People who felt scandalized by Short n’ Sweet songs such as “Juno” or “Bed Chem” probably won’t like Man’s Best Friend, according to Sabrina Carpenter.
In a clip released Thursday (Aug. 28) ahead of her appearance on CBS Mornings Friday, the pop star confirmed that her new album is not for the faint of heart — and if they do want to listen, they’ll probably want to do it in the privacy of their own homes.
“The album is not for any pearl clutchers,” Carpenter told Gayle King of the LP, which drops Friday (Aug. 29). “But I also think that even pearl clutchers can listen to an album like that in their own solitude and find something that makes them smirk and chuckle to themselves.”
When King noted that the songs on the project are as “sexual” as they are “powerful” and “vulnerable,” the two-time Grammy winner replied, “I think that’s the thing, is sometimes people hear the lyrics that are really bold or they go, ‘I don’t want to sing this in front of other people.’”
“It’s like it’s almost too TMI,” Carpenter added. “But I think about being at a concert with, you know, however many young women I see in the front row that are screaming at the top of their lungs with their best friends, and you can go like, ‘Oh, we can all sigh [in] relief like, ‘This is just fun.’ And that’s all it has to be.”
This isn’t the first time the pop star has addressed backlash to her sexual song lyrics, which have polarized audiences ever since Carpenter found breakout success with 2024 album Short n’ Sweet. In a Rolling Stone cover story published in June, she said, “It’s always so funny to me when people complain … like, ‘All she does is sing about this.’”
“But those are the songs that you’ve made popular,” she continued at the time. “Clearly you love sex. You’re obsessed with it. It’s in my show. There’s so many more moments than the ‘Juno’ positions, but those are the ones you post every night and comment on. I can’t control that.”
Man’s Best Friend has also caused people to, as Carpenter puts it, clutch their pearls even before its release. When the Girl Meets World alum first shared its cover art — a photo of herself down on all fours, held in place by a man grabbing her hair — she was met with backlash from some critics who found the image degrading to women.
Not to worry, though. Carpenter has since released several variants of MBF with alternate covers that even pearl clutchers can probably get behind.
See a snippet of Carpenter’s Friday CBS Mornings interview below.
