Sabrina Carpenter’s 'Man's Best Friend' Proves that Obedience is Out and Biting is In: Album Review
- Abby Anderson
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Stand-out tracks: "Tears" "Nobody's Son" "Goodbye"
Our favorites: "My Man on Willpower" "Sugar Talking" "Don't Worry I'll Make You Worry"
Release date: August 29, 2025
Label: Island Records
For fans of: ABBA, Taylor Swift, Chappell Roan
For the love of God, Sabrina Carpenter isn't meant to be put in a cage. And the comedy of errors disguised as a dazzling power play that is Man's Best Friend proves it. Her second full-length album in just a little over a year unbuckles the collars of expectation and drips with quips that leave romance begging on its hind legs for a taste of the woman who keeps love on a long leash. Man's Best Friend is an arsenal of euphemistic claw-scratching at love lost, complete with the bold bite that gives Sabrina Carpenter what may just be the best album of her career.
After the colossal smash that was Short N' Sweet, there was no expectation for Carpenter to head back into the studio any time soon. But when the playfully cheeky opening "Oh boy" of album-opener "Manchild" dropped last spring, it was clear that one thing Sabrina may not have put to bed after SNS was her lack of tolerance for BS and her larger-than-life sense of humor. And fresh on the heels of Sabrina's declaration of "I swear they choose me / I'm not choosing them"? A whole tracklist of songs explaining how and why that's exactly the case.
But she's not man's best friend in the way her suggestive album art may lead you to believe. While her playfully seductive lyricism is far from gone, she's also so astutely aware of the pitfalls of mankind that she pokes fun at them with the flippancy of a woman who refuses to be scorned. From the man addicted to self-restraint and workaholicism on "My Man on Willpower" to the twinkly-disco bass mansplained breakup rationale of the whipsmart "Nobody's Son," Sabrina dances through loves lost with a twinkle in her eye.
But being sparklingly flirtatious is basically synonymous with Sabrina Carpenter. So, she leans on consistent collaborators in Jack Antonoff and John Ryan to build the most sonically ambitious production work of her career, making 80s disco and ABBA-esque production sound fresher and sultrier than ever. From the pop-monster cheek of "Tears" and its bare-minimum worshipping "A little communication, yes, that's my ideal foreplay / Assemble a chair from IKEA, I'm like 'Ah'" to the in-your-face retro-groovy "House Tour" and its shameless "Are you gonna come inside?," Sabrina makes every move she makes look effortless.
Even her most guard-down moments are strokes of genius meant to bend the will of mankind to her goddess-tier indifference. "Don't Worry I'll Make You Worry" is a stunningly twisted ballad for all her beloved faux pas, and "Goodbye" begs to be sung at a sleepover between Mamma Mia movies and overflowing glasses of wine as an ode to every numskull who's ever made her say, "Forgive my French but f*ck you, ta ta!"
The success of Man's Best Friend lies in the fact that Sabrina Carpenter basically said, “Oops, your bad,” shrugged, and turned it into a chart-topping disco-pop gem. Confident, chaotic, and couldn’t care less about playing it safe, Sabrina’s not out here pretending to be perfect; she’s busy weaponizing her mistakes with sparkly one-liners, wink-wink innuendos, and hooks so catchy they should be put out with the dogs. After years aiming to meet the expectations of the industry and the men who don't deserve her, Man's Best Friend feels like the moment Sabrina stopped trying to prove anything and just had fun, finding that who she is at her core is the exact reason the whole world, men included, worship at her feet.
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