Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Austen – and now, Sabrina Carpenter. The Pennsylvania pop-it girl has been lauded as one of the greats for her discography of witty, campy, and unrepentantly horny lyricism. After edging us with smash-hit single “Manchild”, the singer now offers a fiercely pent-up, group chat-esque soliloquy with her latest album Man’s Best Friend – released today, August 29.

Sonically, the project follows a pretty familiar, if perfectly executed, pop formula. Carpenter has always been a master craftsman of coffee shop staples and radio hits, and Man’s Best Friend delivers both in buckets. There’s expansive country-pop production, a a few ABBA-esque disco moments and cathartic choruses perfectly poised to soundtrack breakups and lover’s tiffs. Narratively, the project tells a loose tale of Carpenter dating a hopelessly incompetent man, eventually breaking up after his “seventh last chance” – nothing revolutionary, but it is in Sabrina’s signature sarcastic lyricism that Man’s Best Friend gets really juicy.

Where previous singles like “Espresso” and “Please, Please, Please” leaned heavily on innuendo, Carpenter’s quill now drips with more satirical bite. As she delivers lines so sharp that Carpenter warned CBS Mornings listeners they were “not for any pearl-clutchers.” With lyrics like “Remembering how to use your phone gets me oh so hot” and “And you've got a right hand anyway” taking jabs at straight men’s obsession with self-optimisation, communication inability and commitment anxiety. It’s a wordsmithing prowess that only a 5’2”, diamond-bedazzled pop icon could deliver.

These cutting lines follow a rollout that has been just as audacious. Earlier this year, Carpenter found herself at the centre of an online shitstorm when she unveiled Man’s Best Friend’s provocatively staged cover that critics were quick to label degrading. It follows sex-positive criticism that has also targeted the singer’s styling and live show “Juno” gimmick, that sees her configure into a new sex position each time, ultimately revealing more about cultural discomfort with female agency than any shortcomings on Carpenter’s part. 

Below, in honour of the release of Man’s Best Friend today (August 29), we rank the ten of the wittiest lyrics from the Pennsylvania pop provoctuer.

WHY SO SEXY IF SO DUMB?

“Why so sexy if so dumb? And how survive on Earth so long?” – “Manchild”

The only single released ahead of the album, “Manchild” set Man’s Best Friend’s wonderfully condescending tone. On the track, Carpenter paints her partner as hopelessly incompetent: he thinks his phone is broken, only to realise that he’d just forgotten to charge it; he wears clothes so bad that they can only be considered ironic; and, he finishes in the bedroom before she’d even realised they’d started. But, one lyric above all epitomises this sarcastic pandering to the male ego: “Why so sexy if so dumb? And how survive on Earth so long?” While the lead cover for Man’s Best Friend sparked widespread discussion as to whether Carpenter was submitting herself to the male gaze, “Manchild” left no doubt that boys were actually intended to be the butt of the joke. SPM

PRETTY GIRL AVENUE

“My house is on Pretty Girl Avenue” – “House Tour”

I’m not sure if this is a *sharp* lyric so much as a delightfully stupid one, but either way I like it. With its groovy bass line and glittering synths, “House Tour” sounds a bit like Cyndi Lauper or True Blue-era Madonna, and the lyrics complement that bubble-gum pop sound. At the end of a successful date, Carpenter invites you to check out the first, second and third floor of her home, but don’t expect any hanky panky, because “none of this is a metaphor” – she’s just really enthusiastic about interior design and chocolate chip cookies. There’s a place for angst, yearning and introspection in pop music, but it’s refreshing to hear someone not taking it too seriously and having such campy fun. JG

HE’S ON A BIG SELF-HELP JOURNEY

“Yeah, okay, okay, he's on his big journey to find a little zest of life, a new sense of purpose, but why?” – “My Man on Willpower”

It can feel a bit pat to describe writing as ‘relatable’ (isn’t all good art meant to strike a chord with its audience?), but – as a woman who has had her fair share of encounters with jarring men – it’s difficult not to describe Carpenter’s lyrics as such. This line from “My Man on Willpower” is a particular standout for me, with its skewering of straight men’s obsession with self-optimisation and self-discovery. In the song, Carpenter laments the fact that her partner is too busy focusing on himself and seeking “a new sense of purpose” to make love to her anymore. It’s a situation many women will have found themselves in, scratching their heads while their boyfriends earnestly gabble about some incredibly basic philosophical idea. It’s something of a running theme throughout Carpenter’s work, too, with Short n’ Sweet’s “Dumb & Poetic” also taking aim at boring men obsessed with self-help books and taking shrooms. SS

SHE LOVES A COMMUNICATOR

“Remembering how to use your phone gets me oh so hot” – “Tears”

Carpenter frequently pokes fun at man’s inability to communicate throughout the album, from “Manchild”s aforementioned phone charging fiasco, to referring to her partner’s fake-deep epiphanies as a “big word for a real small mind” in “Sugar Talking”. This sentiment takes centre-stage on the disco-pop track “Tears”, in which the bar is set so low that simply “a little communication” is Carpenter’s “ideal foreplay”. All of this, of course, is drenched in Sabrina’s signature sarcasm – assembling an Ikea chair isn’t really enough to get her aroused – but this is apparently lost on Carpenter’s knuckle-headed lover. Indeed, writing this as a straight man who has definitely attempted to impress a girl by putting up a shelf, I consider this useful feedback. SPM

