Topline
Sabrina Carpenter said she was surprised by some of the backlash to the suggestive cover for her new album, “Man’s Best Friend,” which dropped on Friday, stating she feels it represents young women having the choice to be in control, after some critics and women’s organizations called it “regressive.”
“Y’all need to get out more,” Carpenter said of her album cover’s critics in a Friday morning interview with Gayle King on CBS Mornings.
Carpenter said the cover, which depicts the singer on her knees while a man holds a fistful of her hair, is up to interpretation, but she sees it as a representation of young women “being in on the control, being in on your lack of control,” and deciding “when you want to be in control.”
“I think as a young woman, you’re just as aware of when you’re in control as when you’re not, and I think some of those are choices,” Carpenter said, adding she feels the album is “about the humanity of allowing yourself to make those mistakes.”
Carpenter said she took the backlash with a “grain of salt,” stating the controversy was “a lot of pointing fingers” from people who “hadn’t heard the project.”
When controversy raged after Carpenter unveiled the cover in June, her fans defended it as satire, and Carpenter said Friday morning she knew her “fans that know me and know the person behind the music would look at that photo and know exactly what it is.”
“The album is not for any pearl-clutchers,” Carpenter told King, but acknowledged critics could still “find something that makes them smirk and chuckle to themselves” in her music.
Social media lit up with both detractors and defenders of Carpenter’s cover when she announced “Man’s Best Friend” in June, as some critics called it offensive to women. Glasgow Women’s Aid, a Scottish advocacy group for women experiencing domestic violence, said Carpenter’s album cover “isn’t edgy, it’s regressive,” alleging it evokes “tired tropes that reduce women to pets, props, and possessions and promote an element of violence and control.” In a column in British outlet The Telegraph, writer Poppie Platt slammed Carpenter’s “over-sexed, degrading new album cover” and called her marketing tactics “troubling,” comparing the cover to the TikTok-fueled “trad-wife” trend that promotes submission to men and traditional gender roles. Weeks after the controversy broke out, Carpenter unveiled a new alternate cover on her Instagram, which she joked was “approved by God.”
Fans who defended Carpenter’s cover noted she often uses humor, innuendos and sex positivity in her music and performances, though these activities have drawn some criticism in the past. While on her “Short n’ Sweet” tour, Carpenter mimicked a new sex position every night while performing her song “Juno,” which contains the lyric: “Wanna try out some freaky positions? Have you ever tried this one?” On a previous tour, Carpenter performed a new four-line outro, frequently charged with sexual innuendos, during each performance of her song “Nonsense.” In her Telegraph column, Platt criticized Carpenter’s concerts as unsuitable for children despite a “large swath” of her fanbase being “young, prepubescent girls.” Carpenter, in a June Rolling Stone cover story, said it’s “so funny to me when people complain” about her sexually tinged performances. Songs like “Juno” are “the songs that you’ve made popular. Clearly you love sex. You’re obsessed with it,” Carpenter said, stating there are “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,” Carpenter’s seventh album, was released Friday, about one year after her Grammy-winning album “Short n’ Sweet.” Carpenter released the lead single “Manchild” in June, and she debuted a music video for her new single “Tears” on Friday, featuring actor Colman Domingo in drag. Carpenter co-wrote and produced the album with Jack Antonoff, a prolific pop producer behind albums from Taylor Swift and Lorde. Initial reviews are generally positive: The Guardian gave it four stars, calling it “stunning craft from pop’s best in show,” while Variety praised it as “one of the year’s best pop records” and “almost certainly the funniest.”