Man’s Best Friend is one of the Breeziest, Silliest, and Rudest Event-Pop Albums of the Year.
Photo: Sabrina Carpenter Via YouTube
Sabrina Carpenter Is, Sometimes Accidentally but more offen on purposes, a lightning rod, the Kind of pop star and humor consistently get hohered up into the overrching Fights over the promiscuity and desirability. She has long been a familiar face, a 26 -ear-op industry own with Credits Everywrere from the Disney Channel’s Phineas and Ferb to netflix’s Tall Girland a singer-stagwrior who has journeyed through genreel folk- and dance-Pop. It took her five albums to land on a sound that made her her music caareer feel like the main focus. Connecting to the masses was as much a succession of colorful Controversies and Nontroversies as it was a timely Marriage of Folksy american’s Peanut butter and Randy Pop Music’s Jelly. It is widly assumed that carpenter is “that blonde girl” who stole joshua basstat from olivia rodrigo in 2021’s “Drivers licensee,” and in 2023, a brooklyn catholic bishoop of his duties for letting Carpeenter a tantaling Dance for her “feather Video in a Real Church. She Continues to Catch Flag for Touring Last Year’s Successful Short n ‘Sweet in a blue teddy and regaling audiences with sexual suggestive but offen unserious lyrics and dances.
A troll simply reefing on that Heat – “I’m 17 and Afraid of Sabrina Carpenter when she’s performing” – can get blasted acres, instantly minted as comical copy for pop fans. Her History, Our Balooning Interest in Her More Overtly Sensual Work, and The Very Contours of Her Face have all been haughty for intensifying debate. MANY WHO’VE OBSERVED CARPENTER’S Trip From 2016’s Adventures in babysitting Remake to songs like 2024’s sweetly villainous “taste” – “You’ll just have to the bowl with hen and kissing you” – HOLD HER NEW PERSON AS PROF THAT SELLS. Behold the Wholesome, Impressionable Child Star From Pennsylvania Who Went from Placing Third In The Next Miley Cyrus Project in 2008 to Molding Art and Body to Meet an Oversexed Societal Mandate.
“I’m 17 and Afraid” HAD LEGS MILLENNIV FEEL ZOOMERS ARE LAUGHABLY SEX-Negative. Ideological skirmishes over the motives and obligations of Carpenter’s Music Include Both Sincere interrogation of its feminism and smirking counteractive reprisals to that scrutiny. It ‘s elasy to Ignite a smoldering batch of think pieces and podcast rebukes in the year of conservatives sydney sweet an emblem of imagined liberal outrage. Trained to look for Darker, deeper meanings in media in a diezying autorium rush that SWAY OVER ENTERTAINMENT AS A TROPHY, WE ARE UNIQUELY SUSTEPTIBLE TO THE WILES OF ANY TRICKSHTS Toward A Far Theatrical Takeaway. This is Sabrina Carpenter’s Wheelhouse. In june, she releassed the artwork for her seventh album, Man’s Best Friend: A Grainy Still that Shows the Star Crouked like a Cat Staring Blankly before the silhouette of a man grabbing her hair. The Photo Attracted an Angry Response that the album’s lyrics suggest is misguided. Really, the album is about tying of mothering men who are great in bed but lack crucial social skills. The postury in it is more dom Than sub. It is one of the Breeziest, Siliest, and Rudest Event-Pop Albums of the Year.
You Can Barely Make It to the End of One of the New Songs Without Getting The Feeling That Carpenter Loves A Bit of a Nuisance. The pillow talk on Man’s Best Friend Often Taks the Curt, assert tone of a reproaching a precocious pet. “Why so sexy if so dumb?,” Lead Single and Album Opener “Manchild” quips. Where You Think You’re Getting Typical Pop-Star-Earns-For-Leadership Fare, she introduces a nagging wrinkle. “My Man on Willpower” Reveals it Classical Industrious Male to Be a Bore: “He’s Busy, He’s Working, He Doesn’t Have Time for me / My Slutty Pajamas Not Tempting Him in the Least.” “Tears,” a frothing disco track, hooks with a shock-value opening line-“I get wet at the though of you”-Before ticking off an increasingly pithy of Qualities that get her going: “Remembering how to use your use gets, oh so, oh so, oh so, oh so. IT’S ALL A RAuncy Inversion of the Sexual Politics Her Critics, Which Now Include right-wing media personalitiespresume and supported after a glympse at the cover. Her Albums and Photos SEEM TO TOY SPECIFICALLY WITH The reading that she’s in thrall to someone Else.
