Sabrina Carpenter reveals alternative album cover ‘approved by God'

Sydney Morning Herald

7 hours ago

Sabrina Carpenter has released an alternate cover for her upcoming album following online controversy over the sexualised nature of the previous image, joining a long line of pop divas who've had to tone it down for conservative markets.
The new cover – which Carpenter said was 'approved by God' – was published on Instagram early Thursday morning (AEST), exactly two weeks after imagery on the original cover stirred a debate over whether it was satirical or misogynistic. The new image appears to be a recreation of a 1957 image of Marilyn Monroe and her then-husband, Arthur Miller.
The original cover for the 26-year-old's seventh studio album, Man's Best Friend, due out on August 29, depicted Carpenter on her knees in a mini dress and high heels, with her hair being held by an anonymised man in a suit. The new cover features a dressed Carpenter, still posing alongside a man in a suit.
Dr Emma Phillips, an assistant professor at the University of Canberra who wrote her PhD thesis on the aesthetics of sexualisation, told this masthead in response to the previous cover that 'there's a deep irony or satire going on, and there's no question that Carpenter is engaging in that'. Despite Carpenter's perceived intentions, the cover was lambasted for being regressive and overly sexualised.
While Carpenter has yet to explain the reasoning behind the new cover, alternate album art is regularly created by labels for the release of limited-run, collector edition, or deluxe versions (featuring additional tracks). In some countries album covers are censored to meet cultural expectations.
Between being banned from China for having 'poor taste and vulgar content' in 2011, and being banned for meeting with the Dalai Lama in 2016, Lady Gaga made the most of her brief interregnum to release the 2013 album ARTPOP to the Chinese market.
The cover of the album features a Jeff Koons' statue of the naked singer covering her breasts with her hands, with genitals hidden behind a blue orb. However, for the Chinese release of the album, the orb was enlarged to cover the artist's breasts, and leggings were photoshopped onto her legs.
Similarly, Kylie Minogue's 2001 album Fever — which iconically depicts the singer in a barely-there white outfit — had an alternate Asian cover featuring a close up shot of the artist, and a Saudi Arabian cover in which Minogue wears a less revealing dress.