Sabrina Carpenter's Controversial Album Cover Is Hilariously Close To This '80s Comedy

Sabrina Carpenter's album "Man's Best Friend," which was released on August 29, 2025, has inspired a small amount of hand-wringing due to its lightly provocative cover. In the cover photo, Carpenter (wearing a small black dress and high-heeled shoes) is posing on her hands and knees in front of an anonymous man. The man's face is out of frame, but his fist is holding a tuft of Carpenter's hair. The image evokes a distinctly sexual vibe, wherein Carpenter is this anonymous man's pet-like plaything; the two are seemingly playing a sub/dom-style sex game. There's nothing explicitly sexual about the image, but it is certainly provocative.

The controversy comes from some who may feel that Carpenter is being too overtly sexual or who disapprove of her presenting herself as a sexual object for a mysterious man. Carpenter, however, has long been a very sexual songwriter with few pretenses of being "wholesome." She said as much in an interview with Interview Magazine, stating that she prefers when people recognize and appreciate the sexual nature of her music. She even referenced "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" in her music video for "Tears." The "Man's Best Friend" album cover isn't really "controversial," then, but a seeming extension of Carpenter's typically sexual milieu, which has always caused some monocles to pop.

Of course, fans of Rob Reiner's 1984 mockumentary "This is Spinal Tap" will immediately see what Carpenter is doing. Indeed, Carpenter may very well be making a reference to that film with "Man's Best Friend." In Reiner's movie, the fictional rock band Spinal tap attracts a great deal of controversy for releasing a record with a similar image on the cover, titled "Smell the Glove." Even Reiner took notice, as he remarked in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.

In the fictional arc of "This is Spinal Tap," Spinal Tap is about to release a record dubbed "Smell the Glove," which some have said is disgusting. The members of the band (played by Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer) think their record is harmless and is merely evoking the ultra-sexual images typically associated with heavy metal. The cover of "Smell the Glove" is a closeup of a woman's face and a leash visibly around her neck, with a man's hand sticking in from out of frame, shoving a black leather glove in her face. A character named Bobbi Flekman (Fran Drescher) states that the album cover is offensive and demeaning.

Reiner recapped the "Smell the Glove" scene while speaking to THR, quoting the film's hilarious, semi-improvised dialogue. The members of Spinal Tap note that a rival, a singer named Duke Fame, recently released a record where he's tied to a bed and being whipped by half-naked women. The band's manager (Tony Hendra) argues that Duke Fame's record hasn't attracted controversy because "he's the victim," so the "Smell the Glove" cover is ultimately changed. Indeed, the final punchline is that "Smell the Glove" is altered to be all black, cover and back, with no text whatsoever.

Reiner was then asked about "Man's Best Friend" and its similarity to "Smell the Glove." Reiner very much picked up on that, replying:

"Exactly. [...] And so, what she's doing is taking off on what we talked about: the album cover that was banned by Spinal Tap. She's playing off of that, which is great. [The Spinal Tap world] is this mobius strip that keeps bending into itself. Life imitating art, imitating life, imitating art."

Reiner is clearly flattered. And that's not where the similarities end.

Spinal Tap fans might also observe that Carpenter's "Man's Best Friend" arguably bears a closer resemblance to the cover of a follow-up Spinal Tap single that came out in 1992.

Despite being a fictional band, Spinal Tap has still released several real-life records and singles over the years, and the three comedians have occasionally performed heavy metal concerts while in character as David St. Hubbins, Nigel Tufnel, and Derek Smalls. In 1992, eight years after the release of "This is Spinal Tap," the band even released a new album titled "Break Like the Wind." The lead single from that album was a pointedly misogynist ditty called "B**ch School." The single even had a fully-produced music video that aired on MTV in the early 1990s. "B**ch School" was also released as a separate single, and the cover art for that single is ... well, it's almost the same as "Man's Best Friend" exactly.

Specifically, the cover of "B**ch School" is a full-body shot of a woman in a revealing fetish outfit, including fishnet stockings, leather, and chains. She is on her hands and knees and is also outfitted with a leash. In a surreal twist, a dog's paw is holding the leash. The woman is also wearing a graduate's mortarboard to highlight that she is indeed attending the titular school. The vibe is pretty much the same as "Man's Best Friend." Indeed, both albums are encouraging onlookers to think of the word "b**ch." In the case of Spinal Tap, though, the word is printed right on the cover.

Spinal Tap wouldn't put out another (real world) record until 2009, when the group recorded "Back from the Dead." Most recently, in 2025, they also released "The End Continues," the soundtrack to Reiner's new sequel "Spinal Tap II: The End Continues."

It's amusing to think that a fake "shock" album cover from a 1984 mockumentary is now being lightly wielded by pop stars in real life. Well done, Sabrina.