Lately, conversations with friends, both online and offline, have revolved around identifying the elusive “perfect” song. Not just favorites, critically acclaimed tracks, or guilty pleasures, but truly perfect songs. It’s a subjective and ever-shifting concept, yet pop songs, often polished by radio play and nostalgia, frequently emerge in these discussions. For many, including myself over the past year, Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Run Away With Me” stands out as a prime example of pop perfection. The song’s quirky saxophone intro, its genuine romanticism, the energetic rhythm, and the mature yet youthful girl-group chorus all contribute to its magic. No matter your age, the desire to escape remains, and it’s undeniably enhanced with a partner and a plane ticket, perfectly captured in Jepsen’s anthem.
Like many music critics, I’ve been captivated by Carly Rae Jepsen’s album EMOTION since its release. This record, a shimmering homage to the 80s, was widely touted to elevate her beyond her initial hit, “Call Me Maybe,” transforming her into a respected artist and potential superstar. However, it’s fair to say that the broader public, much like many music fans, hasn’t fully embraced this critical darling.
Yet, according to Jepsen herself, global domination was never the objective. In a recent interview leading up to her headlining performance at the Gothic Theatre, she shared a telling anecdote: “I don’t know where I read it, because generally I try not to, but it said something like ‘Carly Rae Jepsen doesn’t know how to be famous,’ and it was the biggest compliment.”
This statement sparked a desire to delve deeper into Jepsen’s apparent aversion to fame. Questions arose about sexism within the music industry and her navigation of the often-manipulative forces behind manufactured stardom. There was an anticipation to hear this embodiment of Canadian charm and kawaii culture express some unfiltered opinions.
However, Jepsen remained composed and diplomatic throughout our conversation. While grounded, she also maintained a certain distance. Her responses were punctuated with laughter and snippets of sung melodies, her voice as bright and engaging on the phone as it is on her records. She navigated questions with grace, even addressing the intrusive nature of tabloid culture, which she critiques in her song “L.A. Hallucinations.” Despite her reservations about the spotlight, she acknowledged, “I like to have a private life that feels like it’s mine. There’s nothing wrong with wanting the opposite.”
Our conversation yielded a few charmingly random details. Her karaoke go-to is Ace of Base’s “I Saw the Sign.” Her boyfriend was visiting, and they were planning a walk around Pike’s Market in Seattle post-interview – a quintessentially Seattle activity. And her favorite character from Full House (for which she recorded the theme song for the sequel Fuller House) was Kimmy Gibbler.
Jepsen has openly stated that EMOTION was intended to be an album marked by maturity and authenticity. Staying true to this, our discussion gravitated towards songwriting, evolving into a mini-episode of the Song Exploder podcast.
While hesitant to name any single song as “perfect” – “There can’t be one song that checks all boxes at all moments…I take this question so seriously I can’t even answer” – she readily acknowledged the influence of Cyndi Lauper.
“I remember when we saw Cyndi Lauper in Japan, and she was singing ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,’” Jepsen recalled. “I was thinking, ‘Oh, there’s something to this that’s just so timeless and yet so perfectly ’80s, yet relevant now. I love that it stood the test of time, and it’s a banger that I would put out today if I had written it.’”
When considering timelessness in her own songwriting, Carly Rae Jepsen shared, “That’s always a thought in my career. The careers that I’ve always looked up to are the ones with longevity, the ability to not be a flash in the pan but to create lots of work over time, to develop and change as an artist as you go—that’s the dream.”
Although each song’s creation process, and often the team of collaborators, varies, Jepsen emphasized the importance of revisiting and refining her work. “I always revisit [a song]. Start from a place of initial inspiration and you’ll get at a melody and a top line and some lyrics, and then you readjust it a couple weeks later…. You assess it and realize, ‘Oh, my God, that bridge isn’t where it needs to be, and it’s not lifting the way I want, or, could we condense that rhythm and make it even snappier?’ You challenge it until it feels right.”
“Run Away With Me,” for example, required two trips to Sweden and several sleepless days and nights before it felt “cooked,” as Jepsen described. The crucial element in completing the song? “I think space is really vital. I had a chorus in place kind of where the bridge is now, but it wasn’t right. We tried so many versions of ‘Run Away With Me’ before we landed. It’s just that feeling, that rush of wanting to escape with your lover in the middle of the night and go travel around the world — you can’t explain when the melody finally felt that way. But when it did, it was like, ‘Ah, we got it.’”
This seemingly spontaneous and romantic anthem was, in fact, the product of dedicated effort and refinement.
