{"id":106976,"date":"2025-08-30T04:10:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-30T04:10:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/106976\/"},"modified":"2025-08-30T04:10:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-30T04:10:07","slug":"it-is-not-for-the-pearl-clutchers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/106976\/","title":{"rendered":"‘It is not for the pearl clutchers’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Carpenters, gather round: Sab has finally released new music! Sabrina Carpenter\u2019s seventh studio album, Man\u2019s Best Friend, officially became available to stream on Friday. The \u201cSugar Talking\u201d singer, who honored her latest record with a heartfelt Instagram post<\/a>, also held a Spotify album release party<\/a> at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles on Thursday night.<\/p>\n

\u201cMan\u2019s Best Friend is out now x how special to make something out of pure inspiration and zero pressure. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve had greater memories making something before,\u201d read Carpenter\u2019s Instagram caption. \u201cIt\u2019s a real party for heartbreak, a celebration of disappointment! It\u2019s laughing at yourself and your poor choices as everything is falling apart, it\u2019s wondering how loyalty and love always gets you back to third wheeling, spoken sarcastically like a true 25 year old !\u201d<\/p>\n

Also accompanying the release of Man\u2019s Best Friend was the music video for \u201cTears,\u201d<\/a> Carpenter\u2019s 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<\/a>, who guides the singer through the glittery, delectably choreographed dreamscape.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not for the pearl clutchers,\u201d Carpenter said of the album on Thursday\u2019s episode of CBS Mornings<\/a>. \u201cBut 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Featuring the lead single, \u201cManchild,\u201d which Carpenter released to the surprise of her fandom in early June, the album\u00a0marks the official beginning of the pop star\u2019s new musical era, which she teased throughout the summer.<\/p>\n

With a solid 12-song track list, Carpenter\u2019s Man\u2019s Best Friend seems like the appropriate follow-up to her chart-topping Short n\u2019 Sweet, which earned her a handful of Grammy Awards and cemented her as 2024\u2019s songstress of the summer. On Man\u2019s Best Friend, Carpenter\u2019s sonic dispositions are still in full force: She offers up bubbly disco anthems that are infused with both country twang and \u201980s adult contemporary.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> (\u201cManchild\u201d), cheekily croons about tears running down her thighs (\u201cTears\u201d), cries over deceptive men (\u201cNobody\u2019s Son\u201d) and wants to play a round of naked Twister (\u201cWhen Did You Get Hot?\u201d).<\/p>\n

Carpenter\u2019s fans, however, seem to be at odds over Man\u2019s Best Friend. While much of the fandom is on board with the new album, others are less impressed by it.<\/p>\n

\u201cEach song is SO different and rich I could see them ALL being smash hits,\u201d one fan wrote on X<\/a>. \u201cThere is a clear cohesiveness to this project that we haven\u2019t 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\u2019s discography.\u201d<\/p>\n

Argued another fan on X<\/a>, \u201cIm afraid Sabrina\u2019s new album is not good… it feels so rushed, almost all of the songs have the same arrangement. The lyricism isn\u2019t there and it seems like she\u2019s talk-singing the entire album. WHERE ARE THE VOCALS? This is not living up to the masterpiece that ShortNSweet is…\u201d<\/p>\n

Ahead of Friday\u2019s 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 12 tracks.<\/p>\n

\u201cI 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 \ud83d\udda4\ud83d\udc3e\u201d the 26-year-old pop star wrote on Instagram. \u201cThey 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!\u201d<\/p>\n

When Carpenter first announced the summer release date for Man\u2019s Best Friend, the internet was flooded with critiques of the seemingly suggestive album artwork<\/a> shot by photographer Bryce Anderson \u2014 and even some of the pop star\u2019s own fans turned on her as a result. The artwork in question shows Carpenter on her knees in a black minidress<\/a>, gazing at the camera as an unidentified man, who is standing, grabs her hair.<\/p>\n

Fans were similarly scandalized by Carpenter\u2019s July\/August cover for Rolling Stone<\/a>, in which her long blond 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, they said.<\/p>\n

Following the backlash against her initial Man\u2019s Best Friend album cover, Carpenter dropped an alternate cover in late June, in which she appears to re-create a 1957 paparazzi photo of Marilyn Monroe and her then husband, Arthur Miller. She debuted the new artwork on Instagram, alongside the caption \u201cHere is a new album cover approved by God.\u201d<\/p>\n

A third album cover<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

Carpenter rounded out her array of Man\u2019s Best Friend album covers with a fourth and final offering<\/a> in August, in which she wears a sparkly blue dress while commanding the attention of men in tuxedos at a dinner table.<\/p>\n