Can Sabrina Carpenter “Please Please Please” Stop? Sabrina Announces New Album, Man’s Best Friend
By Kayla Harper
Like many girls, I grew up with Sabrina Carpenter, who at the time was best known for her role as Maya Hart on the series Girl Meets World. She started releasing music around the same time with her debut album, Eyes Wide Open being released when she was only 15 years old. She would go on to release four more albums with Hollywood Records before signing with Island Records in 2021. It wasn’t until her first release with Island Records, emails i can’t send that her music career started to take off.
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emails i can’t send is the first album where Carpenter had total creative control and wrote all of the songs herself with collaborators. This alone gives her fifth studio album an authentic sound the last four lacked. Aside from the upbeat pop hits she’s known for, emails i can’t send is vulnerable and emotional, with songs addressing her fathers infidelity (“emails i can’t send”), the death threats she was receiving from the media (“because i liked a boy”) as well as many about heartbreak and falling in love.
Already there is more variation in thematic elements as well as production on emails i can’t send than any of her other albums including Short n’ Sweet.
Even emails i can’t send songs about romance were more authentic and creative, such as “Tornado Warnings” or “Read your Mind”. However, the witty lyrics and innuendos she’s become known for are not a new thing in Carpenter’s music, many songs on emails i can’t send feature this side of Carpenter, like “Nonsense”, however, it was not overdone, and thus was more effective.
Carpenter’s music started taking off when videos of her hit “Nonsense” live at the emails i can’t send tour started trending. She was still playing mostly smaller venues on this tour and would include a unique outro at the end of “Nonsense” every night, usually some sort of sex joke and play on the city’s name that she was currently performing in. When these outros started going viral, Carpenter became known for them.
By the time she released the lead single, “Espresso” to her sixth album Short n’ Sweet, Carpenter’s music career would become even bigger than her acting career. “Espresso” was a fun, unserious pop song that defined the summer of 2024, and while it expressed Carpenter’s funny lyrics and was similar to the side of her we see in “Nonsense” or “Feather” it was not overly sexual. Even the music video had its moments, but was focused on the music.
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Short n’ Sweet was released on August 23, 2024 with the original album clocking in at roughly 36 minutes and containing 12 tracks. Upon first listen I remember feeling disappointed at the lack of thematic variety and that most of the production felt fairly similar. However, it eventually grew on me and became one of my favourite pop albums to listen to on a summer day -the upbeat, unseriousness makes it a fun album to dance to, but this doesn’t change the fact that it was a huge downgrade to its predecessor, emails i can’t send.
Short n’ Sweet lacks complexity as each song seems to be an extended “Nonsense” outro; a bunch of raunchy jokes strewn together over midi loops. Whether she’s singing a love song or a breakup song, the majority of them are written this way. Of course this isn’t a bad thing, as a writer myself, I always say it’s equally impressive to write a song with lyrics like “Espresso” as it is to write one with lyrics like Taylor Swift’s folklore album –in fact, I think it’s even more difficult to write an upbeat unserious song without coming across too corny. But the way Carpenter does it on every track gets boring because she’s only ever talking about how hot she is, how dumb men are, and wondering how many innuendos she can fit into this one. The deluxe album released in early 2025, contains five extra songs, but is really no different. However, it fits the theme of Short n’ Sweet well so it was what I expected.
In June of 2025 Carpenter released the single “Manchild”, which I assume is the lead single for her upcoming album, Man’s Best Friend, which she just announced on June 11. While “Manchild” is a fun, upbeat, unserious track, it just didn’t grab me right away because it’s so similar to Short n’ Sweet; another track of the same old jokes and wordplay saying the same thing as the last 17 tracks she released. This isn’t to say it’s not catchy and doesn’t highlight Carpenter’s outstanding vocals and fun side, it’s just been done so many times now. Additionally, recent releases of Carpenter’s have sounded very similar to other songs, including “Manchild” which sounds just like Chappell Roan’s “Good Luck, Babe” or “Couldn’t Make It Any Harder” which sounds note for note like Olivia Newton-John’s “Hopefully Devoted To You”.