“It’s my favorite way to write,” Jepsen revealed. “I love the fact that it started from this really inspired place, and that the process is documented. My boyfriend was in town, and he’s a videographer, so he documented some of the songwriting process. At that point we were just friends, and he was just this fly on the wall. You can see us with an acoustic guitar, singing ‘body, body’ and ‘party, party’…. It’s a fun thing to look back now and see how lost we were before we found it.” Despite collaborating with numerous producers and writers, Jepsen asserted her central role in shaping the album’s vision: “I never show up to a session empty-handed. I generally have a vision or specific song I want to work on, or I have a bunch of ideas to pull from my pocket.”
Interestingly, some of the most memorable parts of Carly Rae Jepsen’s hit singles originated almost as afterthoughts. In the infectious “Call Me Maybe,” the bridge – Before you came into my life/I missed you so bad – adds an unexpected layer of depth, injecting a sense of enduring love into the initial excitement of a new crush.
“Weirdly, with the ‘Call Me Maybe’ bridge, that was actually the first part of the song that was written,” Jepsen explained. “I wrote it as a completely different song with a different melody, and it was written as a chorus. In the session, we were in the last day of production and didn’t have a bridge, and I remembered that hook and thought, ‘Oh, that would be kind of romantic here…but I had to sing a different melody to make it fit. So I sang it out, and that was that. A misplaced chorus plugged in.”
Similarly, the spoken interlude in “I Really Like You” – Who gave you eyes like that/Said you could keep ’em – injects a playful sexiness into what is otherwise a very upbeat and almost childlike serenade.
“For ‘I Really Like You,’ we felt like it needed a spoken moment, and we were trying to find comedy because the song was so tongue-in-cheek and so purposefully on-the-nose adorable…. It wasn’t written; they just threw me into the booth and said, ‘Say some spoken things with melody to it.’ It was maybe the third run-through that I was like [goofy, deep voice], ‘Who gave you eyes like that’ like a big hoke. And they loved it.” Regarding the album’s overall subtly sexy vibe, Jepsen noted, “There was a desire to have a sexual thread throughout the album. There was a song that I’m sort of sad didn’t make the album and that might make a future one, called ‘The One.’ The hook line is [sings] ‘If you want to, you can stay the night, but I don’t want to be the one.’ It was a very on-the-nose one-night-stand song. We didn’t get it to the point where it needed to be, but I was excited about this very empowering idea of that being totally fine, and the woman taking power in that way and making boundaries. It felt like an unusual thing to hear a woman sing.”
While EMOTION achieves a remarkable cohesiveness and romantic atmosphere, Carly Rae Jepsen clarified her intention to move beyond solely “boy-centric” themes. “That’s what I hoped for with ‘L.A. Hallucinations,’” she laughed, “but it ended up being about a boy anyway, so whatever.” The song, opening with I remember being naked/Young freaks just fresh to L.A., is more narrative-driven compared to the other tracks. “It does say, ‘Take me into your arms again,’ but in my mind that’s me singing to the audience and to the world of ‘realness’ in general,” she explained. “Getting out of this fake world I found myself in and back to the real deal again.”
I inquired whether Carly Rae Jepsen senses a demand from her fanbase for greater personal access or public vulnerability.
“I think I’m extremely vulnerable in my music. The heart of what’s important — I share that,” Jepsen responded. “What I’m wanting for people who are listening to the album is to hopefully make it part of their lives and their soundtrack and let it be about what’s going on in your chaos and your story. The music I love becomes part of my life and becomes mine and feels like I wrote it. I want people who listen to the album to feel like it’s theirs now, rather than a big story about me.”
Jepsen articulates all the right sentiments, a master of subtle self-effacement. This deflection, it turns out, is crucial to her artistic approach. Rather than positioning herself at the center of a pop universe like Beyoncé or Taylor Swift, building a personal brand or meticulously crafting a public persona, Carly Rae Jepsen appears to aim to be a conduit for her listeners’ shared experiences. Her music is intentionally relatable, her swirling vocals acting as a vortex of distilled, polished emotion. The core of her artistry isn’t a spotlight on herself, but a portal – an earworm-hole – connecting with her audience.
So, how does one craft a perfect pop song, like “Call Me Maybe” or “Run Away With Me”? Despite the personal pronoun in the titles, for Carly Rae Jepsen, the answer seems to be: remove yourself from the equation, focusing instead on creating something universally resonant.
Carly Rae Jepsen performed Saturday, March 5, 8:30 p.m., at the Gothic Theatre.
