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Sabrina Carpenter has unveiled a more muted alternate cover for her forthcoming album, Man’s Best Friend, after dividing opinion with the original artwork.
The 26-year-old two-time Grammy-winner faced criticism earlier this month when she announced the album and its accompanying cover, which shows Carpenter on her hands and knees, while an anonymous figure in a suit holds her by her hair. Another image shared alongside the cover showed a dog wearing a heart-shaped collar tag that also read “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.
But on Wednesday (25 June), the “Espresso” singer unveiled an alternate cover, a black and white image showing Carpenter standing while clutching the arm of another anonymous male figure, as other men are slightly visible in the distance.
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. “Available now on my website.”
Fans praised the singer for her response to the backlash, with one saying, “‘Approved by God’ haha I freaking love you.”
Another added: “She really said, since y’all are so sensitive, here you go.”
One fan said they were still buying the original cover, adding: “I stand by this girl.”
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Carpenter hit back at criticism that her music and image are oversexualised, saying there’s much more to her art that critics tend to ignore.
“It’s always so funny to me when people complain,” she said. “They’re like: ‘All she does is sing about this.’ But those are the songs that you’ve made popular. Clearly you love sex. You’re obsessed with it.”
Carpenter added that she believes the scrutiny placed on her to be unfair, saying: “I don’t want to be pessimistic, but I truly feel like I’ve never lived in a time where women have been picked apart more, and scrutinised in every capacity. I’m not just talking about me. I’m talking about every female artist that is making art right now.”
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The Independent’s Helen Coffey wrote in a recent comment piece that any detractors criticising the original cover had not grasped the subversive nature of Carpenter’s work.
“Carpenter is not some manufactured Nineties tween pop princess whose every move is dictated by a lewd, middle-aged band manager with dollar signs in his eyes, coaxing her to squat down because ‘sex sells’,” wrote Coffey.
“To suggest she doesn’t have agency on a cover that she posed for in a set-up she chose for an album full of songs she wrote seems a wilful misreading of the power dynamics at play. And it’s far smarter than its critics would have you believe; any provocation here is entirely intentional.”
Man’s Best Friend is being supported so far by Carpenter’s new single, “Manchild”, which was written with Amy Allen and pop producer and Bleachers frontman Jack Antonoff.
Carpenter, a graduate of Disney sitcoms, began working in music as a teenager but was catapulted to stardom when she supported Taylor Swift on her Eras tour in 2023. Her 2024 album, Short ‘n’ Sweet, won best Pop Vocal Album at the Grammy Awards, while her earworm hit “Espresso” was victorious in the Best Pop Vocal Performance category.
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