Sabrina Carpenter addressed the controversy around her ‘Man’s Best Friend’ artwork during her Saturday Night Live hosting debut.
The singer’s seventh album was released in August and its cover art showed her kneeling on the floor as an unidentified person stands beside her and pulls on her hair. It was accused by some as leaning on “tired tropes that reduce women to pets” and became the subject of an online backlash.
Carpenter used her platform hosting SNL yesterday (October 18) to comment on the controversy during her opening monologue. “Some people got a little freaked out by the cover,” she said. “I’m not sure why. It’s just this.”
With that, she produced a copy of the LP and added: “Me on all fours with an unseen person pulling my hair. But what people don’t realise it’s just how they cropped it.”
“If you zoom out, it’s clearly a picture of me at the 50th anniversary, and Bowen helping me up by the hair,” she said, referring to SNL cast member Bowen Yang. “After Martin Short shoved me out of the buffet line, saying something like, ‘Daddy needs his mini quiche’.”
“Since I’m here, I want to clear up some misconceptions people have about me,” she went on to say. “Everyone thinks of me as this horndog pop star, but there’s really so much more to me. I’m not just horny…I’m also turned on. And I’m sexually charged. And I love to read. My favourite book is the encyclopaedia, it’s so big, and it’s hard, and okay seriously, sorry.”
It is not the first time that Carpenter has made light of the backlash. Shortly after sharing the cover image, she offered up an alternative cover “approved by God” in which she clutches a man’s arm instead. “I can not give a fuck about it,” she added.
In a later interview, she said: “Y’all need to get out more, I think. Between me and my friends and my family and the people that I always share my music and my art with first, it just wasn’t even a conversation… It was just, like, it’s perfect for what the album is, and what it represents.”
When asked about her own interpretation of the cover art, Carpenter said she interpreted it as “being in on the control, being in on your lack of control, and when you want to be in control.”
Later on her SNL episode, she performed ‘Manchild’ in a pink bedroom and ‘Nobody’s Son’ in a bejewelled karate gi. As she mentioned, she was also part of the show’s 50th anniversary celebrations back in February, at one point appearing in a sketch where she sang an off-key version of ‘Espresso’.
Carpenter has also been announced as one of the headliners of next year’s Coachella alongside Justin Bieber and Karol G. Coachella 2026 will take place between April 10 and 12, and again on April 17 to 19. As for tickets, you’ll be able to get yours here.
‘Man’s Best Friend’ scored a four-star review from NME, with Nick Levine writing: “Musically, this album isn’t markedly different from its predecessor, though it has a few more country-leaning cuts sprinkled among the daytime disco and featherlight funk.
“It also sticks to Carpenter’s winning formula of pairing sticky melodies with pithy lyrics about the flaws and allure of inadequate males. If there were a Bechdel Test for pop albums, ‘Man’s Best Friend’ wouldn’t be in danger of passing it.”
