man's best friend

That’s the thrust of the singer’s shrewd and tangy “Man’s Best Friend,” which dropped Thursday night, just a year after last summer’s chart-topping “Short n’ Sweet.”

It’s a veritable gallery of rogues, this LP, not least the dude in the dark suit pictured on the cover of “Man’s Best Friend” with a hank of Carpenter’s blond hair in his fist as she kneels before him.

Song for song — line for line, really — “Man’s Best Friend” isn’t quite as sharp as “Short n’ Sweet,” which offered the rare thrill of a young artist coming into her own on her sixth studio album.

In an interview with “CBS Mornings” on Friday, the “Espresso” singer talked about her reaction to the controversy behind the cover of her seventh album, “Man’s Best Friend,” which displays Carpenter on her knees at the feet of a male figure pulling her hair.

Sabrina Carpenter's seventh studio album, Man's Best Friend, dropped on Friday to much excitement among fans online, but it came with a warning from the US pop star herself.