The Conflicted Wit of Sabrina Carpenter’s Man’s Best Friend (2025)

One thing is abundantly clear: Sabrina Carpenter knows how to get people talking. Just one year after her Grammy-winning album Short n’ Sweet (2024), Carpenter has made her return with Man’s Best Friend (2025), an album steeped with classic, catchy pop songs and polished production. Backed by pop veterans Jack Antonoff and John Ryan and propelled by the success of its lead single “Manchild,” the album had seemed poised to deliver a fresh and meteoric step forward while staying true to Carpenter’s pop roots. Yet, immediately upon listening, the album’s charm quickly fades away, revealing predictable lyrics and tired attempts at sensuality that leave the listener wondering if this album was needed at all.  

The album starts off strong with its lead single, “Manchild,” a catchy, classic pop song that features Carpenter at her best. A clear successor to her first major hit “Espresso,” the song follows the same formula of a catchy bridge and short repetitive chorus designed to go viral. This formula is maintained across the album with songs like “Nobody’s Son” and “Go Go Juice,” where lyrics such as “Got a soft spot for a bev and a boy that’s fruity” and “If I’m not there, it won't get done / I choose to blame your mom” continue to demonstrate Carpenter’s clear ability to weave humor with vulnerability. While highlights like these show that Carpenter still possesses the wit and charm that made her music so appealing in the first place, the same cannot be said for the rest of the project.

The second single, “Tears,” reveals much of the album’s weakness. Although “Tears” attempts to continue Carpenter’s trademark witty charm, it ultimately fails, with the song offering little more than the same repetitive innuendo of “tears” running down her thighs, lacking the same emotional depth of the other tracks. Despite previous comparisons to her pop peers Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo, it has become increasingly clear that Carpenter lacks their songwriting skills. Songs like “House Tour” and “When Did You Get Hot?” only continue to repeat the same surface-level, cliché lyrics that cover the same recycled themes of attraction, confidence, and sexual empowerment—with sexual innuendos appearing in almost every song. This rampant repetition leaves the references feeling tired and uninspired, coming off as a shallow means to seem edgy and provocative. Ultimately, this reliance on such tropes only further underscores how rushed this project feels. 

The biggest talking point of this album, however, has been its controversies—most notably the cover image, which shows Carpenter on all fours with a man’s hand tugging at her hair. While some fans have interpreted this as an attempt at satire, the album struggles to support that reading. If Carpenter was attempting to spark a conversation on the objectification and exploitation of women, the album has failed to do so. With lyrics lacking in nuance and insight, the heavy precedence of shallow sexual innuendos seems to only reinforce the very issues she appeared to critique. There is nothing wrong with embracing a more sensual image, but the album must commit to it fully. Instead, what Carpenter was truly trying to stand for remains unclear.

In the end, Man’s Best Friend fails to showcase Carpenter’s full potential. What could have been a chance to establish Carpenter as a major force in pop instead resulted in a muddled and unoriginal album, weighed down by recycled themes and clichés. Rather than releasing just a year after her last project, Carpenter might have benefited from taking the time to further refine and develop her artistic vision. The album serves as a reminder that while Carpenter has undeniable talent and the ability to craft a pop hit, she is still in the process of growing into her full creative voice.