Taylor Swift will, one day, not be the most famous woman in the world. Pop music will enter a post-Swift twilight. In the darker sky, three new lights will begin to define themselves. Heartbroken Olivia Rodrigo is more like a moon. Genius Chappell Roan is a distant comet. It is Sabrina Carpenter, whose album Man’s Best Friend arrives today, who seems likely to give us the steadiest, solar warmth.
This is Carpenter’s seventh album, but her third mature one. Previously she was a Disney child star making Disney child star music. She emerged as an adult with rumours that she was the older, sexier, blonder girl envied in “drivers license”, Olivia Rodrigo’s sensational lockdown hit. “She’s everything I’m insecure about,” Rodrigo sang. Carpenter signed with Island Records less than three weeks later. Her first album with them, Emails I Can’t Send, earned her a spot opening on Taylor Swift’s Eras tour.
From then on, Carpenter adhered strictly to every known law of pop superstardom. She trained her image to a readily known visual language: 50s bombshell glamour. She trained herself to a tight brand: cheeky, girly, knowing. She even embarked on a romance with the hottest actor of the moment, Saltburn-fresh Barry Keoghan. (Carpenter later sang: “Who’s the cute boy with the white jacket and the thick accent?/Who’s the cute guy with the wide blue eyes and the big bad mm?”)
Somehow Carpenter’s provocations never feel like those of Madonna, Britney Spears or Miley Cyrus. By all evidence she appears to be a cheery, hopeful young person. She just seems to know that the media will cycle through outrage and philosophy if she does something crude. The cover of the new album shows Carpenter on all fours next to the legs of a man who is holding her hair. The title Man’s Best Friend seems to compare her at once to a dog and a sex worker. Thinkpiece writers said it was pornographic and reprehensible.
Now we have all 12 songs and 38 minutes of Man’s Best Friend. After the raucous lead single “Manchild”, Carpenter runs a couple of comic riffs. “Tears” recounts the hotness of a communicative, responsible man assembling Ikea furniture. “My Man on Willpower”, which could only have been written in this very specific moment, complains about a boyfriend who has gotten so into self-improvement that he keeps going to bed for early nights before they can have sex. (“My man’s in touch with his emotions/My man won’t touch me with a 20-foot pole”).
Four subsequent songs take a loungey, sultry tone. A lot of the singing is done in Carpenter’s breathy-whisper mode, which sounds nice but can never soar. The performances open up a little as the album gets into its second half. “When Did You Get Hot?” is frisky and danceable, with swampy synth beats and absurd lyrics (“I bet your light-rod’s, like, bigger than Zeus’s”).
The best song comes after with “Go Go Juice”, a barnstormer about the “good-old fashioned fun” of getting drunk and texting exes. Carpenter reintroduces her energetic, comic asides; “Fuck, just trying different numbers, didn’t think that you’d pick up!” And at the end brings in a cackling, joyous chorus to shout along with mistyped drunk texts – “Do you me still love?” is the most singable line in the album.
Three songs follow and feel, again, like Carpenter in second or third gear. You do have some regret that there are none of the huge notes found in “Please Please Please” or “Nonsense”. Or a love interest compelling enough to produce a “Juno” or a “Bed Chem”. Or the exuberant, maximal production of all those songs and “Taste” or “Busy Woman”.
But if Man’s Best Friend is a little muted, it is certainly a good time. And in the new sky, there is no doubt that Carpenter is a star. All fans will be keen to see just how brightly she can glow.
[See also: The rise of Gracie Abrams]
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This article appears in the 03 Sep 2025 issue of the New Statesman, The Age of Deportation
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