On the morning of June 2nd 2025, Sabrina Carpenter dropped a caption-less video of her hitchhiking to her Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok accounts. The video is primarily silent until the last few seconds, where Sabrina giggles before saying “Oh boy”.

Carpetville and the general public immediately bursted into theories. What did the video mean?? Busy woman music video??? A new song?? A new album??

Sabrina didn’t leave the internet hanging for long, with billboards featuring supposed song lyrics popping up all over Houston, Texas; with lines like “AMEN”, “HEY MEN!”, and “I SWEAR THEY CHOOSE ME, I’M NOT CHOOSING THEM”. With one of the final billboards featured the word “MANCHILD” in quotation marks…all signs were pointing to a brand new Carpenter single.

Releasing a new single ahead of a festival performance is nothing new for Miss Carpenter! As many may remember Espresso was released the day before Sabrina’s iconic Coachella performance, and instantly became the song of the summer. June 2nd also marked the 1 year anniversary of Sabrina’s Please Please Please and Album announcement teaser.

On June 3rd, Sabrina posted the cover of her brand new single titled “Manchild” to her Instagram and Twitter accounts, even changing the profile picture of all of her accounts to that of the new single! Officially replacing the Short n’ Sweet album profile picture she’s had since its announcement. Her instagram bio was also updated to read: “Manchild out this Thurs at 8pm est ❤️”

Two of Sabrina’s favorite collaborators, Jack Antonoff and Amy Allen are also set to be credited on the track. Amy has a writing credit on EVERY song on Short n’ Sweet album and the Deluxe; While Jack has producer and writing credits on Please Please Please, ⁠Sharpest Tool, Slim Pickins, ⁠Lie To Girls, and Busy Woman. So basically? The dream team. But did the new single live up to the hype? Did Sabrina Carpenter succeed in delivering us the MUCH NEEDED 2025 Song of the Summer??

Paired with the single announcement, a new 7” vinyl was released for pre-order on the Sabrina Carpenter Store website, set to ship out on June 6th.

Excitingly or troublingly, depending on which Carpenter you ask, “Manchild” is now the only topic that appears in Sabrina Carpenter’s website, wiping out everything “Short n’ Sweet” related. Could Sabrina be gearing up for a brand new era, marking the short and sweetness of short n sweet? Is it a one-off single? Or do Sabrina and her team simply know that all the confusion and speculation will just boost boosting engagement and give her a better shot at that coveted #1…

With around 24 Hours until the release of Manchild, Sabrina and her team started ramping up promotion, with the Team Sabrina account announcing Manchild Release Week streaming parties starting June 6th at 5:30PM ET running through June 12th.

“The Sabrina Carpenter Driver-In Theater Experience” was also announced. On June 4th, fans were able to sign up to get tickets for a June 6th special Manchild streaming event in New York City.

Sabrina herself also began posting more teasers to her socials, including a Tiktok video as well as another music video teaser at around 2PM EST, 6 hours before the new single goes live; also doubling as a music video announcement for 10am EST the next morning.

The song released Thursday June 5th at 8PM EST, and was generally positively received with the main complaints from both other Carpenters and the general public that it sounds “too much like SNS” and to that I say…well no shit? The Short n’ Sweet era is far from over. But in the house of Sabrina Weekly? It is in fact the song of the summer. In true Sabrina fashion, she posted an instagram photo dump celebrating the release of her new song with the caption:

Sabrina’s music video for “Manchild” premiered at 10 a.m. on Saturday, serving up a delightfully bizarre, country-movie-inspired spectacle. Sabrina spoke more on her inspiration for the hilarious vision of her new video on both her Instagram and her newsletter:

Filmed at Club Ed in Lancaster, California, Sabrina wore 33 different outfits in the music video, some for only single shots and more sourced from vintage Cali shops. It’s giving budget. Thank you Jared Ellner!

Sabrina released a new Manchild merch collection the morning of the music video. Including a new tank top, a hoodie, 3 t-shirts, boxer shorts, a patch hat, bumpersticker, a lighter, and of course the Manchild 7” vinyl.

Fresh off the release of Manchild, Sabrina headlined Primavera Sound in Barcelona, the day after Charli XCX and the day before Chapell Roan. The official Powerpuff Girls of the 2024 Summer.

Sabrina performed a relatively remixed version of her Short n’ Sweet Tour, switching up the setlist significantly. She opened with Busy Woman before Taste, then went into Good Graces, Slim Pickins, Bed Chem (featuring a Pony dance break interlude), gave us the first ever live performance of Manchild, Coincidence, because i liked a boy, and then spontaneously broke into a jaw dropping cover of It’s Raining Men, and ending the first half of her set with Nonsense (yes still not outro).

She came back on stage in a new gold dress and finished her set, opening ACT II with Nonsense (a personal favorite), then singing Couldn’t Make it Any Harder (which was gorgeous), Feather, Juno, Please Please Please, Don’t Smile, and ending of course on Espresso.

While Sabrina was dancing her heart out on stage in Spain, Carpenters were getting together in New York for the 7PM Sabrina Drive-In Pop Up experience where they received popcorn, merch, a video message from Sabrina (with messed up audio that she then recorded over), and got to watch the Manchild Music Video together.

What did Sabrina wear this week? Well the Manchild music video ALONE had 33 individual looks. Here are a couple that Carpenter’s could find!

So is Sabrina gearing up for a new era or what? Honestly? I highly doubt it. With the second leg of Short n’ Sweet starting this fall, there’s no way Sabrina is shifting focus away from Short n’ Sweet. But she is definitely testing out and experimenting with new music. On Sabrina’s Manchild 7’ vinyl, the B side teases a brand new song. And i’d say there’s a prettyyyy good chance of her releasing it before her next festival in July.