Pop star Sabrina Carpenter has been accused of copying the cover art for her new album, "Short n’ Sweet," from a years-old photo shoot in a French magazine. The 25-year-old singer announced on June 3 that her new album would be released on August 23, sharing the cover art on social media. The image shows Carpenter looking over her bare shoulder, marked with a lipstick kiss.
However, social media users quickly noticed a striking resemblance to a 2018 photo of French model Tiffany Collier. In Collier's photo, she also looks over her bare shoulder with a lipstick kiss, an image she posted on Instagram with the caption, “Happy Valentine’s Day,” and tagged photographer Bruno Juminer.
While Carpenter’s announcement excited many fans, some criticised her for not crediting the original image. One person tweeted, “Just literally copied and pasted the inspo.” Another commented, “The problem isn’t that Sabrina took inspo from some French Cosmo shoot (that’s normal), the problem is it lacks all the emotion of the original.”
Despite the backlash, some fans defended Carpenter. “Her new era is inspired by a retro summer aesthetic and that’s inspiration from that time and era; she never claimed to have been the original creator of that photo,” one supporter said. Another pointed out, “It’s complicated but legally it’s just inspiration cause anyone can do this. But if she were to take the original and just put it as her cover then that’d be considered stolen.”
"Short n’ Sweet" will be Carpenter’s sixth studio album. In April, she released the lead single, “Espresso,” which has topped the UK music charts for five weeks straight. This new album follows her 2022 record, "emails I can’t send," which features hits like “Feather” and “Nonsense.” Last month, Carpenter also made her debut on Saturday Night Live, where her performance of “Nonsense” included a surprising and “hilarious” lyric change.
