Sabrina Carpenter had a long and successful past year with her extremely popular album “Short and Sweet” which  brought home two Grammy awards and a number 1 single on the Billboard Hot 100. 

In June of this year, she released the lead single for her album “Manchild” and this song would debut number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Following the release of this song she would officially announce her seventh studio album Man’s Best Friend.

As someone who wouldn’t really call themselves an actual fan of Sabrina Carpenter’s music, just a casual listener, I was quite excited to see what she’s been working on this past year.

 I was a bit surprised that she would be releasing a brand new album so soon, since her previous album came out last year and dropped a deluxe for it earlier this year as well. So, I was curious whether it was going to be a similar sounding album or have a completely different sound from her previous record, and my expectation on this album was mixed since I didn’t know what to expect.  

After my first listen of this album, my initial reaction was very positive. I found some of the songs to be very catchy right off the bat, while others weren’t so great but I felt like this album had nothing that made it feel any worse than her previous album.

The only negative part of this album is that it sounds quite similar to her previous album, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Also, I felt like the themes are very similar since both albums revolved around her relationships even though “Short and Sweet” wasn’t about heartbreak and “Man’s Best Friend” was, but I feel that doesn’t take away much from the album itself  since they were released in a pretty close time frame.

The title Man’s Best Friend is usually used to refer to  dogs, since they are commonly referred as a man’s best friend. I think she used that title to refer to her still having feelings for a guy she was dating, so in a sense she’s being loyal and she still wants to come back to him.

The cover, on the other hand, shows her being on her hands and knees while a man who’s in black holds her hair. Although I feel like she could’ve used a better cover for the album since this cover seems misogynistic, I think that in a sense this cover portrays the theme of this album well. During most of this album she feels vulnerable and out of control when she was going through this breakup, which makes her feel powerless which can be interpreted by seeing this cover. I wasn’t a fan of this cover and I felt like she could’ve used one of the alternate covers and the overall message would’ve still been portrayed.

At the start of the track list the album had two of the standout tracks, the first standout track was “Tears,” which is more of a disco/pop song, where it makes it feel like it can perfectly fit in on the dancefloor with a really groovy sound with her talking about she got attracted to a man due to his responsible and respectful attributes. 

The third track, “My Man on Willpower,” is less flashy, with the instrumental being more of a minimal guitar that isn’t trying to take the full spotlight, but paired up with her vocals it compliments the song with a catchy delivery right off the bat when she starts off with “He’s clingy, he’s loving, he always initiates, callin’ and touching.” The storytelling in this song was also great as she described how her partner started losing interest in her as he was gaining more self control.

The fifth track on this album “We Almost Broke Up Again Last Night” showed one of her best vocal performances. Although she didn’t do anything too spectacular on this track, she had a softer and smoother tone with her vocals over an acoustic guitar that perfectly matched the more hopeful, yet melancholic, tone she went for this song since as referenced in the title she was facing problems with her partner which caused their breakup.

The following song, “Nobody’s Son,” transitions into her facing the problems and emotions that come after a breakup. Even though the instrumental and her vocals didn’t have anything that stood out, the chorus of the song had a melody that is catchy and gets stuck in your head when she says, ¨Here we go again, crying in bed, what a familiar feeling, all my friends in love, and I’m the one they call for a third wheeling.” 

A song that I feel that didn’t hit the mark but wasn’t necessarily bad was “When Did You Get Hot?” This song relied on a buildup that felt forced and I felt like it didn’t pay off well. For more than the first half of the song, it had a sort of a slow buildup since the song had a slower beat, but then the song had a small bridge that randomly led to the climax of the song where she said, “Big riff coming, I need a minute, wait I need a minute, ehmm okay here it comes,” right after she hits a high note and the song goes towards more of an upbeat direction with the same chorus but a faster beat  and ends with an outro where she repeats “When did you get, when did you get” multiple times which makes the writing seem lazy. 

A change of pace happened with the song “Go Go Juice” where it seemed like it took some inspiration from country songs. The song starts off as more pop influenced, but slowly integrates some country elements, for a major part of the song the banjo is utilized as a big part of the song and the banjo is a known staple for country music. This song mostly focuses on her being drunk and missing her ex boyfriend and is expressed when she says “I miss you and I think about you every minute,” and “I’m just drinking to call somebody, ain’t nobody’s safe when I’m a little drunk.”

Although this album is consistent, I feel like some songs don’t have the charm that others songs have and don’t stand out as much. Songs like “Sugar Talking” and “Don’t worry I’ll make you worry,” are examples of songs that are good, but they don’t stand out. It almost feels like she put a lot of effort into most of the album and forgot about giving these songs that charm that the other songs had.

Overall, I felt like this album was a great follow up with the success of her last album, since the majority of the songs on this album were great and had a familiar yet different sound that Short and Sweet had. Although I would say S&S is still a better album, I can’t deny that this record came pretty close to it and I would rate Man’s Best Friend a 7.5 out of 10.