You can hear why “My Man on Willpower” stuck the moment it went live on 29 August 2025.
Track three on Man’s Best Friend runs 3:17, released on Island Records, written by Sabrina Carpenter, Amy Allen, Jack Antonoff, and John Ryan, and produced by Antonoff, Ryan and Carpenter.
What greets you is gloss with bite. A bright, dance-leaning chassis keeps the body moving while the lyric cools the room by inches.
The title frames the gag and the ache. He’s “on” something that steals heat rather than sparks it.
Vulture catches the hybrid feel in a single swipe, calling the cut “upbeat, country-lite,” which fits the way the drums smile while the story sours.
The jokes arrive in short darts. “He used to be literally obsessed with me.” “My man won’t touch me with a 20-foot pole.”
They’re funny until they’re not, which is how the song works on repeat: you laugh first, then notice the lump in your throat.
In fan threads, readers split between a literal no-sex spell and a broader habit-stack that turns partners into flatmates with a shared calendar.
Spin the album around it and the picture sharpens. Man’s Best Friend is a tight twelve-track set with live-band colour and a streak of ABBA sugar that critics kept circling on release day.
The Guardian heard “stunning craft” and a run of standout arrangements, naming “My Man on Willpower” as one of the cuts where sleek production and camp humour sit comfortably together.
The Washington Post filed the whole record as “zesty, clever and cathartic,” which is exactly the tension the song leans on; high-shine surfaces carrying barbed one-liners.
Carpenter keeps the subject fogged on purpose. In a new ELLE write-up of her CBS Mornings appearance, she says she avoids naming names and prefers the ambiguity, letting listeners map their own lives onto the stories.
That stance matters because it explains why a cut like this lands without gossip scaffolding.
The lines are spare, open enough to fit more than one kind of distance, and they play funnier because you can see the scene clearly even when the characters are nameless.
From a listener’s seat, the production choices are almost invisible.
The low end is tidy, the top line gleams, and the chorus lifts on phrasing rather than fireworks.
You can hear the balance cleanest on the official lyric video, where the arrangement leaves air around each punch-line so it lands without shouting.
What the song means depends on the room you bring to it, but certain threads keep showing up.
People’s album-day coverage groups this track with others about everyday distance and the petty cruelties that make a house feel colder.
Pitchfork’s round-up flags the album’s blend of cheek and feeling, and that’s the lane where “Willpower” cruises.
If “Manchild” is the loud headline, this is the under-the-breath aside that stays with you after the party.
Place it in sequence, and the sequence logic clicks. Apple Music clocks Man’s Best Friend at a brisk 38 minutes, with “My Man on Willpower” sitting early between “Tears” and “Sugar Talking.”
You feel the contrast: a clean comic scene framed by two hooks that push and console in different ways.
That early slot helps the cut travel because it’s one of the first moments where the record’s tone is bright outside, wry inside, and comes into focus.
Listeners spotted it quickly. The official lyric video went live on Carpenter’s channel and started picking up views quickly.
Discussion threads started clustering around two readings: a literal no-sex spell versus the broader habit-stacking that turns a couple into flatmates who share a calendar.
The specifics will be argued all week, but the consensus forming in fan spaces is that the joke lines aren’t throwaway. They’re the point.
Critically, the song also carries a quiet through line for the album, folding unexpected instrumentation and a live feel into a scene that plays like a joke until it hurts.
People groups it with the tracks about everyday distance and petty cruelties that cool a house, while Pitchfork flags the campaign’s blend of cheek and feeling, together they map where “Willpower” sits; not as a headline, but as the line you remember later.
Numbers can wait. The case is on the tape: a bright, tightly arranged pop scene where humour and heat pull against each other until the room cools.
Within Man’s Best Friend, “My Man on Willpower” plays like the thesis, a sly joke carrying a lived-in stalemate about self-control and desire.
Critics have already framed the set as “zesty, clever and cathartic,” with reads that point to ABBA gloss and a hybrid tilt this cut wears lightly.
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