Sabrina Carpenter Explains Meaning Behind Controversial Man’s Best Friend Cover

Over the summer, the Grammy winner announced her seventh album that would be released later in the year, and shared the provocative cover image, which saw her posing on all fours and looking out towards the camera, while an unidentified figure gripped onto her hair.

Having already become a figure of debate since her meteoric rise to global fame, Sabrina’s album cover led to yet more discourse, with some suggesting the Manchild singer was just making light of the way she’s been portrayed in the media in the past, and others claiming that there was a danger of this message getting lost in the mix, especially in the current political and social climate.

While Sabrina has previously shied away from explaining her true intent with the Man’s Best Friend cover art, she shed more light on the situation during a new interview with Variety.

The outlet pointed out that Sabrina sports an “inscrutable expression” on the Man’s Best Friend cover, which she said was her way of illustrating that “you can be so in control and so not in control at the same time”.

“It was about how people try to control women, and how I felt emotionally yanked around by these relationships that I had, and how much power you’re allowing yourself to give them,” she claimed.

Of the backlash faced by the cover, Sabrina said: “It meant one thing to me and 100 things to other people, and I was looking at it going, ‘That’s valid. Mine’s valid. What’s for dinner?’.

“Not to bypass the weight that it did carry for some people. I saw it and was like, ‘That is a great point. It wasn’t the point I was trying to make’.”

She also dismissed the suggestion that later alternate covers were a response to the controversy, insisting: “Oh, girl, I just wanted to take more pictures!”

During a conversation with Interview magazine about the backlash earlier this year, Sabrina said: “When I came up with the imaging for it, it was so clear to me what it meant. So the reaction is fascinating to me. You just watch it unravel and go, ‘Wow’.”

Prior to that, Sabrina told CBS Mornings: “Y’all need to get out more, I think. I was actually shocked [by the controversy] because I think 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, ‘[the cover is] perfect, for what the album is, it’s perfect for what it represents’.

“Everything about it to me just felt so opposite of the world ending.”

Man’s Best Friend topped the albums chart on both sides of the Atlantic when it was eventually released in August, spawning hit singles Manchild, Tears and When Did You Get Hot?.

The popularity of the album meant that tracks like My Man On Willpower and House Tour have also charted within the top 20 in the UK singles chart, based on streaming figures.