TELLING MOMS THEIR SONS SUCK 🔥 

“He sure fucked me up and yes, I’m talking ‘bout your baby” – “Nobody’s Son”

There are not one but two songs on the album where Carpenter complains about a disappointing romantic partner to their mum (on “Don’t Worry I’ll Make You Worry”, she sings “and your mother even agrees that emotional lottery is all you’ll ever get from me”; on “Nobody’s Son”, she address the mother directly: “that boy is corrupt, could raise him to love me, maybe? He sure fucked me up and yes, I’m talking ‘bout your baby.”) I’m not sure if this is a trend exactly - the only other example I can think of is Lana’s “A&W” and the who line “your mom called, I told her you’re fucking up big time” - but it should be. If we all started grassing on men to their mums whenever they treated us badly, maybe they would stop acting so foolish! JG

WHEN DID YOU GET HOT?

“Sorry, I did not see the vision, thank the Lord, the fine you has risen” – “When Did You Get Hot?”

This excerpt from “When Did You Get Hot” has all the hallmarks of a classic Sabrina lyric. Here, she cements herself as a distinctly Gen Z voice with her finger on the pop culture pulse with a reference to a meme-y, internet-y slang phrase (“I did not see the vision”), while also nodding to her country influences by “thank[ing] the Lord” for her new lover’s glow-up. An unapologetically horny song about lusting after someone you already know after seeing them in a new (and sexy) light, “When Did You Get Hot” is sure to go down as a quintessential Carpenter track. SS

SKEPTA CARPENTER

“Do you want thе house tour? I could take you to the first, second, third floor (We can take it to the–) And I promise none of this is a metaphor, I just want you to come inside... But never enter through the back door” – “House Tour”

When Sabrina released “Bed Chem” last year, one particular lyric had us clutching our pearls more so than any other. Despite the entire song being about sex, we were equally shocked and obsessed to hear her sing “Come right on me, I mean camaraderie”. Safe to say that for Man’s Best Friend, we were better prepared for her blunt sexual requests. On “House Tour”, she really wants you to come inside… her house, of course. Despite her promise that this is merely a metaphor, she also suggests a trip to her first, second and third floors, though we think she’s more likely talking about bases. Either that, or this is the Sabrina Carpenter version of Skepta’s 2011 “All Over The House”, in which he candidly raps: “We had sex / In the kitchen / In the shower / In my bed / On the couch / In other words we had sex all over the house.” Whether Sabrina is alluding to possible locations within the house to get it on, or simply locations on her body, she’s pretty clear about one thing: “Never enter through the back door”. IVD

BARRY CATCHING STRAYS

“Could be John or Larry, gosh, who's to say? Or the one that rhymes with ‘villain’ if I'm feelin' that way” – “GoGo Juice”

Now, I’ll preface this with the fact that I don’t think ‘villain’ really rhymes with Keoghan but, considering Carpenter’s dating history, who else could she really mean? This lyric arrives on the chorus of yearning country ballad “Go Go Juice”, which casts Sabrina drowning her heartbreak in an attempt to muster up the courage to booty call an ex. It is widely known that Carpenter dated Irish actor Barry Keoghan between 2023 and 2024, breaking up amid rumours that Keoghan had cheated on her – allegations that were perhaps encouraged by Carpenter announcing that Irish boys were “hard work” at the Dublin leg of her Short ‘n’ Sweet tour in March of this year. So, all the clues point to Keoghan being the ‘one who rhymes with villain’ – and maybe it really does rhyme in a country accent after a half dozen tequila shots? SPM

TELLING BOYS TO USE THEIR RIGHT HAND

“I think this schedule could be very nice, call up the boys and crack a Miller Lite, watch the fight. Us girls are fun, but stressful, am I right? You’ve got a right hand anyway” – “Never Getting Laid”

Once the crushing heartbreak wears off, being newly single can be thrilling: the novelty of downloading Hinge, the loaded potential that every night out brings, the exhilaration of fucking someone new for the first time in years. That is, until you realise that your ex is out there sowing their wild oats just as much as you are. This feeling is what Carpenter encapsulates in “Never Getting Laid”, an ode to a former lover for whom she wishes a “lifetime full of happiness” but also “a forever of never getting laid”. In this verse, Carpenter encourages her ex to hang out with his boys and eschew female company (“us girls are fun, but stressful, am I right?”). Sabrina wouldn't be Sabrina without an X-rated quip, and she delivers here by urging him to use his “right hand” if he gets horny. SS

RIP GRANDMA

“And what a strange coincidence, your grandma died and died again. I would send condolences, if one of my phone calls would just go through” – “Such A Funny Way”

Oh dear, it seems Sabrina’s man has forgotten how to use his phone again. Arriving on vinyl-exclusive bonus track “Such A Funny Way”, it is in exactly these sorts of seductively savage lyrics that Carpenter shines. Presumably responding to a man who repeatedly uses the excuse of his grandma dying in order to avoid her, Sabrina uses her sharpest tool: sarcasm. Gallows humour plays a recurring theme in Carpenter’s music, who announces “It’s kind of a thing, someone has to die in every video” before murdering a smitten suitor at the end of the “Tears” music video released today. It is through lines like these that Carpenter places herself in a position of power, calling out men’s futile advances and petty attempts at deception alike. Man’s Best Friend is sort of like parent’s evening for straight men. SPM

Man’s Best Friend is out now.