Sabrina Carpenter is breaking her silence on her controversial new album cover that has displeased some fans.
The Grammy-winning Espresso crooner, 26, debuted the album art last week for the Aug 29 release of Man’s Best Friend, which shows the Disney Channel alum on her knees in a short black dress and matching stilettos as a man pulls her signature blonde tresses. Her post is restricted on Instagram for users 18 and over.
“Does she have a personality out side of sex?” asked one disgruntled X user.
“Girl yes and it is goooooood,” responded the Please, Please, Please singer, whose tongue-in-cheek lyrics and Short n’ Sweet tour often delve into the sexually explicit.
Those on X weren’t alone in criticising the art, which Glasgow Women’s Aid decried as “regressive” and less “subversion” than promoting “tired stereotypes of women.”
The day after making the album art public, fashion photographer David LaChapelle‘s nude portrait of Carpenter made waves as the cover of Rolling Stone’s Summer Double Issue.
“It’s always so funny to me when people complain,” Carpenter told the magazine. “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.”
Though the show is full of innuendo and sexually charged choreography, Carpenter said there are also “ballads” and “the more introspective numbers.
“I find irony and humour in all of that. … I’m not upset about it, other than I feel mad pressure to be funny sometimes,” she continued, adding later that she feels “like I’ve never lived in a time where women have been picked apart more, and scrutinised in every capacity”. – New York Daily News/Tribune News Service
