Sabrina Carpenter has a message for any overly sensitive listeners after the release of her seventh studio album.
On Friday, the “Espresso” singer’s newest album, Man’s Best Friend, became available to listen to everywhere. Speaking in a recent episode of CBS Mornings with Gayle King, Carpenter spoke about the explicitness of some of her lyrics and visuals.
As King praised the “Please Please Please” singer’s music because it was “unapologetic,” she also thought “there are some people that would listen to the music and they'd be clutching their pearls.”
“Correct,” Carpenter replied.
“The album is not for any pearl-clutchers,” she continued before backtracking. “No, 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....”
King chimed in, pointing out how “sexual,” “powerful,” and “vulnerable” Carpenter’s music is.
“That’s the thing, 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... it’s TMI,” Carpenter said. “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 of relief, like, ‘This is just fun.’ And that’s all it has to be.”
When the album and its cover image were first announced in June, it quickly faced criticism. The image shows Carpenter on her hands and knees while an anonymous figure in a suit grips her by the hair. A second promotional photo, released alongside the cover, depicted a dog wearing a heart-shaped collar tag inscribed with the words “Man’s Best Friend.”
The cover, shot by Bryce Anderson, sparked a debate on social media, with some fans arguing that it was degrading towards women, while others said Carpenter was owning her sexuality as well as poking fun at patriarchal values.
Later that month, the singer unveiled an alternate cover, a black and white image showing Carpenter standing while clutching the arm of another anonymous male figure.
Alluding to the backlash she received for the original cover, Carpenter joked that the new artwork had been “approved by God.”
“Here is a new alternate cover approved by God,” she said at the time. “Available now on my website.”
