Sabrina Carpenter’s highly anticipated seventh studio album, Man’s Best Friend, was released on Friday, sparking considerable excitement among her online fanbase. However, the US pop star issued a caveat alongside the release.
“The album is not for any pearl clutchers,” she stated in an interview with CBS News, referring to individuals who are easily offended or overly prudish.
“This is just fun – and that’s all it has to be,” she added, commenting on her often risqué live performances.
In June, the singer unveiled alternative album artwork that had been “approved by God,” following controversy surrounding the original cover. The initial design, depicting Carpenter on her hands and knees in a black minidress while a suited man grabbed her hair, drew criticism for allegedly pandering to the male gaze and promoting misogynistic stereotypes.
CBS News’s Gayle King, in her interview with Carpenter, lauded the artist’s “sexual, powerful, vulnerable” and “unapologetic” new music, which includes the recent hit “Manchild” and the new single “Tears.”
However, King noted: “I think there are some people that would listen to the music and they’d be clutching their pearls.”
Carpenter responded, “Correct. The album is not for any pearl clutchers. 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.”
She further elaborated: “Sometimes people hear the lyrics that are really bold and they go, ‘I don’t want to sing this in front of other people’. It’s almost… TMI.
“But I think about being at a concert, with 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, we can all sigh of relief.
“This is just fun – and that’s all it has to be.”
She also commented that those offended by the album cover “need to get out more.”
Of the album’s 12 tracks, nine carry an explicit content warning.
Carpenter co-produced the album with Taylor Swift collaborator Jack Antonoff, as well as John Ryan, who contributed to her previous album, Short n’ Sweet, which achieved Grammy recognition and topped charts on both sides of the Atlantic last year.
In a three-star review, Victoria Segal of The Times described Man’s Best Friend as musically “negligee-thin, surprisingly vanilla”.
Segal added that, considering the initial cover artwork controversy, it “would have been amazing” if the album “was in fact so subversive that it crushed the male gaze for ever, somehow positioning Carpenter as an avenging angel, a cute pocket-sized gorgon turning men to stone.
“Unfortunately, nothing here justifies that cover image.”
The Independent also awarded the album three stars, stating that while “there are some sensational songs… too much of the rest struggles for lift-off”.
Reviewer Adam White wrote: “With Carpenter circling many of the same themes in her lyrics, the hit rate on Man’s Best Friend is largely dependent on its song-by-song production.”
White continued, “House Tour is sensational, a chugging slice of 80s power-pop so instantly catchy that you’re able to forgive it holding some of the album’s biggest lyrical clunkers,” referencing some of her more overtly suggestive wordplay.
He added that Carpenter “is above all a brilliant aesthete” and that her videos and album artwork were “uniformly inspired.”
Meanwhile, Emily Bootle of the I characterized the album as “TikTok slop,” writing: “She knows sex sells. That doesn’t make her a feminist – or make her music any more interesting.”
George Monaghan of The New Statesman stated that while her new album “may be muted”, she “remains the only popstar with comic talent.”
BBC Radio 1’s Newsbeat gathered initial reactions from two young fans in Hertfordshire. Amy, 21, commented: “It’s the type of album you want to dance to and drive with the windows down to.”
“I love House Tour, I think it’s so fun and so theatrical. I love the whole theatre kid showgirl vibe from her.”
Guy, 20, suggested it sounded like Carpenter was “being open and in touch with her femininity” on “some sad songs” as well as having “Short n’ Sweet-vibes songs”.
The singer-songwriter celebrated the album’s release with a Spotify-hosted fan event at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
Speaking to Rolling Stone magazine, she said the record “wasn’t written from a place of ‘how do I one-up myself?’ or ‘how do I re-create something else?'”
She stated: “Short n’ Sweet 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.”
The former Disney star, 26, has cultivated her brand around playful and risqué pop music, and her sexually charged lyrics and provocative performances frequently generate attention.
At the Brit Awards in March, media watchdog Ofcom received 825 complaints, primarily concerning her pre-watershed opening performance featuring a red sparkly military-style mini-dress, matching stockings, and suspenders.
She was also observed in close proximity to a dancer dressed as a soldier wearing a bearskin hat during the performance, which was broadcast live on ITV.
Last month, however, BBC News culture reporter Annabel Rackham noted that her performance at London’s Hyde Park had been “noticeably toned down as the US singer embraced a more family-friendly show”.
In her review of the gig, she wrote: “At one point a graphic flashed up on screen advising ‘parental discretion’ as Carpenter launched into album track Bed Chem. She ditched her usual sexually suggestive performance on song Juno and instead used a cannon to fire T-shirts into the crowd.
“Despite these changes she was still at her best, storming through a 17-song tracklist that comprised her biggest hits, charming the crowd with her Hollywood smile and incredibly bouncy hair.”
BBC News used AI to help write the summary at the top of this article. It was edited by BBC journalists. Find out more.