Sabrina Carpenter Brings Me To TEARS Making This Remix
Plus: Ranking every track off Man's Best Friend [spoiler alert - I wasn't a fan]
Sabrina Carpenter came out with a brand new album, Man’s Best Friend, as I’m sure you’re all aware since it seems to be the big talking point these past couple weeks. I had to see what it was all about, especially after already featuring Manchild earlier this year.
The focus track is one of the few disco pop attempts off the album and not gonna lie, this track has some of the worst verse lyrics I’ve ever seen from a songwriting perspective. When I sat down to start working on this track, my first listen through the acapella was a little bit shocking to say the least. “Assemble a chair from IKEA” has to take the cake as the most clumsily phrased line of the song for me.
Putting my feelings about the technical aspects of the writing and topline aside, the vocal was at least fun and upbeat. I knew I could get past the lyrical content and still have something to work with to make a decent track. Fun twist though - I quickly realized the verses and hook seemed to be in different scale modes. WOOHOO! But that’s nothing I haven’t had to deal with before when it comes to these remix challenges. I got down to business and I think what I ended up with was a decent track.
Having only heard Manchild prior to this, I was really surprised to learn that the original production for this track pulled so heavily from disco. I definitely preferred this to the over-the-top, on-the-nose country direction of the first single, but it still left something to be desired. If you’re going to include a “dance break” section in a track, at least amp up the production in that part to give people something more to get excited about. For as much as was going on, this track still felt rather one-note. Thank god for the music video, because that alone had to be this track’s one saving grace. I’ll take full on Camp any day.
Take a listen through to the acapella to hear the same version I heard first:
And get the full experience of the original track here if you haven’t already:
As if listening to this single wasn’t enough, I also decided to rank the full album, track-by-track, this week. Wow, did I have a lot of thoughts about this one.
I think my main takeaway from this release is that streaming services will really push anything if the money is behind it. Independent artists with great songwriting and production struggle to get platform support, while major artists with big names get thrown to the top without much consideration for quality.
Tears lead every Spotify New Music Friday playlist on release day, while album cut House Tour also made several appearances on various international iterations of the the playlist as well. In no way did I think these were the best tracks off the album, nor did I feel that they were at all representative of the project as a whole. As the only two disco-leaning tracks included, they lead the listener astray as to what to expect from the rest. It was giving false advertising.
The majority of the remaining album cuts are mediocre, retro-inspired ballads that I honestly had such a hard time differentiating between. Plus, the narrative across the project feels meandering and unfocused. Are these tracks supposed to be about the same guy? It’s hard to follow her perspective as an artist and understand how these tracks fit together other than revolving around feeling disappointed or objectified by men, which feels a bit like grasping at straws in terms of establishing a solid conceptual foundation. I get that these tracks are all meant to be a bit tongue-in-cheek, but still, what is she trying to say?
At the same time, I can acknowledge that my lack of an interest in anything centering a straight man makes me a less than ideal candidate for this album’s target audience. It’s not a subject matter I can fully relate to. However, that didn’t keep me from enjoying Short n’ Sweet, so what makes this album so much more lackluster?
Is it just me? What did you think of Sabrina’s latest release?
I will say, I absolutely LOVED When Did You Get Hot? It was such an unexpected inclusion and so reminiscent of late 90’s, early 2000’s Christina Aguilera. It felt like it had no relation to the other tracks stylistically whatsoever, but it was one of the few tracks I’d actually recommend checking out.
🔎 Looking for more?
Find all previous episodes in this series here
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