How many blurbs can we go without mentioning the album cover? Place your bets now!
[Video]
[6.80]
Will Adams: Sabrina Carpenter presented 50 ways to insult your lover on Short n’ Sweet, so it’s understandable that number 51 would have diminishing returns. Everything sounds fine but familiar, from the Chappell-via-Wham! synth chords to the ruthless teasing. At a certain point, you have to say something more than just “yoo-hoo.“
[5]
Alfred Soto: What came easily sounds labored, which doesn’t mean I change the station.
[7]
Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: I soured on Carpenter’s run of hits last year the more I heard them; every clever joke and wink at the camera diminished with overplay. “Manchild” is far stupider than those songs — which makes me like it more. The production, which I at first took for a brazen rip of “Good Luck, Babe!”, is hilariously chintzy, and her performance has a similar charm. Last year, Carpenter was trying very hard at all times to be the likeable ringleader of a broader pop circus, to her detriment. Now, in a far less exciting musical environment, she can waltz in with a clear throwaway performance and win me over.
[7]
Al Varela: Simultaneously encouraging and discouraging as the next chapter in Sabrina’s career. “Manchild” is a decently fluttery song with a solid hook, though it maybe takes too many glances back at “Good Luck, Babe!”. I wish there were more of the country flourishes that pop up at the end, like the delightful fiddle, and more emphasis on the jangly, pop-country-esque guitar riffs. It would have made Sabrina’s dismissal of dumb cute boys more fun and jovial, in a way that’d remind me of The Chicks. I also struggle with Sabrina retracing lyrical ground I already didn’t like off of Short n’ Sweet. Something about her constantly making songs about dating down and disparaging the men she dates, all the while falling back into their arms all over again, is a bit too reminiscent of the current dating scene that treats love and sex like something to do when bored. It’s not that sexy, and it’s not a thrilling fantasy. It just makes dating Sabrina Carpenter sound like a chore. I’d be more receptive to that if she could convincingly pull off the “hot and jaded” kind of charisma, but she’s too cutesy and tongue in cheek for that.
[6]
Claire Davidson: I want to like Sabrina Carpenter: she’s a charismatic vocalist, she can write a good hook, and her producers have good instincts more often than not. But her label-constructed schtick as “the funny one” in mainstream pop (a title that should really belong to Chappell Roan) is wearing very thin. “Manchild” is wholly derivative of previous Short n’ Sweet tracks: a blend of the conceit of “Please Please Please” and the instrumental of “Busy Woman,” with the cursory addition of some banjo strums. It’s no wonder that the song was eclipsed by the controversy surrounding the upcoming album’s artwork, as the twenty-something women who make up Carpenter’s target demographic have rightly revolted against its quasi-ironic objectification and charming title of Man’s Best Friend. (“Isn’t it so funny that I keep playing into my partners’ retrograde fantasies?” No, it really isn’t!) And “Manchild” itself is similarly dispiriting, a threadbare lament about her attraction to immature men with a self-pitying tone that doesn’t pair well with the song’s galloping clip. Most of the punchlines are half-baked and dated, the product of a very online brand of heteropessimism that still finds novelty in the idea of a guy not being able to charge his phone. That these jokes are paired with vaguely country instrumentation only feels more cynical after 2024, a year that saw not only Carpenter’s ascendance but country’s cross-pollination with a number of genres; that it’s used here as a shorthand for low intelligence is overtly condescending.
[5]
Katherine St. Asaph: I do not endorse the discourse. (Sexuality is not misogyny! Iggy Pop exists! And, at the risk of TMI: hair tends to fall without intervention.) I care about hooks. And with Sabrina Carpenter specifically, I care about songwriting barbs. These hooks aren’t as good as the ones in “Please Please Please,” and these barbs aren’t as good as the ones in “Sharpest Tool.” They’re not bad, though.
[6]
Joshua Lu: “Manchild” is less about a man and more about the woman who loves him. Every moment of the song builds up not only how dumb this guy is, but also Sabrina’s own role in manifesting this relationship: how she says she pursues these kinds of men but denies culpability right after, how she blames the mom instead of the man for his own shortcomings, and even in how she delivers the title in the chorus, full of longing and tenderness as if she were singing the man’s name. It’s an interesting way to respond to the narrative that inevitably develops when someone makes a bunch of songs about a bunch of manchildren, and it’s wrapped up in an effervescent bop and delivered with a knowing smile. Bonus points for the video, which gives Vania Heymann and Gal Muggia’s style of “what if a bunch of random shit happened” (“Glad He’s Gone,” “Tailor Swif“) the budget it deserves. Each clip is its own detailed universe; it took me dozens of watches to realize that the shotgun blast at 1:03 actually succeeds at sinking the red billiard bell!
