Thank You To Sabrina Carpenter For Reminding Everyone That Pop Is Supposed To Be Provocative

Sabrina Carpenter on stage at the 2025 Brit AwardsSabrina Carpenter may not have been part of the cultural conversation for all that long, but her impact is unignorable.Last year, she spent longer at the top of the UK singles chart than any other artist (including juggernauts like Beyoncé or Taylor Swift, as well as her modern peers like Chappell Roan, Charli XCX and Billie Eilish) thanks to a cluster of hits from her Short N’ Sweet album, Please Please Please, Taste and her real breakthrough moment, Espresso.In that short space of time, she’s also brewed up a fair bit of controversy, largely thanks to some of her more sexualised lyrics and on-stage performances.Earlier this year, on her Short N’ Sweet tour, she performed album cut Juno while mimicking a different sexual position every night, taking this one step further when she opened the Brit Awards in March, where she did a reveal into some bejewelled lingerie before showing off some risqué choreography and, finally, dropping to her knees in front of a backing dancer dressed like a Buckingham Palace guard, who ended the charade by winking at the camera.This performance sparked a wave of Ofcom complaints which, let’s face it, is the exact sort of thing fans of pop culture live for, particularly after an unsettlingly long chain of chart-toppers who’ve leaned more on the beige side of the colour chart.For the last few days, Sabrina has once again found herself back at the centre of the conversation, after unveiling the cover for her new album Man’s Best Friend. True to the album’s title, the accompanying photo-shoot sees Sabrina on all fours in front of a mysterious male (or, at least, presumably male) figure, who can be seen grasping her hair.My new album, “Man’s Best Friend” 🐾is out on August 29, 2025.i can’t wait for it to be yours x Pre-order now: https://t.co/E7QJWhYV2Dpic.twitter.com/UXVLzBQTj4— Sabrina Carpenter (@SabrinaAnnLynn) June 11, 2025Just hours later, the Nonsense singer then debuted her new cover spread for Rolling Stone magazine.While inside the pages of Rolling Stone, she could be seen posing in nature for David LaChapelle (who has previously helmed similarly sexually provocative shoots for everyone from Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Lady Gaga to David Beckham and Eminem) in colourful lingerie, the cover photo sees Sabrina completely nude in just pull-up stockings, with long hair extensions covering her breasts.View this post on InstagramA post shared by Rolling Stone (@rollingstone)The reaction to both has been pretty extreme. While some are loving Sabrina’s latest photo-shoots, highlighting the satirical intentions of her new album cover and comparing it to similar works by some of her pop predecessors, others are less impressed.Now, is Sabrina Carpenter’s new album cover provocative? Absolutely yes. That’s obviously the point. But is she “disgusting”, “disturbing”, “setting women back 100 years” or, indeed, “glorifying paedophila” as real headlines in some mainstream media outlets would have you believe? Probably not, no.For one thing, Sabrina is a reminder that pop has always been – and, in my opinion, should always be – a safe space to push boundaries and start conversations. Let’s face it, pop and sexuality have always gone hand in hand – right before Sabrina there were sexually-charged videos from Lil Nas X, Cardi B and Sam Smith that had critics clutching their pearls. Before them, it was Miley Cyrus and Rihanna. Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears. Madonna, Prince and Janet Jackson.The Man’s Best Friend cover is absolutely not going to be to everyone’s tastes, and feeling uncomfortable about it is a perfectly valid reaction. But, if it’s encouraging us to question why that discomfort is there, and maybe look inward at why we feel the way we do about a young woman expressing herself sexually or, indeed, the way women are depicted as sexual beings within our mainstream media, then surely, it’s done its job as an art piece.But also – why shouldn’t Sabrina Carpenter be free to express herself sexually in any way she sees fit? Don’t forget, after all, that the first time many of us heard her name wasn’t because of Espresso, or even Nonsense, it was in connection with a song she had no involvement in whatsoever, but one that still pulled her into a media storm.Sabrina Carpenter performing during the 2025 GrammysIn 2021, a then-unknown Olivia Rodrigo topped the charts from nowhere on both sides of the Atlantic with her song Drivers Licence, a slow lament about the end of a relationship with an ex-boyfriend who she’d struggled to trust during their relationship.One lyric in particular, “you’re probably with that blonde girl, who always made me doubt” led to near-immediate speculation that Olivia was singing about Sabrina, and a new media narrative was born.Having had her personal life debated and picked apart without her consent on the world stage before she’d even had a top 40 single in most territories, who could blame Sabrina for wanting to seize control of the narrative – and, indeed, her sexuality – when the opportunity presented herself?As Sabrina herself told Rolling Stone in an interview accompanying the shoot that’s already generated so much controversy: “[People say], ’All she does is sing about [sex]. 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 are the ones you post every night and comment on. I can’t control that. “If you come to the show, you’ll [also] hear the ballads, you’ll hear the more introspective numbers.”She added: “I find irony and humour in all of that, because it seems to be a recurring theme. I’m not upset about it, other than I feel mad pressure to be funny sometimes.”Of course, Sabrina’s way of expressing that “irony and humour” might not be your cup of tea, and that’s fine. But as the pop pioneers who’ve inspired her have proved – nothing grabs people at the beginning of a new era quite like a load of controversy. And I, for one, can’t wait to see what she does next…READ MORE:Sabrina Carpenter Hits Back At Critics Of Her Sexualised Performances And LyricsSabrina Carpenter Has Epic 4-Word Response About Who Inspired Her Single ManchildDolly Parton Had This 1 Big Rule For Sabrina Carpenter Before Recording Their Duet

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