"Pop superstardom, it turns out, did absolutely nothing to improve Sabrina Carpenter's love life. That's the thrust of the singer's shrewd and tangy "Man's Best Friend," which dropped Thursday night, just a year after last summer's chart-topping "Short n' Sweet." The earlier album, which spun off a pair of smash singles in "Espresso" and "Please Please Please," went on to be certified triple platinum and to win two Grammy Awards."
"Yet all that success seems only to have attracted more of the losers she sang about last time. Here she's dealing with a smooth talker doling out empty promises, a crybaby who can't decide what he wants, even a guy so fixated on self-betterment that he's lost interest in the bedroom. "He's busy, he's working, he doesn't have time for me," she trills exasperatedly in "My Man on Willpower," "My slutty pajamas not tempting him in the least.""
"It's a veritable gallery of rogues, this LP, not least the dude in the dark suit pictured on the cover of "Man's Best Friend" with a hank of Carpenter's blond hair in his fist as she kneels before him. The image inspired an instant controversy when she unveiled it in June, with critics accusing her of propping up dangerous ideas about the submission of women in the age of the tradwife."
Sabrina Carpenter released Man's Best Friend as a follow-up to a hugely successful, award-winning prior album. The record presents a catalogue of unsatisfying partners: a smooth talker with empty promises, a crybaby, and a man so focused on self-betterment he neglects intimacy. Lyrics highlight frustration with a partner too busy to respond to seduction. The album cover, showing a suited man clutching Carpenter's hair while she kneels, provoked controversy over perceived endorsements of female submission; Carpenter countered the criticism and framed the image as satirical commentary on dating power structures faced by successful women.
Read at Los Angeles Times
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