Sabrina Carpenter’s Songwriting Questioned by Popular YouTuber: ‘Maybe She Wrote One Line’ originally appeared on Parade.
Sabrina Carpenter recently took heat for the controversial cover art for her forthcoming album Man’s Best Friend.
Now the “Espresso” hitmaker has found herself in the sights of popular music YouTuber Rick Beato, who is questioning the contributions to her own songs.
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In a video titled “How Do People NOT Know This About Pop Music?” posted on YouTube on June 24, Beato focuses on Carpenter’s current hit single “Manchild” and plays a clip of the video before letting loose on Carpenter and her fans.
“People are discussing the lyrics, and they are talking about them as if Sabrina Carpenter wrote these lyrics herself,” Beato says in his video. “Now maybe Sabrina Carpenter wrote one line or changed a couple of words or something,” he adds, without providing evidence to back up this claim.
As of this writing, Beato’s video has more than 1.2 million views, and his channel, which often features interviews with classic rock icons, has more than 5 million subscribers.
Beato goes on to mention that the song was co-written by Carpenter with songwriters Amy Allen and Jack Antonoff, who have worked with Carpenter in the past. Allen was one of the writers on Carpenter’s massive breakout hit “Espresso.” Carpenter, Allen and Antonoff also collaborated on her hit “Please, Please, Please.”
Related: Sabrina Carpenter Is Back With Provocative New Album Title and Cover Art
After noting Allen’s and Antonoff’s credits as writers on several hits by other artists, Beato again takes a shot at Carpenter’s role in writing her songs. “Yeah, she might be in the room for some of this stuff, but the fact of the matter is these same people are all over multiple hit songs.”
He also questions her role in the making of her videos. “When I see people make videos on YouTube where they’re about her lyrics, what this ‘Manchild’ thing means, it’s like doesn’t mean anything,” Beato says. “Every bit of this video has been meticulously crafted. They do story boards. They do all this kind of stuff. They figure out what kind of outfits, what the vibe’s going to be. The same thing with the album cover art. All of it is a completely calculated thing. She’s a pop star. This is a thing that I guess a lot of people don’t realize that this stuff is figured out by massive groups of people. These are not songs that are coming from Sabrina Carpenter’s head.”
While Beato’s video is seemingly designed to inform his followers about the making of pop records, some took at as an unwarranted attack on Carpenter.
“Something so unseemly about Rick Beato popping off on Sabrina Carpenter,” author/musician Paul Myers, host of The Record Store Day podcast, wrote on his Facebook page. “Such a bitter Lefsetz-ian move,” he added, referring to music industry commentator Bob Lefsetz.
Despite Myers’ criticism, those who commented on Beato’s YouTube video generally seemed to agree with Beato’s thoughts on the matter.
“A few writers writing for everyone, a few producers producing everyone, mixed and mastered by the same people. Starts to feel like McMusic,” wrote one.
Sabrina Carpenter’s Songwriting Questioned by Popular YouTuber: ‘Maybe She Wrote One Line’ first appeared on Parade on Jun 26, 2025
This story was originally reported by Parade on Jun 26, 2025, where it first appeared.
