‘It’s not for the pearl clutchers’

Carpenters, collect spherical: Sab has lastly launched new music! Sabrina Carpenter’s seventh studio album, Man’s Greatest Pal, formally turned accessible to stream on Friday. The “Sugar Speaking” singer, who honored her newest report with a heartfelt Instagram publish, additionally held a Spotify album launch occasion on the Hollywood Ceaselessly Cemetery in Los Angeles on Thursday evening.

“Man’s Greatest Pal is out now x how particular to make one thing out of pure inspiration and nil strain. I don’t assume I’ve had larger recollections making one thing earlier than,” learn Carpenter’s Instagram caption. “It’s an actual occasion for heartbreak, a celebration of disappointment! It’s laughing at your self and your poor decisions as every little thing is falling aside, it’s questioning how loyalty and love all the time will get you again to 3rd wheeling, spoken sarcastically like a real 25 12 months previous !”

Additionally accompanying the discharge of Man’s Greatest Pal was the music video for “Tears,” Carpenter’s second single off the album. The Rocky Horror-themed video sees Carpenter stumbling right into a haunted home full of dazzling drag performers, together with two-time Oscar nominee Colman Domingo, who guides the singer by way of the glittery, delectably choreographed dreamscape.

“It’s not for the pearl clutchers,” Carpenter mentioned of the album on Thursday’s episode of CBS Mornings. “However I additionally assume that even pearl clutchers can take heed to an album like that in their very own solitude and discover one thing that makes them smirk and chuckle to themselves.”

That includes the lead single, “Manchild,” which Carpenter launched to the shock of her fandom in early June, the album marks the official starting of the pop star’s new musical period, which she teased all through the summer season.

With a stable 12-song observe checklist, Carpenter’s Man’s Greatest Pal looks like the suitable follow-up to her chart-topping Quick n’ Candy, which earned her a handful of Grammy Awards and cemented her as 2024’s songstress of the summer season. On Man’s Greatest Pal, Carpenter’s sonic tendencies are nonetheless in full drive: She provides up bubbly disco anthems which can be infused with each nation twang and ’80s grownup modern.

Carpenter can be simply as witty, sex-positive and demanding of males as ever earlier than. Her problem of gender-based energy dynamics is simply as clear on this album: She thanks males for testing her (“Manchild”), cheekily croons about tears operating down her thighs (“Tears”), cries over misleading males (“No one’s Son”) and desires to play a spherical of bare Tornado (“When Did You Get Scorching?”).

Carpenter’s followers, nonetheless, appear to be at odds over Man’s Greatest Pal. Whereas a lot of the fandom is on board with the brand new album, others are much less impressed by it.

“Every track is SO completely different and wealthy I might see them ALL being smash hits,” one fan wrote on X. “There’s a clear cohesiveness to this undertaking that we haven’t seen from her earlier than to the purpose the place it feels a bit like an idea album at occasions, which makes for a really enjoyable and distinctive addition to Sabrina’s discography.”

Argued one other fan on X, “Im afraid Sabrina’s new album isn’t good… it feels so rushed, virtually the entire songs have the identical association. The lyricism isn’t there and it looks like she’s talk-singing your complete album. WHERE ARE THE VOCALS? This isn’t residing as much as the masterpiece that ShortNSweet is…”

Forward of Friday’s launch, choose teams of followers in Los Angeles, New York and London had been handpicked by the singer herself to take heed to the album from begin to end. In every metropolis, solely 26 followers had been chosen to satisfy Carpenter at a non-public location, the place they willingly surrendered their telephones, screamed, cried, laughed and took within the pop perfection of all 12 tracks.

“I requested 26 of my lovely LA followers to satisfy at a non-public location after which get on a bus to return meet me on the studio the place i acquired to play the entire album for them 🖤🐾” the 26-year-old pop star wrote on Instagram. “They had been gracious sufficient to let me take their telephones in order that they had been completely current and respectful and superb and it was genuinely one in all my favourite nights in such a very long time!”

When Carpenter first introduced the summer season launch date for Man’s Greatest Pal, the web was flooded with critiques of the seemingly suggestive album art work shot by photographer Bryce Anderson — and even a few of the pop star’s personal followers turned on her in consequence. The art work in query exhibits Carpenter on her knees in a black minidress, gazing on the digicam as an unidentified man, who’s standing, grabs her hair.

Followers had been equally scandalized by Carpenter’s July/August cowl for Rolling Stone, during which her lengthy blond locks had been strategically positioned over her bare physique. These crucial of the album art work and Rolling Stone cowl argued that Carpenter was going towards the seemingly feminist sentiment of her music. Right here she was, all of the sudden in service of the male gaze on two separate events, they mentioned.

Following the backlash towards her preliminary Man’s Greatest Pal album cowl, Carpenter dropped an alternate cowl in late June, during which she seems to re-create a 1957 paparazzi photograph of Marilyn Monroe and her then husband, Arthur Miller. She debuted the brand new art work on Instagram, alongside the caption “Here’s a new album cowl permitted by God.”

A third album cowl was unveiled in early July. The art work, which accompanies a limited-edition rose vinyl, exhibits Carpenter clad in lace lingerie and surrounded by a number of bouquets of roses as she lounges on a powder blue chair in a lavish resort room.

Carpenter rounded out her array of Man’s Greatest Pal album covers with a fourth and remaining providing in August, during which she wears a shiny blue gown whereas commanding the eye of males in tuxedos at a dinner desk.