Take it from Sabrina Carpenter, dating can be like the Wild West — especially when so many eligible prospects turn out to be stupid, slow and useless. Or, in other words: a “Manchild.”
Following her new single’s release the day prior, the pop star dropped the hilarious music video for “Manchild” Friday morning (June 6). In the Vania Heymann and Gal Muggia-directed visual, Carpenter travels all over the American West by hitching rides with a diverse crop of men, whose only similarities are their propensities for odd modes of transportation and their inability to get the Grammy winner where she needs to go.
Barreling down the highway on the back of a jet ski, in a shopping cart attached to a motorcycle and on the arm of a motorized recliner chair, Carpenter repeatedly rolls her eyes and sings, “Stupid, or is it slow/ Maybe it’s useless/ But there’s a cuter word for it, I know/ Manchild/ Why you always come a-running to me?/ F–k my life/ Won’t you let an innocent woman be?”
“it’s exactly what i pictured in my head,” the Girl Meets World alum wrote of the video on Instagram shortly after it dropped. “no animals were harmed in the making but some men were.”
Released Thursday (June 5), “Manchild” marks Carpenter’s first piece of new music since the Short n’ Sweet deluxe album brought forth bonus tracks “15 Minutes,” “Couldn’t Make It Any Harder,” “Busy Woman” and “Bad Reviews.” The original LP arrived in August and spent four weeks atop the Billboard 200, marking the musician’s first-ever No. 1 album on the chart.
According to Carpenter, she penned the track with songwriter Amy Allen and producer Jack Antonoff shortly after finishing Short n’ Sweet. “it ended up being the best random tuesday of my life,” the “Espresso” artist wrote on Instagram Thursday. “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.”
Carpenter is currently on a short break from her Short n’ Sweet Tour, which kicked off last fall with a North American leg in September. This spring, she traveled across Europe on a run of dates that will pick back up with two performances at London’s Hyde Park in July, followed by another round of shows in the United States and Canada.
Watch the “Manchild” music video above.