Nobody expected Sabrina Carpenter to return this quickly. One year and six days after releasing Short n’ Sweet — her commercial breakthrough that elevated her to arena headliner, the album that spawned her first No. 1 single and Grammy award, the project that contained four radio smashes, the moment that a longtime entertainer became a household name — she’s already back with its follow-up, Man’s Best Friend.
Instead of basking in the glow of a pivotal moment, Carpenter has moved on to a new era — yet anyone paying attention to her greater trajectory understands that this new album is not a cash grab, or victory lap. After spending years as a Disney Channel star and even more as a prolific pop ingenue searching for a wider audience, Carpenter has discovered her true potential, and grabbed hold of her aesthetic. She’s not letting go anytime soon.
As such, Man’s Best Friend finds Carpenter fully locked in to her current groove — writing the songs she wants to write (funny, sneakily heartfelt reflections on love and lust), operating within her preferred sound (huge, mainstream-focused pop flecked with rhythmic curiosities), working with the people who know how to unlock her creativity (Jack Antonoff, Amy Allen and John Ryan). If the general outline of Man’s Best Friend marks a continuation of the winning playbook of Short n’ Sweet, the deepening of Carpenter’s artistic persona is what separates, and elevates, her latest project from its predecessor.
Carpenter was always the type of knowingly quirky pop star that was able to effortlessly use a word like “agoraphobia” in a chorus, but Man’s Best Friend is by far her most idiosyncratic album yet, full of self-possessed and unabashedly sexual lyricism, genre explorations via nifty instrumental hooks, and vocal takes ranging from sarcastic whispers to large-hearted cries. As much as she’s dominated the mainstream over the past 18 months, Carpenter is still abiding by her weirdo-pop impulses, being driven to make music that only she can make — and the results are often spectacular. Let’s hope she doesn’t stop anytime soon.
While all of Man’s Best Friend is worth absorbing, here is a preliminary ranking of every song on Sabrina Carpenter’s latest album.
“Don’t Worry I’ll Make You Worry”
Reading the lyrics to “Don’t Worry I’ll Make You Worry” suggests a sprightly kiss-off, with Carpenter dancing circles around a guy who can’t keep up with her — but instead of packaging the song as an uptempo pop track, Carpenter opts for a soulful, slightly sorrowful tone, as if she’s sadly aware of the relationship’s power dynamic. As such, “Don’t Worry I’ll Make You Worry” is a late-album curveball, highlighted by the bundle of yearning vocal harmonies that comprise the bridge.“We Almost Broke Up Again Last Night”
“We Almost Broke Up Again Last Night” is a masterful synthesis of influences: after opening with acoustic guitar strums and murmured vocals, the song blooms into a bubblegum sing-along with spiraling-higher vocals, as Sabrina impressively splits the difference between Lana and Britney. Carpenter’s own superpowers as a singer and songwriter most clearly shine through on the bridge, which distills the point of the song in four whiz-bang lines: “You say we’re drifting apart / I said, ‘Yeah, I f–king know’ / Big deal, we’ve been before / And we’ll be here tomorrow.”“Goodbye”
Carpenter has been wronged on “Goodbye,” and her feelings have turned acidic toward the ex who’s still trying to act like a pal: “Can’t call it love, then call it quits / Can’t shoot me down, then shoot the s–t,” she spits. Instead of hiding her pain, however, Carpenter lifts it up to the sun with a rollicking big band arrangement, full of bubbling horns and supportive harmonies — turning “Goodbye” into an open-armed spite-fest as a means of catharsis, and a fitting conclusion to Man’s Best Friend.“Never Getting Laid”
The title suggests that Carpenter is about to mourn her lack of sex life post-breakup, but on “Never Getting Laid,” she flips that expectation on its head and openly wishes for her ex to embrace celibacy. Over a dreamy lounge-music arrangement, Carpenter maintains her cool until she reaches moments in which she anger and confusion spill over, her voice rising up sharply to betray her hurt; instead of abruptly concluding the song, she drops a coda at the three-minute mark, turning the climactic line “And abstinence is just a state of mind” into a future live-show highlight.“My Man on Willpower”
Sabrina is bewildered: the guy who was obsessed with her is now obsessed with self-discovery, and none of her calls for attention are working (“My slutty pajamas not tempting him in the least,” she laments). “My Man on Willpower” features one of Carpenter’s most nuanced vocal takes on the album: she, Antonoff and Ryan concoct another country-leaning clap-along, and Carpenter balances crooning and punchlines with aplomb, never tipping the song too much towards comedy to betray the genuine emotion at its core.“Go Go Juice”
“A girl who knows her liquor is a girl who’s been dumped,” Carpenter concludes on “Go Go Juice” — a proverb of sorts, which encapsulates the spirit of a song about drinking beyond the point of numbing heartache, to where you’re drunk-dialing every bad decision in your contact list. The chipper energy of “Go Go Juice” belongs to Carpenter, although the extended instrumental breakdown, which swerves from fiddle blasts to drinks-up gang vocals, sounds indebted to the stage energy of Bleachers, co-producer Jack Antonoff’s own band.“When Did You Get Hot?”
