Music

Sabrina Carpenter tried to warn you. “The album is not for any pearl clutchers,” the “Espresso” pop goddess told Gayle King, before dropping her new album, the hotly awaited Man’s Best Friend. And she wasn’t kidding about that. Sabrina has returned with her most libidinally charged, riotously funny album — not to mention her best. All over Man’s Best Friend, Sabrina delivers nonstop one-liners about love, sex, and breaking up. Right from the start, she set out to punch people’s buttons, starting with the title and the hugely controversial album cover. The photo depicts Sabrina on her hands and knees in a little black dress, reaching up to a power-suited figure who’s grabbing a fistful of her blonde hair. The songs live up to that spirit — it’s the great smutty sex-comedy concept album that Abba never made. 

It’s also full of delightfully catty break-up salt, after her high-profile split from Saltburn actor Barry Keoghan. But the whole album is a major statement from a true original — nobody in the game combines sex and laughter the way Sabrina does. Here are five takeaways from Man’s Best Friend.

She’s Not One to Waste Time
Sabrina moves fast — Man’s Best Friend comes almost exactly a year after her breakthrough Short n’ Sweet, the August 2024 blockbuster that made her a household name. But instead of taking her time with the follow-up, she introduced her new era back in June, with “Manchild,” her second Number One hit after “Please Please Please.” Man’s Best Friend gets right to the point — twelve songs in 38 minutes, all written by Carpenter with just three collaborators: Jack Antonoff, Amy Allen, and John Ryan. All three are on top of their game — not a skip in the bunch. Antonoff really puts out as her producer, helping her cram the music full of nonstop twists and turns, with loads of Abba and Eurodisco. His most famous collaborator has been Sabrina’s pal/tourmate/mentor Taylor Swift, but she made her upcoming album with Max Martin and Shellback. (Carpenter is featured on the title song, “The Life of a Showgirl.”) So no wonder Antonoff sounds extra-determined to remind everyone why he’s the producer-king wingman to all the main pop girls.

Sabrina’s Got Sex on the Brain
No surprise here — Sabrina spends virtually of these songs on the prowl for carnal satisfaction, milking every kind of sexual scenario. She never runs out of risqué imagery. The synth-pop banger “House Tour” is one of her most hilariously filthy songs. After dinner with a dim bulb who drives a cool car (“the pineapple air freshener is my favorite kind”), she invites her date back to her home on “Pretty Girl Avenue,” offering, “I’m pleasured to be your hot tour guide.” But it soon becomes clear she’s not talking real estate. “Do you want the house tour?” she purrs. “I could take you to the first, second, third floors/And I promise none of this is a metaphor/I just want you to come inside.” She constructs the song with all her lyrical carpentry, from “I spent a little fortune on the waxed floors” to “We can be a little reckless because it’s insured” to “Never enter through the back door.” Location, location, location.

She Needs Emotional R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Sabrina is not exactly coy when it comes to shredding lovers who fail to deliver. In her excellent new single “Tears,” she explains that what she really needs is an emotional connection. The chorus has one of her most clever hooks: “I get wet at the thought of you/Being a responsible guy/Treating me like you’re supposed to do/Tears run down my thighs.” She goes into detail about her ideal of seductive male behavior — “Considering I have feelings? I’m like, ‘Why are my clothes still on?’” — and how much it turns her on when you do the dishes and assemble her IKEA furniture. (She debuted the “Tears” video on Friday, a Rocky Horror homage starring Colman Domingo.)

She faces a different version of the same dilemma in “My Man on Willpower,” where she laments, “My man won’t touch me with a twenty-foot pole/My slutty pajamas not temping him in the least.” Whatever he’s going through, it leaves her frustrated, asking, “What in the fucked-up romantic dark comedy is this nightmare?”

Even Sabrina Gets the Break-Up Blues
Hell hath no fury like a Sabrina scorned, and this album is full of songs where she rips her exes apart. After the headlines about her split from Keoghan, she did a not-so-subtle remake of the “Please, Please, Please” video with Dolly Parton, where his character is bound and gagged in the back of her truck. So fans were ready for Saltbrina to fire away, and she doesn’t hold back, with kiss-offs like “I just wish you didn’t have a mind that could flip like a switch/That could wander and drift to a neighboring bitch.” She hits the town for a rebound bender in “Go Go Juice.” “A girl who knows her liquor is a girl who’s been dumped,” she sings, until she decides to drunk-dial her troubles away. “Could be John or Larry, gosh, who’s to say? Or the one that rhymes with ‘villain’ if I’m feeling that way.” (“Villain” might not exactly rhyme with “Keoghan” — though Bob Dylan is a longtime friend of the Beatle Keoghan plays in an upcoming movie — but “Larry” sure rhymes with “Barry.”)

When it comes to saying farewell, she doesn’t necessarily take the high road. “Goodbye” concludes, “I’ll say arrivederci, au revoir/Forgive my French but fuck you, ta ta.” Her nastiest barb here is “Never Getting Laid,” her sarcastic revision of “I Will Always Love You,” as she lets her ex know, “I wish you a lifetime full of happiness/And a forever of never getting laid.”

She’s Sick of Her Phone
Sabrina meets her share of romantic buzzkills on Man’s Best Friend, but she’s got especially harsh words for phone junkies. In the highlight “Sugar Talking,” she goes ballistic on a lover who spends more time texting than showing up in person. “Put your loving where your mouth is,” she commands, after getting one too many late-night texts. “Your paragraphs mean shit to me / Get your sorry ass to mine.” She commands him to put down the phone and focus on giving her some IRL face-to-face action. He sends her flowers to apologize, but that doesn’t do it for her either. It’s a bold stand from a romantic who wants less thumb-typing and more face time. “You having these epiphanies,” she sneers. “Big word for a real small mind/Aren’t you tired of saying a whole lot of nothing?” Like the rest of Man’s Best Friend, it’s Sabrina at her nastiest, funniest, and most irresistible.