American singer-songwriter Sabrina Carpenter released her seventh studio album, Man’s Best Friend, on August 29th, 2025. Despite initial backlash for the cover, and how underwhelmed many fans felt during their first listen of the album, it has grown to be just as well-loved as the rest of her discography.
Man’s Best Friend was first announced on June 11th, shortly after the release of Carpenter’s first single, “Manchild”, which became a massive hit. It was a shock to many fans that she was already releasing new music, less than a year after her album Short n’Sweet, that skyrocketed her into fame, but nobody was complaining.
Well, some were…
Carpenter’s announcement of her upcoming album came with an album cover, which upset a shocking amount of people. The cover depicts the artist on all fours, with her hair being held like a leash, seemingly playing on to the Man’s Best Friend title, portraying her like a dog.
The image is a criticism of how some men tend to treat women in relationships, and how it can feel to be mistreated and neglected as a partner. Despite the fact that times have changed, and it’s less common for those “traditional” gender roles to be pushed in modern day relationships, it’s still a notable issue in our country.
With many men being unintentionally neglectful to their relationships in the lack of quality time, and lack of emotional understanding aspect, it can truly make you feel like you’re not being heard. Many women may like they are an animal, hence the title Man’s Best Friend.
Even though this is how I feel the cover was intended to be portrayed, many people were upset by this image, saying that Carpenter was setting women back…with an album cover. I personally think this is ridiculous.
Her album cover clearly matches the title, and it overall matches the vibe of the songs on the album. But the album cover alone had people bringing up stuff from the past to drag Carpenter down, causing some fans to turn against her.
The vast majority of people failed to understand the concept of the cover and jumped to saying that Carpenter was being degrading to women, which I also feel is interesting because of the timing of this announcement. During the several month-long discourse on the album cover, it was a particular high point of people talking about another woman in the spotlight: Sydney Sweeney. This actress was particularly problematic in the sense of oversexualizing and degrading herself in the public eye around this time, so many people thought that the cover for Man’s Best Friend was comparable to Sweeney and started correlating the two issues to hurt Carpenter’s reputation.
The thing about Carpenter is that her music is unapologetically sexual, which you’d think more people would appreciate, considering that it’s no longer the 1970’s. But this fact seems to be the focal point of the backlash she has received for her album cover.
Despite making good pop music, and having a large audience of fans that love her music, the release of Man’s Best Friend was the height of the hate train for her. After the release, a surprising majority of her fans said the album was underwhelming, overly-sexual and repetitive, and some even said that most of the songs could’ve stayed on her last album. Many felt the songs were too similar to her previous album, Short n’ Sweet, and some were claiming she simply released a new album as a cash grab.
Even with this striking amount of backlash before and after the release, the album still debuted at No. 1, with the lead single, “Manchild”, topping the charts in the US, the UK, and Ireland, and the single “Tears” peaked at No, 3 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Now, basically all of the songs on the album are well-loved by fans. It’s funny how popular the album is today, especially after all the negativity that Carpenter received during the initial release.
But I can’t lie. I didn’t like the album at first either, but now I love it. So I guess I can see where people were coming from.
But they were still wrong. Leave Sabrina alone.
