Sabrina Carpenter has carved out a niche for herself in pop music by singing about topics many have previously considered off-limits — and in a recent interview, the star opened up about her reasons for doing so.

While speaking to Interview for a piece published Tuesday (Sept. 2), the topic of Carpenter’s penchant for writing witty lyrics about sex and other NSFW subjects first came up as she was discussing the controversy her racy Man’s Best Friend album cover caused before the album dropped in late August. “When I came up with the imaging for it, it was so clear to me what it meant,” she said of the artwork, which shows Carpenter down on all fours as a man grips her by the hair.

“So the reaction is fascinating to me,” she continued. “You just watch it unravel and go, ‘Wow.’”

Indeed, the Man’s Best Friend cover caused quite a stir when Carpenter first unveiled it earlier in the summer. Some people found it empowering, while others wrote it off as degrading to women. But the Grammy winner points out that “there’s a lot of nuance” to her choice of imagery.

“I felt like, ‘Why is this taboo?’” she said of both Man’s Best Friend‘s visuals and the sexual content of her lyrics. “This is something that women experience in such a real way, becoming comfortable with themselves and who they are. There’s so many reasons why I called it Man’s Best Friend and there’s so many layers in the experiences that I was going through at the time where, emotionally, I felt like one. I’m really, really grateful that there’s enough of my audience that really knows me as a person that will be able to hear these songs how they’re intended.”

It’s not the first time Carpenter has discussed why she embraces her sexuality in her music. After rising to global superstardom with the success of her Billboard 200-topping album Short n’ Sweet in 2024, critics were quick to take issue with the NSFW nature of tracks like “Juno” and “Bed Chem.”

But those songs — and much of Man’s Best Friend — just simply aren’t intended for “pearl clutchers” to listen to, Carpenter said in an interview with CBS Mornings the day the new album dropped.

“I think that’s the thing, is sometimes people hear the lyrics that are really bold or they go, ‘I don’t want to sing this in front of other people,’” she added at the time. “But I think about being at a concert with, you know, however many young women I see in the front row that are screaming at the top of their lungs with their best friends, and you can go like, ‘Oh, we can all sigh [in] relief like, ‘This is just fun.’ And that’s all it has to be.”

Carpenter is now gearing up to resume her Short n’ Sweet Tour, which will pick back up after this summer’s run of European shows with a second North American lap. Her first show back will take place Oct. 23 in Pittsburgh, after which she’ll play five nights at Madison Square Garden in New York City.