Manchild
The lead single and title-setting joke of Sabrina Carpenter's second straight No. 1 album is a tight, funny breakup song built on a bit she's already run once — this time with the cameras a little too close to the punchline.
By Song Reviews · August 22, 2026
The lead single and title-setting joke of Sabrina Carpenter's second straight No. 1 album is a tight, funny breakup song built on a bit she's already run once — this time with the cameras a little too close to the punchline.
“Manchild” opens Man’s Best Friend by doing exactly what its title promises: cataloging a grown man’s failure to act like one, over a bright, hip-shaking dance-pop groove that never loses its sense of humor even as the lyric gets meaner. Carpenter has built an entire persona on this exact move — deadpan delivery, a filthy joke landed with a straight face, a chorus hooky enough to survive repetition — and “Manchild” is a well-made example of a trick she already ran successfully on Short n’ Sweet. It works. It also announces, fairly loudly, that it’s working the same room twice.
Co-produced with Jack Antonoff and John Ryan, alongside songwriting partner Amy Allen, the track is efficient in the way Carpenter’s singles have become efficient: a verse that sets up a complaint, a pre-chorus that sharpens it, a chorus that turns the complaint into a hook people will still be singing after the joke stops being funny. That’s a real skill, and Man’s Best Friend debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 — her second consecutive chart-topper — on the strength of songs built exactly this way.
The album’s cover art, which shows Carpenter on her hands and knees while a suited man grips her hair, drew public criticism from groups including Glasgow Women’s Aid for leaning on imagery that “reduces women to pets, props, and possessions” — enough of a reaction that Carpenter released an alternate cover she dryly called “approved by God.” It’s worth mentioning here because “Manchild” is where the album’s whole thesis — men behaving badly, a woman keeping the upper hand by making the joke first — has to hold up on its own, without the cover doing the provocation for it. The song mostly manages it. Carpenter’s timing is still the best thing about her, and the specific complaints (“you’re one of one, but not in a good way”) land with real bite.
What it doesn’t do is surprise anyone who already owns the last record. 7.2/10 — sharp, funny, and unmistakably a sequel to a joke Carpenter has already told this well once before.
Hero image: Sabrina Carpenter performing at the O2 Arena, London, March 2025, by Raph_PH, licensed under CC BY 2.0.