With a shocking cover album and title, Sabrina Carpenter’s seventh studio album sparked a wave of discussion among social media and pop fans.

Released on Aug. 29, “Man’s Best Friend” follows quickly after Carpenter’s hit album, “Short ‘n Sweet” (2024). With such short time between both albums, basically a year apart, “Man’s Best Friend” feels like a continuation of the “Short ‘n Sweet” era rather than creating its own feel.

Sure, Carpenter is adding a little more country twang and curls her hair differently, but there is no growth or change of direction from the new album. Carpenter is still talking about boys and how horrible they are. While this is a fun concept and works for many songs, fans are not grasping what the album is expressing.

Nonetheless, this man-hating style is working for Carpenter as her sales and following continue to increase. She does it well with cheeky comments and jokes, as well as comical catch phrases within the songs.

Carpenter produced the album alongside Jack Antonoff (“Modern Girl”) and John Ryan (“Two Months”). Both Antonoff and Ryan are heavily influential in all of the songs with Antonoff’s classic 80’s synth stealing the show.

“Manchild” being the first single really set the tone for what the album would be about. As the title implies, Carpenter is talking about how “stupid” and “useless” men are. Carpenter mentions this a lot throughout the whole album, in almost every song.

“Tears” is one of the songs that takes a ‘happier’ approach. The context of the song is about how good a man makes her feel when he is respecting her.

Carpenter knows what she is doing with her music. Her implications of men’s ‘stupidity’ and bare minimum behavior is done in a very funny way that attracts a huge female audience.

In both the “Tears” music video as well as Carpenter’s VMA’s performance, she has chosen to shed light on transgender women and drag women. Carpenter has faced a lot of backlash with the album’s content as well as the cover, with people calling it ‘anti-feminist’. Carpenter has not responded to much criticism about the album cover besides a few interviews with not much focus on the backlash.

The album has a very pop, upbeat sound with many of the songs nodding to classic artists like ABBA (“Voyage”) and Dolly Parton (“If You Hadn’t Been There”). In songs like “Goodbye,” Carpenter really plays with the synth sound, and it feels like it is coming directly from an ABBA album.

While Carpenter’s album can be considered fun, it falls flat. Depth is not always needed in an album, but Carpenter does not move or change at all throughout her new record. All of the songs have the same idea, which creates cohesiveness but also lacks diversity among the songs.

“Man’s Best Friend” was created too fast without much time in between her previous work. The album feels like a deluxe to “Short ‘n Sweet” rather than its own story.

Carpenter has a lot of talent and a gift with drawing viewers in and creating an entertaining performance. Amidst backlash and criticism, Carpenter continues to create what she chooses and for that, some praise must be given.