Sabrina Carpenter has never been a stranger to transformation. Over the past decade, the former Disney Channel star has steadily redefined herself. Now at 26 years old, Carpenter has emerged as a pop songwriter with a distinct point of view: self-aware, feminist and slightly mean.

After years of balancing television, film, and a growing discography, it was 2022’s emails I can’t send that shifted the conversation. That album marked a turning point in Sabrina’s career, earning her critical acclaim and a new wave of listeners who saw her not just as a former teen idol, but as a fully artist. The follow-up, Short n’ Sweet, released in 2024, expanded on that promise, with Carpenter delivering some of her strongest work to date. It also brought her a Grammy and mainstream visibility that had long felt inevitable.

This summer, she returned with “Manchild,” a single released June 5 and her first new music since the Short n’ Sweet deluxe edition earlier this year. The title alone hints at a playful tone, as it is expected for Sabrina. Co-written with Jack Antonoff and Amy Allen, “Manchild” captures a familiar dynamic many women navigate, the emotional labor of maintaining a relationship, the frustration of unmet expectations and the quiet exhaustion that comes with waiting for someone to mature.

While the lyrics don’t name names, the subtext is hard to ignore. Over the years, Carpenter’s relationships - from the highly publicized fallout with Joshua Bassett and Olivia Rodrigo to her more recent split from actor Barry Keoghan - have unfolded in the public eye, often without her full participation in the narrative. “Manchild” doesn’t retell those stories, but it reframes them from her point of view.

The rollout for Manchild was clever, stylish, and perfectly in step with the song’s tone. Carpenter teased the single with a vintage-inspired video showing her hitchhiking through the desert in platform heels and denim cutoffs. It ends with a quiet, almost amused “Oh boy,” with billboards that soon followed, popping up across Texas with lines like “Hey men!” and “I swear they choose me, I’m not choosing them.”

Alongside the digital release, Carpenter announced a limited-edition clear vinyl featuring a B-side titled Inside of Your Head When You’ve Just Won an Argument with a Man, rounding out the single’s narrative with a dose of dry humor.

If emails was about vulnerability and Short n’ Sweet was about self-definition, “Manchild” is about knowing when you’ve outgrown the conversation entirely and beautifully turning it into a hit.