Each week, Consequence’s Songs of the Week column spotlights the greatest new tracks from the final seven days. Discover our new favorites on our Top Songs playlist, and for extra nice songs from rising artists, take heed to our New Sounds playlist. This week, Sabrina Carpenter quips about a sample in her previous romances.
“Why so attractive in that case dumb?” Sabrina Carpenter asks coyly on her new single, “Manchild,” hitting at a recurring theme present in her latest releases: What’s the cope with all these sizzling dudes being absolute instruments?
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Certain, it’s simple to learn the track as Carpenter following up on the promise given to her now-ex-boyfriend Barry Keoghan on “Please Please Please” (“When you don’t wanna cry to my music/ Don’t make me hate you prolifically”), however even disregarding any real-life context, “Manchild” serves as one other sonic thesis assertion from a pop star at the very prime of her sport.
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Brief n’ Candy provided the similarly-countrified “Slim Pickins” and “Please Please Please” — additionally co-writes from Carpenter’s now-trusty duo of Jack Antonoff and Amy Allen — however “Manchild” has a bit extra pep in its step. The monitor’s syncopated synths and strum-heavy acoustic guitar present that Carpenter is just not keen on wallowing, however “Manchild” isn’t a full-fledged disco celebration both; as an alternative, Carpenter skewers her half-witted beau whereas hinting that she’s perhaps, maybe, ever-so-slightly accountable, too.
“Oh, I like my boys enjoying exhausting to get/ And I like my males all incompetent/ And I swear they select me/ I’m not selecting them,” she sings with a wink, recalling a related conclusion drawn in “Slim Pickins” about her personal incapacity to decide on males with long-term relationship potential. Like the hitchhike-through-mayhem absurdity present in the music video, Carpenter is aware of the cycle effectively: They meet, it’s thrilling, harmful even, and finally, regardless of her telling herself issues may very well be completely different this time, he lets her down. “It’s all simply so acquainted,” she sings.
Her lyrics are as soon as once more endearingly humorous — “If I’m not there it gained’t get completed/ I select guilty your mother,” Carpenter quips — and extra proof that the trio of Carpenter, Allen, and Antonoff have nailed the SabCarp system. There’s a nostalgic, comforting air, circa late ’70s and early ’80s, which inserts with Carpenter’s retro-themed stage actions and music movies. There’s a slight nation twang, which permits Carpenter to slide into a extra informal and genuine singing type. And, above all, there’s a sharp, halfway-out-the-door wit that immediately places the listener in Carpenter’s nook.
Humor, used as usually as Carpenter employs it, can begin to really feel like a protection mechanism — like she’s masking her vulnerability. Maybe there are some meatier epiphanies to come back, however in the meantime, she shrugs off a helpless himbo so effectively on “Manchild” that you simply’d should consider she’s landed on her ft. Higher off, even.
— Paolo Ragusa
Affiliate Editor
