Sabrina Carpenter shares new cover “approved by God” for ‘Man’s Best Friend’
After facing intense backlash for her first album cover, Sabrina Carpenter has released an alternative cover for her upcoming album, Man’s Best Friend.
Her seventh studio album will be released on August 29th. Carpenter has so far shared only a single song from the project, called ‘Manchild’. It sees preppy synths beneath a hoppy beat as the singer talks of her relationship with an immature man.
When the ‘Please Please Please’ singer released the artwork for the cover, many pockets of the internet were not impressed. It shows Carpenter kneeling on the floor whilst a headless man pulls at her hair, likening the female role to that of a dog.
The early response suggested the cover fell back on tired, sexist tropes. In a statement on Facebook, Glasgow Women’s Aid has condemned the artwork, saying: “Sabrina Carpenter’s new album cover isn’t edgy; it’s regressive. It’s a throwback to tired tropes that reduce women to pets, props, and possessions and promote an element of violence and control. We’ve fought too hard for this.”
Carpenter originally responded saying: “I can not give a fuck about it.” However, Carpenter has now shared on social media that an alternate cover “approved by God” is available.
The singer is therefore poking fun at the backlash the first had received, suggesting repentance was needed before she could produce the new image.
In the Far Out feature, ‘Is feminism being abandoned in music?’, the question of Carpenter’s original album was considered alongside other artistic feminist displays of past and present: “Conservative values also have a role to play in both cementing and exacerbating the [feminist] issue—women shouldn’t be forced to cover up, but equally, how can such tropes be avoided when you land in a case like Carpenter’s album artwork, which reeks of an uncomfortable relic of the past?”
Man’s Best Friend is set for release on August 29th.
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