{"id":184914,"date":"2025-08-29T15:37:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-29T15:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/184914\/"},"modified":"2025-08-29T15:37:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-29T15:37:09","slug":"5-takeaways-from-sabrina-carpenters-new-album-mans-best-friend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/184914\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Takeaways From Sabrina Carpenter\u2019s New Album Man\u2019s Best Friend"},"content":{"rendered":"

After years toiling in the post-Disney-star pop ecosystem, Sabrina Carpenter<\/a> finally broke through last year with Short n\u2019 Sweet<\/a>, her sixth album, which rode to pop ubiquity (and strong Grammys recognition) off the back of \u201cEspresso<\/a>,\u201d \u201cPlease Please Please\u201d and \u201cTaste\u201d its three catchy, sharply written megahit singles. Since then, she\u2019s staged a gigantic global arena tour and, somehow, found time to record a follow-up: Man\u2019s Best Friend, which once again finds her working with Jack Antonoff<\/a>, John Ryan, and the songwriter Amy Allen.<\/p>\n

Like its predecessor, Man\u2019s Best Friend positions Carpenter as a kind of TikTok-era Mae West: a sex symbol who\u2019s in on the joke, and who can flick between sweet and savage in milliseconds. This time around, there\u2019s a little more sadness and frustration in the mix\u2014Short n\u2019 Sweet might have made frequent reference to the irresistible nature of Carpenter, but this record pokes some holes in that self-confidence as she sings about men who are disinterested, rude, or just plain annoying. Here are five key takeaways.<\/p>\n

Provocation with Purpose<\/strong><\/p>\n

Man\u2019s Best Friend was already a media sensation before it even came out, thanks to its vaguely provocative cover\u2014Carpenter, on all fours, with a man in a suit grabbing her hair\u2014and its title, which some fans assumed was being presented literally and uncritically. In truth, the presentation of the album makes a lot of sense when you listen to it: Many of these songs, like \u201cMy Man on Willpower\u201d and \u201cWe Almost Broke Up Again,\u201d center on Carpenter\u2019s inability to cut herself off from men who trifle with her emotions or make her feel undervalued. (On her being treated, in other words, like a dog.)<\/p>\n

Euro Swag<\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the songs on Sabrina Carpenter\u2019s pre-show playlist is ABBA\u2019s \u201cIf It Wasn\u2019t For The Nights<\/a>,\u201d an underrated and relatively obscure from 1979\u2019s Voulez-Vous, written by Bj\u00f6rn Ulvaeus about how his own sense of workaholism was the only thing getting him through his divorce from Agnetha Faltskog. Carpenter\u2019s ABBA standom comes into full bloom on Man\u2019s Best Friend, which draws distinct influence from the lush white European pop of the \u201970s and \u201980s. There are shades of \u201cI\u2019ve Been Waiting For You<\/a>\u201d on \u201cWe Almost Broke Up Again Last Night,\u201d while \u201cNobody\u2019s Son\u201d plays like a love letter to the Swedish pop industry, somehow nodding to \u201cOne of Us<\/a>,\u201d Ace of Base<\/a>\u2019s \u201cThe Sign<\/a>\u201d and Jens Lekman\u2019s \u201cThe Opposite of Hallelujah<\/a>\u201d in equal measure.<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s \u201cGoodbye,\u201d the album\u2019s triumphantly acerbic closer, which channels \u201cVoulez-Vous<\/a>\u201d and the hearty chug of \u201cTake a Chance on Me<\/a>.\u201d If Carpenter wants to stay in this lane for a while, there\u2019s still plenty of weird ABBA music from which to mine inspiration: personally, I\u2019d love to hear her take on \u201cVisitors\u201d-esque paranoid coldwave.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After years toiling in the post-Disney-star pop ecosystem, Sabrina Carpenter finally broke through last year with Short n\u2019…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":184915,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[171,33757,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-184914","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-takeaways","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115112800626700292","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184914\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}