In the wake of the release of Man’s Best Friend, Sabrina Carpenter is still defending the album’s controversial cover art.
After Carpenter debuted the cover for her seventh studio album in June, some critiqued the image, which depicts the singer on her knees in a black dress as a man stands out-of-shot, clutching onto her hair. It sparked a conversation about sex-positive feminism, though Carpenter admitted in a profile with Interview Magazine on Tuesday that “the reaction [to the album cover] is fascinating to me.”
“If I’m being completely transparent, I don’t do anything anticipating what the reaction will be,” she said. “When I came up with the imaging for [Man’s Best Friend], it was so clear to me what it meant. So the reaction is fascinating to me. You just watch it unravel and go, ‘wow.’”
Interview editor-in-chief Mel Ottenberg further questioned Carpenter’s reaction to the negative reception of the album art, asking “when there’s all this controversy and people are screaming about it, do you like it? Does it make you cry or giggle?”
“I guess a little bit of both,” she answered. “My experience and point of view are going to be so different from how other people live their lives. Sometimes I read things and I’m like, ‘wow, I don’t experience this that way, but if they do, then that’s real to them.’”
The “Manchild” singer further clarified that Man’s Best Friend was about her personal journey going through “loss and heartbreak and celebration and trying to navigate my life as a young woman.”
Of the cover, Ottenberg pointed out a critique that some have argued, noting that the image made Carpenter “appear submissive.” However, she explained that it was merely “a metaphor.”
“This is on a completely different subject, but I do feel like submission is both dominant and submissive,” Carpenter said. “The image, the way I see it, is a metaphor, but I’m sure that other people are like ‘dang, she’s a sub.’”
Ahead of Man’s Best Friend’s release, she lightly addressed the online backlash by revealing an alternative cover for the project. In a Friday interview with Gayle King on CBS Mornings, Carpenter warned listeners that “The album is not for any pearl clutchers.”
Read The Hollywood Reporter’s track-by-track breakdown of Man’s Best Friend here.
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