After Seeing Sabrina Carpenter’s New Album Cover, I Really Have No Idea What To Expect From Man’s Best Friend

Sabrina Carpenter has released another alternative album cover for Man’s Best Friend, and it only makes the album’s central theme even more confusing. The pop star’s controversial seventh studio album will be out on August 29th, 2025.

The Short n’ Sweet artist released the album’s first track, “Manchild,” as a single in June, and it quickly rose to the top of the Billboard charts. She caused a controversy when she revealed the Man’s Best Friend album cover, but has since announced two alternative covers that have fans bewildered.

Sabrina Carpenter’s Album Cover Variants Are All Vastly Different

Carpenter Is Making It Hard To Figure Out The Theme Of Her New Album

Sabrina Carpenter has released three different album cover variants for Man’s Best Friend, and they are all vastly different. The first cover caused extreme controversy, as Carpenter is on all fours while a man pulls on her hair. The internet had visceral reactions, claiming Carpenter was setting feminism back fifty years by exploiting women.

Carpenter then put out another cover, which references an old black and white photo of Marilyn Monroe. Now, her most recent cover is of the pop star sitting in a room surrounded by flowers. The coloring of the photo is very soft, similar to some of the garden photos from the Short n’ Sweet era.

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The confusing part is that none of these covers match aesthetically. Typically, when an artist does multiple covers, they all appear to be from the same photoshoot. Taylor Swift did this with The Tortured Poets Department, as well as 1989 (Taylor’s Version).

In Carpenter’s case, she went in a different direction, and all three covers look like they were shot in different locations with three different artistic directions. With the vastly different covers, it seems Carpenter might have something up her sleeve in terms of the album’s themes.

Carpenter’s Concept For This Album Already Seems Perfectly Complex

There’s Definitely A Deeper Meaning Behind Man’s Best Friend

Based on the covers, it seems there may be a complex message behind the album. One possibility is that Man’s Best Friend won’t be as sonically cohesive as Carpenter’s past work. The singer’s different album covers could represent a range of emotions and genres of Man’s Best Friend.

After all, Carpenter is releasing her new album a year after Short n’ Sweet, which is a pretty short time between albums. She’s also releasing it before her Short n’ Sweet Tour is officially over, proving she’s not interested in following any rules.

It’s clear she wants to do something different this time around. The “Espresso” singer mentioned Stevie Nicks, Dolly Parton, and Donna Summer as inspirations for why she’s putting an album out so soon after her last. It’s likely these musical icons are also inspirations behind the genres she’ll explore on Man’s Best Friend.

There also may be a complex message Carpenter is trying to send that initially went over everyone’s heads. The three different album covers prove that Carpenter wants to make a statement with Man’s Best Friend. Her message might be unclear now, but there’s certainly a bigger picture that will be revealed when the album drops.

Even if some of her behavior has been interpreted as anti-feminist, it’s clear that this is not what Sabrina Carpenter stands for. Carpenter is incredibly clever, and it’s more likely she’s using her new album as an opportunity to mess with the public.

We Can’t Take Carpenter Or Her Music At Face Value

Sabrina Carpenter Is The Queen Of Satire

While the internet may have taken the first Man’s Best Friend album cover at face value, they shouldn’t have. The singer is a pretty comedic pop star and loves utilizing satire in her work. Carpenter has been pretty sexually explicit in her music and performances, and she has defended it, saying there’s nothing wrong with a woman expressing her sexuality.

However, the public’s reaction hasn’t been great, and it seems Carpenter might be delivering commentary on the public’s perception of her. Carpenter has been called out for infantilizing and oversexualizing women, and it seems her initial Man’s Best Friend album cover could be mocking the public’s opinion of her.

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It also seems like a commentary on the way men treat women in society. Carpenter is seemingly comparing herself to a dog, only here to entertain men. Her lead single “Manchild” certainly fits this theme. The song is about how Carpenter keeps dating men who need her to parent them, and she’s tired of it.

However, Carpenter also jokes about how she’s not choosing these men, but they keep coming to her. In reality, she is responsible for the men she chooses to date, and she knows that. The song seems to hint that Carpenter knows she plays a role in the messes she gets involved in.

Her alternative album covers support the theory that she’ll be exploring the public’s perception of her as well as how she’s contributed to it. One cover shows her mimicking Marilyn Monroe, a woman who was loved by men because of her appearance and utilized it for success.

The other shows Carpenter surrounded by flowers, looking bored, as if she’s tired of all the male attention. This suggests she might be exhausted from the attention she’s gotten from her Short n’ Sweet blonde bombshell persona. While the internet initially interpreted Carpenter’s album cover as misogynistic, Man’s Best Friend might actually be Sabrina Carpenter‘s attempt at reclaiming the narrative.

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May 11, 1999

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