Sabrina Carpenter Man’s Best Friend: Album Release

By Beyoncé Vásquez

Sabrina Carpenter released her new album Man’s Best Friend this Friday. After one year of her sixth and Grammy-winning album Short N’ Sweet, Carpenter is open to dating and self-awareness. The 12-track album opens with the album’s first single, “Manchild,” and ends with the song “Goodbye.” The music video for the record’s second single, “Tears,” also dropped at midnight.

Man’s Best Friend released on Aug. 29. Carpenter produced her seventh album with Jack Antonoff and John Ryan, who also produced tracks on Short n’ Sweet. MBF became Spotify’s most-streamed album in a single day by a female artist in 2025, one day after its release.

“The album is not for any pearl clutchers,”  Carpenter told Gayle King on CBS Mornings.

Sabrina Carpenter Man’s Best Friend Album Cover

Carpenter’s album cover for MBF sparked controversy. She is on her knees next to a faceless person wearing a suit, standing over her and grabbing her hair. The artwork made Carpenter seem submissive, which made people think it was degrading to women.

“When I thought about making this album cover, I was really inspired by a man sort of delicately playing with my hair,” Carpenter told NPR. Because I think there were a lot of metaphors between this dog and me emotionally. You know, a man’s best friend and sort of all the implications that come with it, the power in dominance and submission. When I saw it, obviously, for me, it checked all the boxes in between my friends and family. It just felt like what the music sounds like.

The album contains bold and witty lyrics. Carpenter’s sexual, powerful, vulnerable, and unapologetic new lyrics are featured on the nine explicit tracks in MBF. “I get wet at the thought of you. Being a responsible guy. Treating me like you’re supposed to do. Tears run down my thighs,” Carpenter writes in her song Tears. She also writes, “Put your loving where your mouth is. Yeah, your paragraphs mean shit to me. Get your sorry ass to mine,” in Sugar Talking.

Man’s Best Friend Album Cover Alternative

Carpenter criticizes herself and the men she’s dating, taking accountability for the relationships. She created MBF as a reflective piece of art, and “This is just fun – and that’s all it has to be,” she tells Gayle King.

“How can I be so self-aware and yet so blind and so stupid at the same time? Women are the smartest and the dumbest, in my experience. It’s like they are dumb exactly when they want to be. I think that that’s kind of a theme that I tackle throughout the whole album, just because it’s a little bit more about the reflection of my own choices and these relationships and how I get into them and how I get out of them,” Carpenter told NPR on MBF.