Sabrina Carpenter is gracing fans with new music. The Short n’ Sweet pop star debuted her latest song, “Manchild,” on June 5, marking her first single of 2025.
With assists from her frequent collaborators Jack Antonoff and Amy Allen, the song sees Carpenter lean into Short n’ Sweet’s country-pop dispositions once more. On “Manchild,” Carpenter complains about being pursued by a man she thinks is either stupid or “maybe useless.”
On the chorus, she pleads, “Man-child/Why you always come a-running to me?/F*** my life/Won’t you let an innocent woman be?/Never heard of self-care/Half your brain just ain’t there/Man-child/Why you always come a-running, taking all my life from me?”
In the second verse, Carpenter asks, “Why so sexy if so dumb?/And how survive the Earth so long?”
The twangy single comes four days after Carpenter originally teased its release on social media. Maintaining her blond bombshell image, Carpenter, with her big hair and Daisy Dukes, is seen trying to hitch a ride on a dirt road in a grainy clip posted to Instagram.
Online, many of the pop star’s fans, affectionately known as Carpenters, are already singing the track’s praises, while others have said the song needs to grow on them.
One fan wrote on X, “i like how manchild isn’t even a mean song fr, it’s really just questioning how men have lived this long being so damn dumb,” while another fan wrote on TikTok, “I understand she needs her pop moment but this feels too similar to Chappell [Roan]. I need her to go back to more meaningful lyrics.”
“manchild slander is propaganda i will not be falling for,” one fan declared on X.
Some fans have also noted that the release of “Manchild” comes almost one year after Carpenter debuted her single “Please Please Please” and its accompanying music video, which features her ex-boyfriend the actor Barry Keoghan. The “Busy Woman” singer, however, seems to have addressed speculation that the new song is specifically about him.
“i wrote manchild on a random tuesday with amy and jack not too long after finishing short n’ sweet and it ended up being the best random tuesday of my life,” Carpenter wrote in an Instagram caption. “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.”
The Grammy winner described “Manchild” as the “embodiment of a loving eye roll.”
“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! thank you always and forever for listening and thank you men for testing me!! 🐷🤍”
