The song of the summer just might belong to Sabrina Carpenter once again, as the pop star released the music video for “Manchild” on Friday, less than a day after officially releasing the single yesterday.
In the cinematic video, Carpenter is hitchhiking across a desert landscape in everything from pickup trucks to station wagons to a grocery cart sidecar beside a motorcycle, all the while accompanied by himbos washing themselves with gasoline or trying to smoke a firecracker like a cigarette. “Manchild” – which the 26-year-old teased on X (formerly Twitter) by saying “this one’s about you!!” – was released exactly one year after her 2024 single “Please Please Please,” which became her first song to top Billboard’s Hot 100 chart.
The song itself is an ear worm as Carpenter sings about stupid, no good men, paired with Carpenter’s signature funny, cheeky lyrics like “why so sexy if so dumb.” Carpenter co-wrote the song with her Short N’ Sweet collaborators Amy Allen and Jack Antonoff.
Carpenter took to Instagram to explain how the song came to be. “I wrote ‘Manchild’ on a random Tuesday with Amy [Allen] and Jack [Antonoff] not too long after finishing Short N’ Sweet and it ended up being the best random Tuesday of my life. Not only was it so fun to write, but this song became to me something I can look back on that will score the mental montage to the very confusing and fun young adult years of life,” she said in the social media post.
“It sounds like the song embodiment of a loving eye roll and it feels like a never ending road trip in the summer! Hence why I wanted to give it to you now – so you can stick your head out the car window and scream it all summer long!” she added, cheekily signing off with “thank you men for testing me” with a pig and heart emoji.
The pop singer’s profile exploded last summer following the release of her 2024 single “Espresso” off the album, Short N’ Sweet. The single and album earned Carpenter two Grammy Awards in February for best pop solo performance with “Espresso” and best pop vocal album; she was nominated for six awards including best new artist, album of the year, song of the year and record of the year.
Despite not hitting No. 1, “Espresso” has been Carpenter’s best performing song by-far, with over 2.2 billion streams on Spotify. It’s spent 59 weeks on the Hot 100 chart and currently sits at No. 21.
Carpenter is slated to play additional U.S. shows on her Short N’ Sweet this fall with stops at New York’s Madison Square Garden and L.A.’s Crypto.com Arena.