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In the teaser for the music video she’s standing on the side of the road in skimpy shorts that -I don’t even think you could call them shorts actually…not that this is necessarily a problem either, it’s just that it seems like Carpenter or her label is always marketing her music this way now, in a way that they are selling her body more than they are selling her music. Her music is starting to lack authenticity as she voluntarily becomes modern pop’s staple sex symbol.
Even the album cover for Man’s Best Friend feels like another attempt to grab everyone’s attention with the spicy cover rather than the music that will be on it. Carpenter appears on her hands and knees in front of a man who is grabbing her hair and inferring from the title is comparing herself to a dog…or in other words pet…I don’t think I need to say anymore, it’s disgusting and degrading.
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It gets even worse when looking at the physical media for Man’s Best Friend, among it a picture disc that seems to depict Sabrina, a young girl, sensually laying on a bed with what appears to be an older man at her feet. Even if all of this is to poke fun at the concept of sexuality and degradation, it’s not coming across that way and is rather promoting it.
Carpenter seemed to take the one thing that quickly gained the attention of the most people and ran with it, unfortunately for her that is her body and sexuality. Which is utilized again on her recent Rolling Stone cover:
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In the interview she explains, “It’s always so funny to me when people complain…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. It’s in my show. There’s so many more moments than the ‘Juno’ positions, but those aren’t the ones you post every night and comment on. I can’t control that.” (Carpenter, Rolling Stone, 2025)
What’s possibly even more disgusting than the photos and promotion of the album itself, is Carpenter’s lack of accountability in addressing it. It is pretty much all she’s sang about for the last 17 tracks she’s released and it’s what she’s promoting on her album covers, picture discs, photo shoots etc. so of course many people are saying it’s all she sings about. If you’re always promoting your songs in scandalous outfits and poses, of course people think all you sing about is sex.
Yes, there are more moments in the show than just the “Juno” positions, but Carpenter made that such a significant moment because she changes it every night, just like Taylor Swift changed her setlist every night, so of course that’s the moments fans are going to tune in and see what was different than their show. The “Bed Chem” performance is another sexual performance that is not spread online nearly as much.
As a fan who attended the show, and has attended other Carpenter shows previous to the Short n’ Sweet era, she definitely puts on a great show and it wasn’t overly explicit, but the photo shoots and marketing of her music is. Especially what I previously talked about with Man’s Best Friend, which appears to be targeted for the male gaze, not her demographic…unless that’s what it is now. Even if it is a joke, it isn’t landing and is not the message she should be sending out to her fans, the majority of which are young girls and women.
Carpenter was hugely successful with Short n’ Sweet, winning two Grammy’s at the 2025 award ceremony, so of course she seems to be sticking within that realm rather than expanding her craft.
While I’ve always loved Carpenter and her music, I tend to respect artists more that aren’t afraid to lose publicity or fans for the sake of developing their craft and working hard to sell the music they make, not using some incentive like sexual pictures of themselves on the album to sell it.
For example, Taylor Swift is one of the biggest pop stars in the world and has been a mentor and friend to Carpenter, however, she is also someone who falls in and out of mainstream media as she doesn’t ever stick with one style or the one thing that gets her the most attention –if that were the case we wouldn’t have gotten genre switches and every album since 2014 would sound exactly like 1989. Instead, Swift reaches out to experts to collaborate with in different genres, such as The National’s Aaron Dessner or Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, to learn about different ways of making music and expand her own craft. When she puts out a new album that is so different from the last, sometimes an entirely new genre, she may lose some fans, she may gain some, but most importantly she doesn’t care as long as she is creatively fulfilled and expressing herself through her music.
All of this is not to say that Carpenter isn’t talented. Short n’ Sweet was a solid pop album front-to-back, in fact, the style suits her voice and fun personality well. Additionally, some of the man-degrading humour is definitely warranted. The problem is the way she’s marketing it, in a way that her body is almost being used to sell her music. It’s not a good example for young girls who look up to her, or even grown woman who like her, it’s almost degrading if anything. It wouldn’t be a big deal if Carpenter hadn’t taken it this far and made it her entire brand…while I’m excited for the new album as a long-term Carpenter fan, I’m completely grossed out by the cover art and really hoping the album itself isn’t nearly as bad.
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