[8]
Tim de Reuse: The entertaining-on-paper conceit drapes awkwardly over the sunshine-dance-pop background. Is “Manchild” trying for some Nellie McKay-style dissonance? It isn’t nice enough, nor is it mean enough to stick that landing — the cruel parts aren’t particularly clever, and the nice parts feel like a joke. And since I’m not terribly drawn in by the gimmick, I’m just distracted by how she puts the accents of “incompetent” and “innocent” and “fuck my life” on the least-catchy syllables.
[4]
Jel Bugle: I like the crappy synth sound and little doodly guitar loops. Very much feels like the non-album single after a successful run of singles (even though it’s not). A bit throwaway, a bit tired sounding, but perfectly fine.
[7]
Nortey Dowuona: me to jack antonoff
[10]
Ian Mathers: Sabrina Carpenter is a charming performer and presence whom I am glad is out there, but she seems to make songs where my personal ceiling for them is… maybe a [7]? I love the “synth hoedown” production choices here, Carpenter’s phrasing and voice are characteristically good, and the video is great. I mostly really like the lyrics — certainly the main thrust of them, which feel like they’re addressing a different part of the same problem in Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Beach House.” But at times they shade just far enough into, as she says, “I swear they choose me, I’m not choosing them!” that I wish she was channeling a bit of another CRJ song instead. She’ll get me someday, I have every confidence.
[7]
Joshua Minsoo Kim: Frothy and fun in theory, but the lyrics are so overworked that when the chorus and bridge arrive, they don’t flow smoothly. And maybe that’s the point: she’s the one thinking here, while I just want something mindless to sing along to.
[5]
Hannah Jocelyn: A muted song for a muted summer. Nobody has the patience to let this grow on them, and I don’t think Carpenter’s earned that good faith because despite her extremely long career — remember “Thumbs”? — she’s still relatively new to superstardom. The way she goes “fuckmy liiiiiiiife” is emblematic of the song, where you don’t realize how funny it is unless you’re paying close attention. (Also, the first album cover is generic soft grunge Tumblr landfill not worth the controversy, and the alternate cover is phenomenal. )
[8]
Mark Sinker: Years ago I wrote a long piece trying to dig through how I felt about Eartha Kitt and what was great about her: a very funny kind of border-pushing sexiness, a vivid quickness of mind right there in the growl, and outside but not entirely outside the music a rooted and even stubborn kind of politics. (Also, she was my dad’s favourite singer.) Before Elvis she had been RCA’s biggest artist; today she’s more or less vanished from the discourse, even as a kneejerk comparison. I’m not quite saying Sabrina be thou our Eartha! — the hyper-flirty sexiness and the speed of intelligence are certainly there, but the shape of politics is very changed from 70 years past. Who knows what’s lumbering down the pike at us, and how our current names will respond? But when I want to feel comfy about just going “lol this is so great” every time I have a pretty solid model. The counter-blips in “Manchild” are almost microscopic: I don’t think the title-chorus carries the all-directions weight it needs to (a flaw that will surely dissolve with time), and I find the little hoedown lurches mildly annoying (may not dissolve).
[9]
Taylor Alatorre: “Boys and girls in America / They have such a sad time together.” It’s getting harder to write about Sabrina Carpenter without in some way telling on oneself, which I’ve just done by positing Kerouac-via-Craig Finn as some kind of oracle into the mid-’20s dating scene. But if Sal Paradise was indeed right when he said that, then Sabrina doesn’t seem at all broken up about it; hetero gender relations may be irrecoverable, but this is tremendous content. Sensing the fertile ground below, “Manchild” doesn’t pretend to be an accurate diagnosis or a helpful guide or anything other than a sequined Leiden jar of free-floating anxieties and familiar accusatory scripts. “Never heard of self-care” would be a groaner in most other contexts, but treating it as a show-stopping wham line makes it hilarious at everyone’s expense. And in the spirit of “I choose to blame your mom,” I choose against all likelihood to believe that this is Carpenter intentionally bringing her worst arguments to the table, the better with which to land a softened and fully choreographed blow against the male ego. So long as everyone plays their part in this little dance, they all get to leave home happy.
[8]