Sabrina Carpenter has addressed the controversy surrounding her ‘Man’s Best Friend’ album cover.
- READ MORE: Sabrina Carpenter live in London: A testament to playing the long game to pop superstardom
The pop singer’s seventh studio album ‘Man’s Best Friend‘ arrived yesterday (August 29), after being previewed by ‘Manchild‘, the lyrics to which saw Carpenter call out inept men, with the visuals featuring her as a hitchhiker casting men aside one by one.
Back in June, when she first unveiled the album cover, Carpenter faced criticism by some who accused her of leaning on “tired tropes that reduce women to pets”. The image shows the singer kneeling on the floor, as an unidentified person stands beside her and pulls on her hair.
Carpenter then shared an alternate album cover “approved by God”, and responded to the backlash saying: “I can not give a fuck about it”. The second cover sees her clutching a man’s arm instead.
Now, she’s further commented on the uproar in a new interview with CBS Mornings host Gayle King. “Y’all need to get out more, I think,” she told King. “Between me and my friends and my family and the people that I always share my music and my art with first, it just wasn’t even a conversation… It was just, like, it’s perfect for what the album is, and what it represents.”
Carpenter said that everything about the cover was “so opposite of the world ending.”
When asked about her own interpretation of the cover art, Carpenter said she interpreted it as “being in on the control, being in on your lack of control, and when you want to be in control.”
“As a young woman, you’re just aware of when you’re in control as when you’re not… For me, this whole album was about the humanity of allowing yourself to make those mistakes, knowing when you’re putting yourself in a situation that will probably end up poorly,” she said. “But it’s going to teach you something, so there were a lot of different meanings.”
Carpenter said she heard a lot of the criticism as “pointing fingers” without an understanding of her artistry. “My parents actually loved the photo and they loved it,” she added.
Elsewhere in the interview, Carpenter gave fans a light-hearted warning that her new album is “not for the pearl clutchers”.
Alongside the release of the album, the singer also shared the Colman Domingo-starring music video for ‘Tears’, which followed suit and dialled up her disdain for men, eschewing her usual winking innuendo for the more direct lines: “I get wet at the thought of you/Being a responsible guy/Treating me like you’re supposed to do/Tears run down my thighs.”
As for other Sabrina Carpenter news, her recent headline slot at BST Hyde Park was given a glowing five-star review from NME, and praised as one that “effortlessly reinforces her command over modern pop”.
“Fireworks shoot out of the stage as Carpenter sings the biggest song of her career, which is only a year old, but somehow feels like the only song ever made,” the review read, referring to ‘Espresso’. “It’s catapulted the singer from an artist orbiting the pop girl league tables to one of its reigning champs, but her command of this space is a testament to the years of graft it took to get there. All she needed was time.”
Elsewhere, she is set to join J Balvin and Busta Rhymes as confirmed performers at the 2025 MTV VMAs next month.
It was also recently revealed that she is set to appear on the title track for Taylor Swift‘s forthcoming album ‘The Life Of A Showgirl’, which is out on October 3.
