Here’s a challenge: write a Carly Rae Jepsen review that doesn’t mention “Call Me Maybe” in the first paragraph.
To be fair, the single, which remains a high water mark of 2010s pop, is far from a bad epitaph. But no one wants to go down as another one-hit-wonder, be it A-ha or Baha. Spanning over two months at number one on Billboard, and selling one copy for every two people in her home country of Canada, the single seemed like an effort that nobody could top. But by 2015, Jepsen was tired of trying. “I, personally, am sick of hearing myself on the radio,” she told Rookie magazine. She had her sights set on something bigger and better than a great song: a great record.
Those who saw her as more than a passing fancy always knew Jepsen was capable of more. Her 2012 album Kiss, which was rushed in two months to capitalize on the success of her hit single, was far from a perfect record, but showed promise beyond its gloss and radio-ready production. Tracks like “This Kiss” and “Tonight I’m Getting Over You” failed to match the chart success of “Call Me Maybe,” but they revealed a level of assuredness and an ear for pop hooks that Jepsen would refine and reinvent on E•MO•TION.
While Jepsen said that she started writing songs for the record almost immediately after Kiss’s release, they began as something very different. “I had just been experimenting, trying folky alternative songs and really pure pop songs, and wherever my heart would lead me,” she told The Baltimore Sun in 2016. Like “Call Me Maybe,” which itself began as a folk song before being turned to bubblegum, E•MO•TION started its life cycle as folk music. This ethos still shines through many of the album’s 12 tracks, all of which are focused on the same unbridled feeling that defined the music of some of her biggest influences, such as Joni Mitchell and Van Morrison.
In 2014, Jepsen took the lead role in the Broadway production of Cinderella, pushing her album release back a full year. After finishing her brief stint on the stage, Jepsen took to the studio, writing almost 250 songs in the span of a few months. “I wanted to make a pop album. But I wanted to kind of blur the lines of what that needed to be,” she told NPR. The tracklist was eventually reduced to 50, then its final 12. A special edition and 2016’s E•MO•TION: Side B made sure that some of these songs saw the light of day, but none of them match the effortless charm of the dozen songs that make up the album’s tracklist. Each one would feel out of place on the final product.
The record begins with “Run Away With Me,” a stunning blast of vocals and saxophone that launched a million memes. Jepsen herself wanted this to be the lead single, and it’s not hard to see why: it’s a perfect slice of power pop, a passionate declaration of first love with a subtle sensuality and a nuanced performance from Jepsen that switches from breathy whisper to triumphant shout on a dime. The blaring saxophone is one of the most daring moments on the record, one that could have just as easily verged into pure cheese — but it all works, and the credit belongs to Jepsen’s genuine and unabashed vocal.
“Emotion” is cheekier and simpler than its predecessor, but no less effective. Where “Run Away With Me” is explosive and vulnerable, “Emotion” is confident and straightforward, with Jepsen demanding her lover to “dream about me / and all that we could do with this emotion.” It’s the kind of assuredness that was missing on Kiss, which relied on romantic interests to take the lead. Here, Jepsen is in control.
Which brings us to “I Really Like You,” E•MO•TION’s lead single and arguably its biggest misstep. While the song is chirpy and charming, it’s also the most empty on the album, a surface-level expression of fluttery affection and stomach butterflies. More so than any track on the record, “I Really Like You” tries to capture the same lightning in a bottle as “Call Me Maybe,” and this is reflected both in the song’s lyrics and its similar structure. The Tom Hanks-starring video might be one of the bright spots in the album’s overall dismal rollout, but the song lacks substance, and feels like a retread into the adolescent simplicity of Jepsen’s previous work that so much of E•MO•TION tries to shirk.
“Gimme Love” is equally repetitive, but has the emotional depth that “I Really Like You” lacks. Jepsen sings that her beau “make[s me shy,” but the song is anything but: it echoes the same commanding desire of “Emotion” without falling into neediness. Jepsen described it as a “really crazy map to someone,” and you can almost feel the presence of Jepsen’s object of affection in the song’s pulsing heartbeat of a bassline.
