I’m bored of Jack Antonoff. I wasn’t yet in 2021, when Lorde’s Solar Power and Lana Del Rey’s Chemtrails Over the Country Club and St. Vincent’s Daddy’s Home all shared the same sonic palette; I wasn’t with Taylor Swift’s overwhelmingly dull Midnights or her behemoth THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT; I wasn’t with his 2024 self-titled album or with “Please Please Please,” Sabrina Carpenter’s country-tinged comedown after the effortlessly summery “Espresso.” But in June, I heard the pillowy synths of “Manchild,” Carpenter’s second summer smash, and now I am.

Antonoff dulls Man’s Best Friend — Carpenter’s 7th album — if not to the point of no return, then the point of limited interest. With the exception of a few highlights (including the sleek disco anthem to bare-minimum behavior “Tears”), it lulls the listener. Melodies aren’t novel, the storytelling is awfully simple, and production notwithstanding, Carpenter is running out of material. She can only poke men so often, replaying “Get his ass!” feminism for shrugs. Even in the record’s most uproarious moments — like the last final push of “Manchild,” or the bubbly sugar high of “Go Go Juice” — it can’t help but feel like Carpenter is retreading territory. And in a sense, she is; Man’s Best Friend arrives one year and a couple days after Short ‘N’ Sweet, last year’s blockbuster pop album where Carpenter cemented her ethos: Men are silly, and I’m silly for liking them. That Man’s Best Friend follows so closely to its predecessor isn’t a bad thing in terms of lineage, but everything feels awfully familiar.

Men orbit around Carpenter the entire album. She’s Dolly Parton on “Go Go Juice,” downing liquors and firing off hookup texts (“Could be John or Larry, gosh, who’s to say?”), disarmed by a sudden glow-up (“When Did You Get Hot?”), dismayed by their growth (“My Man on Willpower”), having sex (“We Almost Broke Up Again Last Night”), wishing someone never does again (“Never Getting Laid”), annoyed by a man’s incompetency (“Manchild”) or attracted to it (“Sugar Talking”). She gets a lot of runtime out of the cartoon world of heart-eyed Sabrina dropping anvils on moronic men, but after a while, it feels like a Saturday Night Life parody of Carpenter herself. Lines like “I just want you to come inside / But never enter through the back door” aren’t only expected, but rudimentary. There’s no pearls to clutch about “Zeus’ rod” if you’ve said something similar before.

When she breaks out of the country-pop closet most of the album lives in, the results are mixed: the muddled ska on “Nobody’s Son” and the moody early 2000s R&B of “When Did You Get Hot” are at least interesting. “House Tour” is Jack Antonoff’s best attempt at Janet Jackson-like New Jack Swing; Sabrina does her best with a shaky foundation and even flimsier plot (the date is over, want to come to my house?). “Goodbye,” a somewhat lazily titled finale that bids a date farewell in different languages, feels like a sad ABBA impression — its piano and horns muted and sad where the Swedish band’s were exuberant. Its apathy is fitting for a record that can’t hide its nonchalantless.

The smartest thing about Man’s Best Friend, really, is its cover art — where is the subversive and clever meta-commentary in any of these songs? On tour, her sex poses were lambasted (“I’m 17 and AFRAID of Sabrina Carpenter,” one minor posted), and the degrading cover art of this record only attracted more ire. She barely leans into it on the record, except for maybe a revealing and masochistic line — “I like my men all incompetent!”

Pithy, Tumblr-esque insults dot Man’s Best Friend: “I just hope you get agoraphobia one day,” she jabs, and parrots millions of girls on Twitter by saying “Got a soft spot for a bev’ and a boy that’s fruity.” This isn’t commentary, just meaningless barbs, quippy jokes to make the time pass. Short ‘N’ Sweet was a slapstick ode to modern romance, its comedy fresh, its persona well-visualized. Man’s Best Friend seems like a hurried product to capitalize on her momentum, but it reads as leftovers from the last record (some of which we already got earlier this year with its deluxe version). Can an old dog learn new tricks? Maybe, but Carpenter performs the same ones. “You think that I’m gonna fuck with your head?” she asks at the start of one song, “Well, you’re absolutely right.” Not a great joke if you already know the punchline.

order Man’s Best Friend by Sabrina Carpenter HERE