Stupid - or is it slow? Maybe it's useless?

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts

05/09/25 : Man's Best Friend - Sabrina Carpenter 

Our second visit with Sabrina and after I confidently stated her last album would go nowhere, I'm obviously a bit of an expert on all things Carpenter. I have however heard that things get pretty spicy on this one, so maybe the moral outrage will keep me engaged.

What?!? I don't seem to have worked up any moral outrage at all - what's going on? I actually didn't mind this at all - it's surprisingly 70s (quite ABBesque, in places) and a lot more orchestral than I was expecting. Comparing this with Short'n'Sweet, I think it's lacking an "Espresso" highlight and it has less zingers lyrically, but it has an overall higher quality level and better constructed songs - "Never Getting Laid" in particular made me chuckle. I'm still not a fan of her baby girl voice but I thought this was a lot more interesting than I was expecting. I was also given an interesting perspective from my eldest who said it was a good album for the socials because a lot of the songs have short snippets that can be used to accompany videos - so I guess they really are well constructed.

We're at, unsurprisingly, #1 with a new entry this week - I have a feeling it'll be around for a bit yet. The rest of the top five are a new entry heavy selection - can you guess the only one that isn't new out of CMAT, Bryan Adams, Oasis and The Hives?

CMAT (#2)
This is interestingly cryptic - it feels like it needs some studying to fully appreciate. It’s a deeper album that Sabrina’s - less accessible but more relatable and she’s got a nice voice when she decides to show it off. I liked it and "The Jamie Oliver Petrol Station" is amusingly bizarre about how much she hates seeing pictures of Jamie everywhere (“this will make no sense to the average listener”) - the opening track is just plain bizarre though.

Bryan Adams (#3)
This is some fun US middle-aged dad rock. The lyrics are very not deep indeed (although it's fun to guess which obvious rhyming word is coming up next) but it had better guitar work than I expected - if it's what you're in the market for, you'll be happy enough with it. 

The Hives (#5)
This is some fun European young dad rock. Once again, the lyrics are very not deep but if it's what you want (which I don't) then I guess you'll be happy. I do like the album cover though which has them all dressed up like King George from Hamilton.

Nova Twins (#27)
Plenty of people will lump this with The Hives as just noise, but I thought this was at least ambitious noise with an impressive soundscape - I imagine they'd be fun live.

Belinda Carlisle (#57)
This is Belinda singing some classic pop tracks - she does them well enough (the ones I could be bothered listening to, at least) but it feels very inessential.

Blood Orange (#69)
I didn't mind this but I have absolutely no idea what I'd describe it as - I went for "ambient jazz trip-hop" looking on Wikipedia I see they've chickened out and not attempted to describe it at all. It did however remind me that he used to be known as Lightspeed Champion and told me there's some pretty big names involved on this album including Lorde, Caroline Polachek, Zadie Smith and Ben Watt. 

Skepta & Fred Again (#72)
I don't like either of these guys separately and I find, to no-one's surprise, that I don't like them together either. 

There are some peculiar re-entries this week, but Sabrina Carpenter (#21) is not one of them - more interesting are the Gorillaz best-of (#59) and Halsey (#75 - first charted in '15, so I guess an anniversary release is responsible). Something else that's very curious is that Sombr, an unremarkable new entry last week at #10 is this week at #11 which is almost unheard of behaviour, so I'm intrigued. Last week I said that Wolf Alice would drop to #47 and I was pretty off with that because they're at #16 which is a good effort for a most peculiar album. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Sabrina's going to hold on to the top spot and this week's Taylor stats are two in the top forty and seven in the entire chart.

Wikipedia has quite a lot for a new album (179 milliPeppers) but most of it is about the album cover - is it "appealing to the male gaze in a detrimental manner to women" or is it "satire and a way to challenge misogynistic expectations of women's sexual behavior"? Well, indeed - and do you think Wikipedia provides an answer? Of course it doesn't but it does provide a balanced selection of views, including an interesting comment from Carly Simon (whose 1975 album Playing Possum received similar controversy) defending the cover saying "It seems tame. There have been far flashier covers than hers" which is certainly fair enough. To Sabrina's credit she's released an alternative cover which is "approved by God", which suggests she's got a reasonable handle on the actual importance of an album cover. 

Critically, the album got decent enough reviews, but there was more praise for the production than the songwriting although, of course, the criticism can't quite single out what they don't like about it. But commercially it's made absolutely no difference what the critics think - it hasn't gone down so well in Japan but apart from that it's been top five everywhere and #1 in an awful lot of countries.

discogs.com has a CD version for £15 (unless you want the God-approved cover, in which case it's £25) and various coloured vinyl versions for about £35 and a deluxe iridescent blue vinyl version for £120, so take your pick. I didn't mind this album at all and it's certainly in the running for the album of the week, but I think CMAT pips her in terms of relatability - what's not to like when someone has a pop at Jamie Oliver? I'm also going to call out Nova Twins as the only other album I'd be tempted to listen to again.

29/08/25 - A most peculiar album