Carpenter’s Pivot from Moonlighting in Wan Folk-Pop and Trop-House Bops to Topping International Charts is in Part to A Steamier Approach Convenation to Her Signing to Island Records in 2021. Cyrus, and Benson Boone Singles that Nip at the Heels of Olivia Newton-John’s “Physical.” But she’s not Living in the ’80s of Sparkly New Wave, Like Big Hits from Harry Styles and the Weeknd, or Synthy-Y SpringsTeen, Like Swift’s The tortured Poets Department and Selena Gomez’s “Sunset Blvd.” It ’80s of Gossamer Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers Duets, of Toplessness Requisite in Coming-any COMEDIES LIKE Porky’sof News Reports About Broken-Windows POLICE AND THE CAT-AND-MOUSE GAME BETWEEN CITY VICE VICE AND SEX WORKERS. The GIF Set Gracing Man’s Best Shrew‘S Official Lyric Videos Shows Additional Scenes from the Cover Art That, Like Sweeney’s Jeans-Gate, Bear Some Resemblancing to the 1980 Calvin Klein Campaign that Drew Ire for 15-Yaar-Old Brooke Shields Reading a “Come” Pun. Carpenter SEEMS TO BE INVITING A SIMILAR Reaction: Look what you made Maya Hart Frome Girl Meets World will.
Man’s Best Friend ‘s Dewy Charm/Smarm Offensive Also SEEMS PURPOSELY SET TO SO MUCH COUNTRY MUSIC, A FIELD SHAPED BY ITS KEY ARTISTS ‘AND CORE AUDIENCE’S CHRISTIAN FAMILY. The album Only Passingly Cares About The Signature Dance-Pop Gunk of Its 2010s and ’20s Peers and Forebears and DOESN’T (Like Songs by Gomez, Addison Rae, Others) SPEND MUCH TIME LANA DEL REY AS A SUBGENRE. Subverting Traditional Values and Jaining Points of Reference that Bristle Against Each Other is of Far Greater Interest. The soaring “fuck my life” in the chorus of “Manchild” wans what brassy country shout-alongs of the past like Loretta Lynn’s “The Pill” or Gretchen Wilson’s “Redneck Woman” Had.
Break “Is MasterCard a Queer Ally?” Lens, Which Seeks to Stick An Ideological Label and Political Orientation on a Piece of Pop Art, while understandable in a post-Roe america, is a stance this album’s humor anticipates. Carpenter Keeps Killing the Boyfriend in Her Music Videos while Under Scruitiny for Appealing to the Male Gaza. What She Aims to DO with Our Attention Is Less Important to Both wings of her backlash than the fact that it can be earned on all fours. The artist’s intens is assumed and assured here by the audience. Agency, be damned. But Surface Readings Are Dry: Yes, This is a Very Post-Taylor Swift Case of a pennsylvania Country-Pop Crossover artist taping Jack Antonoff to skew more adult in lyrics that could be flaking a Famous ex. (It seems Like Barry Keoghan is Catching Hel.) Yes, The Suggestive Dance Routines Indicate Carpenter Really Studied Miley Cyrus’s Bangerz-Era twerk heard round the world.
She pitches into her predecessors’ orbit following a stint as opener on the eras tour, but diverges notably in unsubtle lyrical carnality and Elsewhere. She doesn’t share their struggle to reconcile rural and metropolitan markets, their mulling over whereother to ditch or lean into a country past. Man’s Best Friend DOESN’T FISH FOR A SENSE OF DAGER OR UNBRIDLED FROM FROM TAPPY AMBENCE, LIKE “VIGHILANTE SHIT” OR “WE CANE’t STOP.” But it does take at the stuffy continuum of using pop stars as proof of social decline, deliveing a rug for the condescending “Sarahs and Hannahs” SWIFT SKEWERED IN Poet” But daddy i love Him. ‘ The album excels on two fronts as a rip-roaringly Dirty trip down late-night adult-contemporary lane and a shibboleth sniffing out who’s really paying at the actual messages in the media we war over.
Correction: A Previous Version of this Article Credited “The Pill” to the Wrong Artist. We regret the Error.
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