Fresh off her success with 2024’s Short n’ Sweet, Sabrina Carpenter is right back at it in 2025 with her latest album Man’s Best Friend.
Carpenter has taken some heat online and in the press for releasing two albums so close together, with some questioning how much artistic growth is really evident from last year to this year. The argument is that she is simply releasing more of the same to capitalize on a moment of celebrity. But that’s not how I see it at all. Where Short n’ Sweet included four songs with writing and/or production credits from Jack Antonoff, Man’s Best Friend has nine such tracks. The work Carpenter and Antonoff started in last year’s “Please Please Please” is further built upon with the poppier “Manchild,” the Dolly Parton-reminiscent ballad “We Almost Broke Up Again Last Night,” and the triumphantly rock-infused “Goodbye.” It feels like two artists who struck gold last year and wanted to continue working together to further explore their shared musical references and passions.
I hear artistic growth all over Man’s Best Friend, which serves as a powerful showcase of Carpenter’s ability to pull from musical heroes across decades of pop music and tie them all together with her trademark lyrics, full of clever turns of phrase and tongue-in-cheek double entendres. The album is a little bit ABBA, a little bit Christina Aguilara and a little bit Donna Summer, reminiscent of Earth Wind and Fire and also Ariana Grande, soaked in Antonoff-led production that brings in elements of his band Bleachers and his musical heroes like Bruce Springsteen and The Beatles. Man’s Best Friend is familiar and novel at the same time, and it absolutely demands to be danced to and sung along with. It’s a supernova pop album in a year that was desperate for an injection of fun.
Before then, though, Apple TV+ will premiere The Savant starring Oscar-winning actress Jessica Chastain about a digital interruptor who seeks to infiltrate hate groups on the internet to prevent public attacks. The crime thriller comes from Melissa James Gibson, a playwright with experience writing for The Americans and House of Cards.
On October 10, Apple will launch The Last Frontier, which stars Jason Clarke in a thriller about a U.S. Marshall in the remote wilderness of Alaska. This fall, Apple will also stream Mr. Scorsese, a documentary series about Martin Scorsese, and Down Cemetery Road, an adaptation of the thriller novel of the same name starring Ruth Wilson and Emma Thompson.
Will all of these shows be good? Who’s to say? But true to the Apple TV+ formula, they promise huge names in familiar situations, and that’s enough for me to at least check out what they’re cooking over there at the computer company.
What’s especially interesting about season two of the show is that season one occurred in the previous DCEU. To pivot the show into our new DCU universe, season two had to make a brief correction to its canon in the “previously on” at the beginning of its first episode. Instead of the old Snyderverse Justice League showing up for a cameo, season two of Peacemaker switched them out for the new DCU Justice Gang. And just like that, Peacemaker is now in the continuity of the Superman movie.
Though I don’t think anything that happens in Peacemaker is ultimately going to matter too much for the theater-made film entries, fans of the DCU who are game for a low-brow sensibility action comedy with a lot of heart will find plenty of universe details to revel in. But the show is also worth watching on its own merits. Cena turns in a hilarious and surprisingly-moving-at-times performance as Peacemaker, and he’s surrounded by a tremendously fun cast that includes Jennifer Holland, Danielle Brooks, and Freddie Stroma.
Peacemaker is streaming on HBO Max.
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