.
2. Tears
We’ve already learned incompetence in men can be sexy – now Carpenter dares us to imagine someone who willingly does the dishes and assembles IKEA furniture. She really makes the song click by evenutally leaning towards the ridiculous: “Remembering how to use your phone gets me oh so, oh so hot.” Responsible men, this is your cue to awkwardly smile.
3. My Man on Willpower
An appropriately dramatic title for a bit of a narrative twist – though really, a natural extension of ‘Tears’: What happens when the man becomes a little too responsible? “He fell in love with self-restraint and now it’s getting out of hand,” she sings, punctuating this lack of control with a flurry of real instruments – it’s in this kind of song that the record benefits from the live recording, careful not to undercut the real emotion Carpenter displays. It’d be easy to treat it like another joke, but the comedy is starting to weigh on her.
4. Sugar Talking
By contrast, ‘Sugar Talking’ comes off way too synthetic, the drums off-puttingly blocky – and unfortunately, I must point to the absence of Jack Antonoff on production. It’s a shame, because it only makes Carpenter’s confrontation – “Put your loving where your mouth is” – sound oddly disinterested.
5. We Almost Broke Up Again
The story is familiar, predictable, and, unless you’re more like the friend who’s prone to hearing it, relatable – which is why Carpenter and her collaborators resort to the swirling sounds of vintage pop (the ABBA worship begins somewhere around here). But Carpenter owns the song with her disgruntled self-awareness, brilliantly changing the key on “tomorrow” to suggest that the pattern repeats itself, yes, but it’s always going to feel different; more intense, and maybe that’s the appeal. We already know she’s fond of wordplay, but listen to her laughing through the tears, perfectly timing the line “Gave me his whole heart and I gave him head.”
6. Nobody’s Son
On the subject of familiar feelings, ‘Nobody’s Son’ mostly recycles the premise of ‘My Man on Willpower’, delivering more quotable lines like “Just thought that he eventually would cave in, rеach out/ But no siree, he discovered sеlf-control.” It’s more lighthearted, and the chorus sure gets stuck in your head.
7. Never Getting Laid
Carpenter is an expert at poking fun at emotional correctness, so of course she’ll wish her ex a lifetime full of happiness – but also hope he gets agoraphobia someday. The song is laidback enough for the jokes to sting a little harder, but none as much as the coda: “Abstinence is just a state of mind.” Enjoy it, boy.
8. When Did You Get Hot?
Switching gears, ‘When Did You Get Hot?’ is indeed sultry, swaggering, and a breath of fresh air – neither self-deprecating nor accusatory. “It’s thickening the plot,” she sings, but it’s just tension.
9. Go Go Juice
Man’s Best Friend has been fun, but not always in the “good old fashioned way” that ‘Go Go Juice’ espouses. It goes down real smooth, with a typical Antonoff bridge that helps drive things home. Still a couple more songs to go.
10. Don’t Worry I’ll Make You Worry
Antonoff getting his Bleachers bandmates to play on the album pays off, but ‘Don’t Worry I’ll Make You Worry’ sounds oddly lifted out of Take the Sadness Out of Saturday Night – though, of course, folklore and evermore are easier comparison points. Just when you think it’s middling territory and lacking Carpenter’s singular tricks, she sharpens her pen. “Silent treatment and humblin’ your ass,” begins the second verse. “Well, that’s some of my best work.” By this point, you might be convinced Man’s Best Friend is, too.
11. House Tour
The most musically fun track on the album, deploying the snazziest synths and intricate percussion a modern Eurodisco song possibly could. After ‘When Did You Get Hot?’, the singer has no reason to play coy with her invitations, and she promises none of this is a metaphor. What do you mean you’ve never heard of Pretty Girl Avenue? Should be right up your alley.
12. Goodbye
The album’s playfully defiant closer may remind you of any number of ABBA songs, but I’ll point to ‘Knowing Me, Knowing You’, in which Frida sings, “Walking through an empty house, tears in my eyes/ Here is where the story ends, this is goodbye.” Carpenter may be in a similar predicament, but she gets to hold the upper hand, calling out the guy’s hypocrisy and stooping to his level only to ridicule him: “You used to love my ass, now, baby, you won’t see it anymorе.” No matter what languages you speak, there’s no innuendo here. What you see is what you get, and in Carpenter’s canny pop world, that’s refreshing.
Great Job Konstantinos Pappis & the Team @ Our Culture Source link for sharing this story.