When she appeared on Saturday Night Live in April, two months before the album dropped, she surprised fans and listeners by following up “I Really Like You” with “All That,” a song unlike any of her previous work and one that served as the first hint at her new direction. In a way, this was the first song that made Jepsen cool. It was produced and written in part by Blood Orange’s Dev Hynes, and the song’s ‘80s synths and groovy guitars are straight out of Blood Orange songs like “Time Will Tell” and “Chamakay.” In an interview with NPR, Jepsen called it her favourite song on the record. “That song holds a special place in my heart because it is so revealing: It’s talking about the desire for intimacy with somebody.”
In contrast, “Boy Problems” is bouncy and irreverent, a girl power anthem about, well, boy problems. Sia provides a writing credit and a cameo appearance — that’s her on the phone at the song’s beginning — and her ear for pop hooks is easy to spot on the album’s infectious chorus and brash lyrics: “I think I broke up with my boyfriend today and I don’t really care / I’ve got worse problems.” Sia also wrote the album’s next song “Making the Most of the Night,” one of the album’s weaker tracks that still manages to make an impact with a building pre-chorus and the opportunity for Jepsen to play the saviour to a gender-swapped damsel in distress.
“Your Type” is another breakup song, one that trades the flippancy of “Boy Problems” for longing and self-doubt. Musically, it’s most similar to “Run Away With Me,” sharing that song’s wall of sound and contrasting quiet verses and booming choruses. “Let’s Get Lost,” on the other hand, mirrors “Emotion,” featuring that song’s simplicity and subtle smirk. Both songs point to the slight decline in quality of E•MO•TION’s second half, retreading the highlights of the first half without bringing much new to the table. Still, these songs are far from throwaways, trading in the same musical consistency and charming lyrics that the album has in spades.
“LA Hallucinations” is one of the more interesting songs on the record, even if it’s not one of the best: it’s the only song that arguably has little to do with love, focusing instead on the perils of fame and casting Los Angeles as a flighty lover in true Elliott Smith fashion. It’s a point of lyrical growth for Jepsen, though not everything here works. The song’s eventual refrain “BuzzFeed buzzards and TMZ crows / What can I say that you don’t already know” comes off as a little toothless and a clumsy fit for Jepsen, whose tough guy attitude here is somewhat awkward.
Jepsen’s collaborations with a diverse set of musicians and producers continue with “Warm Blood,” the strongest track on the album’s second half and a spiritual successor to the similarly successful “All That.” For a song about warmth, it’s remarkably cold, featuring a calm and textured vocal from Jepsen and measured keyboards from Vampire Weekend alum Rostam Batmanglij. Jepsen called it “a very personal song to me. But I want it to be personal to you when you listen to it.” It worked: in the song’s post-chorus, she sounds like she’s whispering directly in your ear.
Endings are hard to nail, and “When I Needed You” is far from the record’s crowning achievement, but as an endnote it delightfully sums up what makes the album so great: its emotional complexity, its catchy chorus and strong ‘80s influence, and its striking attention to detail. It’s a satisfying end to a supremely satisfying record.
So why didn’t E•MO•TION get the attention it so deserves? Blame the album’s bungled rollout, the relative tiredness of its lead single, the genre experiments that defined so many of its songs. But for Jepsen, it was never meant to be the commercial success that its label so wanted it to be. “I wanted to be brave and [record] music that was really me rather than just putting out what I thought would sell,” she told Billboard. “I would’ve regretted more not doing what I did — making a passion project come to life.”
If E•MO•TION isn’t perfect, it’s as close as pop albums get. It manages to be both consistent and an engaging grab bag of sounds, feelings, and themes. But more than anything, it’s a personal record, one that allows Jepsen the chance to play both the hero and the one who needs saving. “That’s the beauty of it: You can play out your fantasy in music,” she told Rookie. “I think that’s what I love about it so much.”