A spiritual sequel to “Good Graces” from Short n’ Sweet, “When Did You Get Hot?” approaches the good fortune of a glow-up with sumptuous R&B: cushy percussion and “uh-huh, uh-HUH” backing vocals soundtrack the tale of an ugly kid-turned-sexy man whom Carpenter now hopes to play naked Twister with back at his place. Not only does Carpenter sell the one-liners and inject personality the corners of the track, but she wisely places “When Did You Get Hot?” after “Nobody’s Son” and “Never Getting Laid” on the Man’s Best Friend track list, ending a run of post-breakup songs with newfound hope.“Nobody’s Son”
Of course Carpenter would pair one of the most effervescent arrangements on Man’s Best Friend with the album’s most sorrowful account of romantic hopelessness — an extension of her pop subversiveness designed to keep the listener dancing and crying simultaneously. “Nobody’s Son” juxtaposes images of crying in bed, dashed expectations and bitterness toward a partner’s mother (“Could you raise him to love me, maybe?) with plush synths, echoing kick drum and debonair strings, as if the gorgeous instrumentation is adding insult to injury.“Manchild”
The lead single and opening track to Man’s Best Friend has grown in stature a few months after its release — after dozens of listens, the whirring complexities of “Manchild” have revealed themselves, from the way the beat is deployed in the pre-chorus to the power of the group vocals in the second half of the bridge. “Manchild” may have streaked to No. 1 upon its release as Carpenter’s latest undeniable pop anthem, but those details have helped the song remain a steady hit in the months following its splashy debut, and open Man’s Best Friend on a high note.“Sugar Talking”
There’s a moment on “Sugar Talking” in which Carpenter cuts through all pretense — “Save your money / “and stop making me cry-y-y-y!,” she sings, the sway of the production dropping out and her voice multiplying on the second half of the line. A slick, wounded groove anchored by pensive guitar, “Sugar Talking” is a plea for fewer apology gifts and texts, more face-to-face interaction; the song grounds Man’s Best Friend, as the fourth song on the album following a trio of fizzier pop tracks and a more grown-up riff on Carpenter’s romantic tribulations. It’s also destined to be a killer karaoke song, FYI.“House Tour”
By the time Carpenter sings “I promise none of this is a metaphor” on “House Tour,” she’s already broken her promise: a fast-moving synth-pop track rife with winks and innuendos, the song is both a thrilling gag and expertly crafted ‘80s workout. As the production leans in to the retro cheese, Carpenter moves briskly across hooks and one-liners, landing jokes about waxed floors and backdoors without detracting from the song’s pop shimmer. No other pop star could have constructed “House Tour” quite like Carpenter, and it sounds like a future fan favorite.“Tears”
Fellas, here’s how the low the bar has become for us: “Remembering how to use your phone gets me oh so, oh so, hot!” Carpenter declares, while also counting doing the dishes, assembling IKEA furniture and having a little respect for her feelings as the ultimate aphrodisiacs. “Tears,” which will serve as the album’s second single, operates on two levels, like the best of Carpenter’s pop gems: the dizzying disco production and breathy ad-libs combine for another no-brainer smash, but parsing the lyrics for Carpenter’s sardonic take on modern chivalry makes the experience all the more satisfying. In a world desperately need of more hilarious jams, Carpenter has delivered.
