COMEDY OF ERRORS

Sabrina Carpenter's carnal jokes.

- BY AMANDA PETRUSICH

On "Man's Best Friend," the singer finds endless humor in the friction of love.

Earlier this summer, the pop star Sabrina Carpenter released “Manchild,” the first single from her seventh album, “Man's Best Friend.” It’s a fluffy screed against a dude mired in an endless adolescence. Heading into the chorus, Carpenter sounds both rankled and coquettish:

It's all just so familiar, baby, what do you call it?
Stupid
Or is it slow?

“I choose to blame your mom,” she concludes on the second verse. It’s not the only time that Carpenter has been let down by an undercooked suitor. A big part of the singer's allure is the way that she ultimately shrugs off the crummy choices she makes while in the throes of lust, boredom, yearning, whatever; she aspires not to normie perfectionism but to something more hectic, funnier, looser, more bonkers. In the video for “Manchild,” a hitchhiking Carpenter climbs in and out of a string of preposterous vehicles, including a sidecar fashioned from a shopping cart, a Jet Ski on wheels, and a motorized recliner. It’s a warped, Surrealist vision of Americana: she uses a fork as a cigarette holder, shoots pool with a loaded shotgun, pulls a fried fish from a claw machine. “Fuck my liiiiiife,” she coos on the chorus. The sentiment is relatable; desire is often a catastrophic force, obliterating our best intentions for ourselves. (One of her deranged paramours drives off a cliff after she climbs out of his car.) Willful denial—the way women are quick to muzzle rational thought in service of romance—is a recurring theme in Carpenter's work. “You don't have to lie to girls / If they like you, they'll just lie to themselves,” she sings on “Lie to Girls,” a tender ballad from “Short n' Sweet,” her breakthrough album, which came out last year.