Sabrina Carpenter’s latest studio album, Man’s Best Friend, has sparked plenty of conversation on both sides, but the singer isn’t letting it get her down.
“It’s always so funny to me when people complain,” she said in her Rolling Stone cover story published in May 2025, specifically referring to the backlash over her provocative Short n’ Sweet Tour. “They’re like, ‘All she does is sing about this.’ But those are the songs that you’ve made popular. Clearly, you love sex. You’re obsessed with it.”
Carpenter revealed on June 11, 2025, that her next studio record would be released on August 29, 2025.
“[It] wasn’t written from a place of ‘How do I one-up myself?’ or ‘How do I recreate something else?’ ” the Grammy winner told Rolling Stone. “Short n’ Sweet [her 2024 album] was this magical gift; it fed me, and it fed a lot of other people in the world. It felt true to me, and it felt authentic to a lot of other people. It’s rare that those line up ever, let alone more than once. It unlocked my brain to know myself more and more.”
Sabrina Carpenter Breaks Silence on New Album Cover Backlash
Keep scrolling for a full breakdown of the controversies surrounding Carpenter’s Man’s Best Friend:
‘Man’s Best Friend’ Album Cover
For the official LP art, Carpenter posed on all fours like a domesticated pet while an unidentified man appeared to pull her hair. Some social media users believed that the image glorified domestic violence.
“Women face horrific domestic abuse and degradation at the hands of men every single day worldwide, but she wants to profit off of imagery of herself being degraded, comparing herself to a dog,” one X user wrote. “pandering to men will never be feminist, I don’t care if the lyrics say ‘f*** men.’”
Another X user questioned whether Carpenter had “a personality outside of sex.”
“Girl yes and it is goooooood,” the pop star replied in June 2025.
‘Manchild’ Lyrics
Carpenter’s debut single from Man’s Best Friend was released in June 2025, and its lyrics quickly raised eyebrows among listeners.
“It’s all just so familiar, baby, what do you call it? Stupid / Or is it slow?” she sings in the prechorus. “Maybe it’s useless? / But there’s a cuter word for it. I know: Manchild.”
A handful of fans pointed out that “slow” could be considered an ableist slur.
“Everyone is so focused on Sabrina Carpenter’s new album cover that not a single person is talking about her use of the word ‘slow’ in manchild, which is a historically ableist term,” one user claimed via X, as another alleged the musician was “ignorant at best, [and] willfully ableist at worst.”
Other fans defended Carpenter, arguing that her lyrical choice presumably “wasn’t that serious.”
“Sabrina is incredibly smart and nuanced with the way she curates her image and dare I say, that’s why she gets misunderstood a lot [because] the general audience lacks critical thinking and loves to turn on popular women,” another defender said.
Carpenter has not publicly addressed the “Manchild” backlash.
Sabrina Carpenter Hits Back at ‘Obsessed’ Critics Who Say She’s Too Raunchy
What Sabrina Carpenter Has Said About the Album
While Carpenter has remained mum about the “Manchild” controversy, she made it clear that she doesn’t give weight to the haters or criticism.
“I’m living in the glory of no one hearing it or knowing about it, and so I can not care,” she told Rolling Stone. “I can not give a f*** about it, because I’m just so excited.”
With “Manchild” specifically, Carpenter gushed that the writing process was “special.”
“That was one of those times, which is why it feels more special. If I’m not at the studio right now writing something, then I’m going to die,” she quipped. “I need to make sense of what I’m feeling and what I’m going through, and put it down on paper.”
Carpenter added, “I’ve really just been making things, excited about them, and then continuing forth. Not to be dramatic, but what can I do while my legs still work? I’m limber, let’s use it. My brain is sharp, let’s write. I try not to get sad about the fact that nothing lasts forever, but genuinely, it’s such a beautiful time right now. I want to soak it up and keep making things while I’m feeling this way.”
What Producer Jack Antonoff Has Said About ‘Manchild’
Antonoff worked with Carpenter on both Short n’ Sweet and Man’s Best Friend. He praised her work on “Manchild” in the Rolling Stone interview.
“When I heard those three, that was the moment when I was like, ‘Oh, my God,’” he recalled, referring to the single and two additional new tracks. “You could imagine the entire album from that point, because the songs had such an identity. I find a lot of this album to be some of the most honest work I’ve ever heard.”
He continued, “There’s something really celebratory about it, but most of the lyrical content is about disappointment in relationships and all the different shapes it takes. I think it’s a celebration of those who let you down.”
The Alternate Cover
Weeks after announcing the album, Carpenter revealed an alternate version of the album cover that’s not quite as risqué. “Here is a new alternate cover approved by God,” she quipped via Instagram in June 2025. The new image is black-and-white and shows her in a lacy dress clutching the arm of a man wearing a suit. Three other men in suits are visible in the background. A second image, seemingly the back cover of the album, shows her in a similar pose with more of her floor-length dress visible.
What Sabrina Carpenter Has Said About the Backlash
During an August 2025 interview on CBS Mornings, Carpenter told Gayle King that Man’s Best Friend and its provocative concept are “just for fun.”
“The album is not for any pearl clutchers,” she said. “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. I think sometimes people hear the lyrics that are really bold or they go, ‘I don’t want to sing this in front of other people.’”
Carpenter added, “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 [breathe a] sigh of relief, like, this is just fun.’ That’s all it has to be.”
