‘It is not for the pearl clutchers’

Carpenters, gather round: Sab has finally released new music! Sabrina Carpenter’s seventh studio album, Man’s Best Friend, officially became available to stream on Friday. The “Sugar Talking” singer, who honored her latest record with a heartfelt Instagram post, also held a Spotify album release party at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles on Thursday night.

“Man’s Best Friend is out now x how special to make something out of pure inspiration and zero pressure. I don’t think I’ve had greater memories making something before,” read Carpenter’s Instagram caption. “It’s a real party for heartbreak, a celebration of disappointment! It’s laughing at yourself and your poor choices as everything is falling apart, it’s wondering how loyalty and love always gets you back to third wheeling, spoken sarcastically like a true 25 year old !”

Also accompanying the release of Man’s Best Friend was the music video for “Tears,” Carpenter’s second single off the album. The Rocky Horror-themed video sees Carpenter stumbling into a haunted house filled with dazzling drag performers, including two-time Oscar nominee Colman Domingo, who guides the singer through the glittery, delectably choreographed dreamscape.

“It is not for the pearl clutchers,” Carpenter said of the album on Thursday’s episode of CBS Mornings. “But I also think that even pearl clutchers can listen to an album like that in their own solitude and find something that makes them smirk and chuckle to themselves.”

Featuring the lead single, “Manchild,” which Carpenter released to the surprise of her fandom in early June, the album marks the official beginning of the pop star’s new musical era, which she teased throughout the summer.

With a solid 12-song tracklist, Carpenter’s Man’s Best Friend seems like the appropriate follow-up to her chart-topping Short n’ Sweet, which earned her a handful of Grammy Awards and cemented her as 2024’s songstress of the summer. On Man’s Best Friend, Carpenter’s sonic dispositions are still in full force: She offers up bubbly disco anthems that are infused with both country twang and ‘80s adult-contemporary.

Carpenter is also just as witty, sex-positive and critical of men as ever before. Her challenge of gender-based power dynamics is just as clear on this album: She thanks men for testing her (“Manchild”), cheekily croons of tears running down her thighs (“Tears”), cries over deceptive men (“Nobody’s Son”) and wants to play a round of naked Twister (“When Did You Get So Hot?”).

Carpenter’s fans, however, seem to be at odds over Man’s Best Friend. While much of the fandom is on board with the new album, others are less impressed by it.

“Each song is SO different and rich I could see them ALL being smash hits,” one fan wrote on X. “There is a clear cohesiveness to this project that we haven’t seen from her before to the point where it feels a bit like a concept album at times, which makes for a very fun and unique addition to Sabrina’s discography.”

Argued another fan on X, “Im afraid Sabrina’s new album is not good… it feels so rushed, almost all of the songs have the same arrangement. The lyricism isn’t there and it seems like she’s talk-singing the entire album. WHERE ARE THE VOCALS? This is not living up to the masterpiece that ShortNSweet is…”

Ahead of Friday’s release, select groups of fans in Los Angeles, New York and London were handpicked by the singer herself to listen to the album from start to finish. In each city, only 26 fans were chosen to meet Carpenter at a private location, where they willingly surrendered their phones, screamed, cried, laughed and took in the pop perfection of all twelve tracks.

“I asked 26 of my beautiful LA fans to meet at a private location and then get on a bus to come meet me at the studio where i got to play the whole album for them 🖤🐾,” the 26-year-old pop star wrote on Instagram. “they were gracious enough to let me take their phones so they were totally present and respectful and amazing and it was genuinely one of my favorite nights in such a long time!”

When Carpenter first announced the summer release date for Man’s Best Friend, the internet was flooded with critiques of the seemingly suggestive album artwork shot by photographer Bryce Anderson — and even some of the pop star’s own fans had turned on her as a result. The artwork in question shows Carpenter on her knees in a black minidress, gazing into the camera as an unidentified man, who is standing, pulls at her hair.

Fans were similarly scandalized by Carpenter’s July/August cover for Rolling Stone, in which her long blonde locks were strategically placed over her naked body. Those critical of the album artwork and Rolling Stone cover argued that Carpenter was going against the seemingly feminist sentiment of her music. Here she was, suddenly in service of the male gaze, on two separate occasions.

Following the backlash of her initial Man’s Best Friend album cover, Carpenter dropped an alternate cover in late June, in which she appears to recreate a 1957 paparazzi photo of Marilyn Monroe and her then-fiancé, Arthur Miller. She debuted the new artwork on Instagram, alongside the caption, “Here is a new album cover approved by God.”

A third album cover was unveiled in early July. The artwork, which accompanies a limited-edition rose vinyl, shows Carpenter clad in lace lingerie and surrounded by several bouquets of roses as she lounges on a powder blue chair in a lavish hotel room.

Carpenter rounded out her array of Man’s Best Friend album covers with a fourth and final offering in August, in which she wears a sparkly blue dress while commanding the attention of men at a dinner table.