SABRINA CARPENTER: Man\u2019s Best Friend (Island)<\/span><\/p>\n Verdict<\/span>: Sabrina sticks to the formula<\/p>\n Rating:<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Sabrina Carpenter isn\u2019t the first former Disney Channel starlet to take the entertainment giant\u2019s family-friendly training and add a little more edge to become one of today\u2019s biggest music stars. Miley Cyrus<\/a> used a similar apprenticeship to launch a career in bad-girl country-pop, while Olivia Rodrigo<\/a> used it to turn herself into a confessional rock star.<\/p>\n Carpenter \u2014 whose big break came in the teen comedy Girl Meets World \u2014 initially used the Disney finishing school as a jumping-off point for a fairly predictable run of bubblegum pop albums before becoming more daring with 2022\u2019s Emails I Can\u2019t Send and further upping the ante on last year\u2019s Short n\u2019 Sweet, a raunchy affair built around the huge hit singles Espresso and Please Please Please.<\/p>\n There\u2019s more to grab the attention on her seventh album, Man\u2019s Best Friend, which takes up from where Short n\u2019 Sweet left off, while adding more innuendo, swear words and other lines that leave little to the imagination as she delivers pointed insights into the dating game against a backdrop of disco, R&B, country and Abba-leaning pop.<\/p>\n Man’s Best Friend – and a dog: Sabrina Carpenter’s new album has flirted with controversy, thanks to a controversial cover and explicit lyrics.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Cover story: Carpenter has defended the artwork on Man’s Best Friend, which shows her on her knees having her hair yanked by a faceless man. She has since released alternative covers<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Carpenter, 26, has warned that the record is \u2018not for the pearl clutchers\u2019, and she set the tone in June when she revealed an album sleeve showing her in a submissive pose, kneeling in a black mini dress with her hair being pulled by a faceless man in a suit. Some felt the image was demeaning to women, while others saw it as satire. But it achieved its primary aim in whipping up a media storm reminiscent of the ones created by Madonna in her heyday \u2014 and Sabrina has since released three alternative, less controversial album covers.<\/p>\n Some characteristically risqu\u00e9 lyrics maintain a salacious approach here. \u2018I just want you to come … but never enter through the back door,\u2019 she sings on House Tour, before teasing that an old male friend has a lightning rod that\u2019s bigger than Zeus\u2019s on When Did You Get Hot?. The double entendres can get tiresome, although it\u2019s clear that her tongue is firmly in her cheek as she delivers lines worthy of a West End farce.<\/p>\n As for the music, there\u2019s some good pop, despite a nagging suspicion that her regular collaborator Jack Antonoff, who co-produced the album with fellow American John Ryan, is starting to spread his talent too thinly: in the past two years, he\u2019s made records with Lana Del Rey, Gracie Abrams and Taylor Swift, while fronting his own retro-pop band, Bleachers.<\/p>\n The album begins strongly, with Sabrina\u2019s sense of humour to the fore as she skewers the limited intellect of a hapless male admirer on Manchild. \u2018Why so sexy if so dumb?,\u2019 she asks, sarcastically. \u2018And how survive the Earth so long?\u2019<\/p>\n Disney princess: Carpenter began her career in teen comedy Girl Meets World and has used that as a launchpad for her successful move into the world of music<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Hitching a ride: Carpenter’s raunchy new album has attracted controversy, but also fuelled interest in the artist, who first came to fame as a Disney starlet<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Elsewhere, My Man On Willpower feels melodically undercooked, and the oompah-like Nobody\u2019s Son strives to sound like Abba, but has more in common with their fellow Swedes Ace Of Base.<\/p>\n In February, Carpenter duetted with Dolly Parton on a remake of 2024\u2019s Please Please Please, and the best moments here find her turning to country again. Sugar Talking is a soulful, if syrupy, ballad, and Go Go Juice a witty endorsement of alcohol as a social lubricant \u2014 a timely topic in a week during which Sabrina became the new face of Scottish whisky brand Johnnie Walker.<\/p>\n Arriving just over a year after Short n\u2019 Sweet, Man\u2019s Best Friend finds Carpenter sticking to what she does best without delivering a knockout blow on a par with 2024\u2019s Espresso. But, alongside her guest appearance on the title track of her friend Taylor Swift\u2019s forthcoming The Life Of A Showgirl album, it\u2019s another staging post on her seemingly unstoppable rise to superstardom.<\/p>\n SUEDE: Antidepressants (BMG)<\/span><\/p>\n Verdict<\/span>: Swaggering return<\/p>\n Rating:<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Playing London\u2019s Southbank Centre last month, Suede singer Brett Anderson stressed that his Britpop-era survivors were \u2018the anti-nostalgia band\u2019. And the group are true to their frontman\u2019s words on new album Antidepressants, a sequel to 2022\u2019s Autofiction that sees them shying away from playing the nostalgia card. Suede are now veterans, but they possess the raw enthusiasm of a much younger band.<\/p>\n This release was originally going to be an ambitious concept album. After touring in support of Autofiction, Anderson and his bandmates wrote new songs with a view to working with a ballet company and producing a piece of performance art. But they were so fired up by playing live again after the pandemic that they changed tack to make an album of surging rock music.<\/p>\n The results are wonderfully vibrant. Disintegrate, its title a nod to The Cure\u2019s 1989 album Disintegration, is an uplifting guitar anthem about learning to live with one\u2019s own mortality. Dancing With The Europeans, a song about human connection that was inspired by the bond between the band and their fans at a gig in Spain, is an homage to the power of playing live.<\/p>\n With that forceful early tempo rarely slackening, Sweet Kid is about Brett\u2019s relationship with his 12-year-old son, and The Sound And The Summer about Thelma & Louise-style escape.<\/p>\n No nostalgia here: Brett Anderson, frontman of Suede, plays to the crowd at the Southbank Centre, where the band are doing a residency to promote new album Antidepressants<\/p>\n<\/div>\n We are ten tracks in before we reach the first of the album\u2019s two ballads, the partly-spoken June Rain, before a suitably epic finale arrives in Life Is Endless, Life Is A Moment.<\/p>\n \u2018We got the bit between our teeth, and completely changed what we were originally going to do,\u2019 says Anderson. \u2018We basically went and wrote a whole new record. Suede are a band, not an art project. Sometimes we meander into those things, like making ballet albums… but we always snap back into being a rock band.\u2019<\/p>\n![\"Cover](\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2025\/09\/04\/13\/101830897-15065303-image-a-3_1756989799076.jpg\")
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