Carly Slay Jepsen
Celebrating the totally unironic genius of Carly Rae Jepsen's EMOTION
A friend once told me that she couldn’t believe that I was genuinely a Carly Rae Jepsen fan.
Let it be known, dear reader, that I’ve been a diehard Carly Rae Jepsen fan since high school. During my first year of university, on a frigid November afternoon in 2018, I dragged two of my then-closest friends to the mall, where Carly Rae Jepsen was performing for the unveiling of a Christmas display at a department store. In a since-deleted video from the local news Youtube Channel, I can be seen sprinting toward the stage that Carly was performing on.
While “Call Me Maybe” is likely Ms. Jepsen’s most well-known song and the one that triggered my necessity to discuss her discography to such lengths at all, I’d like to instead zone in on what I believe to be Carly’s magnum opus, her third studio album, Emotion. Seven years later, I still genuinely believe this album to be one of the best — if not the best — pop records of the 2010s. I like to describe Emotion as perfectly encapsulating the motions of falling in and out of love — the all-consuming crush, the devastating heartbreak, the wistful nostalgia, and, finally, acceptance. I won’t be ranking the songs — I believe such a task akin to ranking one’s children and, therefore, reprehensible — instead moving in the chronological order of the tracklist. Allons-y!
Run Away With Me
A droning saxophone welcomes us (and I do love a good sax). It eventually wears away to make space for Carly’s first words on the album: “You’re stuck in my head, stuck in my heart, stuck in my body, body.” And whoa. What better way is there to describe the all-consuming state of limerence, the way somebody becomes stuck in every fragment of your physiology — your head, your heart and yes, your body, body? The repetition of body (body!) is what really does it for me — Carly has a tendency toward such repetition, only a line later lamenting that she’s sick of the party, party — a seemingly meaningless flourish that actually perfectly elucidates the state of crushing, its utter debilitation.
Let’s skip to the chorus, where the brain rot really activates. The sax returns. Carly enunciates: “Baby. Take me. To the. Feeling.” Further, still, she assures him that she’ll be his “sinner in secret,” no less, “when the lights go out.” Jepsen’s slightly nasal, naturally breathy cadence drives the utter desperation home, that she wants this guy oh-so-much, even if it’s a sin! Even if nobody else will be privy to it! A great message for the girlies? Likely not. But we’ve all been there. It’s so deliciously evocative — a perfect album opener.
Emotion
I always love when an album’s titular song also turns out to be one of its best. Carly sings the song’s verses with a distinctive swiftness, in a rush, like she’s been simultaneously dying to get the words out, but is also terrified of them finally entering her sweetie’s eardrums. Everything is said in virtually one breath — “Wonder, wonder how I do? How's the weather? Am I better? / Better now that there's no you? / Drink tequila for me, babe / Let it hit you cold and hot / Let your feelings be revealing / That you can't forget me…” takes all but 13 seconds to sing. This cadence, mixed with interrogative sentences, and Ms. Jepsen’s characteristic repetition… Carly’s got it Bad with a capital B. But she so desperately doesn’t want to. Or, at least part of her doesn’t. A crush is a very masochistic thing.
This song definitely has my favourite chorus on the album. The build-up, the beat drop right before she expresses her hope that her little crushy-crush dreams about her, the isolated harmonies on “all that we can do with this emotion,” the “I feel it… you feel it.” Yeah. Yeah.
I Really Like You
Carly is done pretending, okay? She likes this guy and she’s being explicit with it. No more beating around the bush. It’s “way too soon,” for her to call this love, but she really (really, really, really, really, really) likes him. And he must know!
I admit I find the chorus a little grating. It’s something fun for the summertime, for sure. But whereas the repetition of “body, body” and “party, party” in “Run Away with Me” is poignant, here it’s kind of childish. Which is the point, I know — she spent two whole songs waxing poetic about feelings that she hadn’t fully embraced, so of course, she’d refrain from mincing words now that she’s finally ready to confess. But, I can understand that something makes sense — even admit that it works — and still find it irritating.
Gimmie Love
It seems that Carly and Lover Boy are donezo. But she misses him! She’s regretful! She drives by his house, and can’t sleep, and so on and so forth. She wishes she could return to the time when he was lovin’ her. Here, I think the repetition provides glimpses of a return to form — the “gimmie love, gimmie love, gimmie love, gimmie love” and the “‘cause I want what I want” don’t read as rudimentarily as “I Really Like You”’s central refrain does, but don’t quite replicate the “body, body” sizzle. And it’s still a little annoying, mostly because I cannot tolerate anything that sees a woman begging for a man’s affection (that “I’m just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her” scene from Notting Hill makes me viscerally ill). Like Carly, girl, stand up!
All That
This is my absolute favourite song on the album. It’s slow, it’s groovy. Feels very ‘80s, I think. It’s so different from the other songs on the album, but still coheres so nicely. I know I’m being a bit of a hypocrite because she is very much begging on this song, and very much does need to stand up, but this song doesn’t have the same desperate tinge as its predecessor. She still wants this guy, sure, but it’s in a measured kind of way. Less “gimmie love” and more “show me if you want me.” She’s almost at that point of making peace with the relationship ending, but if there’s even a smidgen of lingering reciprocity, a tidbit of the desire for reconciliation, she’ll be there.
Boy Problems
The opening phone retort (“Just leave or stay. But I’m done with you tonight.”). The invocation of the girlies listening (“Boy problems, who's got ‘em?”). Carly’s cheeky admission that she thinks she broke up with her boyfriend today but, she doesn’t really care — mind you — she has worse problems. She’s stood up and is now firmly sat! It’s cute, fun! And this song features the album’s best bridge, where Carly momentarily peels back the facade of apparent nonchalance about the end of her relationship, revealing that she does care, actually. But, everybody knows that if you fake something enough, it will become true. It’s just science.
Making the Most of the Night
This one is a little tricky. It marks a significant narrative turn in the record: she’s finally said goodbye to her old man and has presumably moved. But something about it feels very tonally off to me. The production is a little too cantankerous and I still can’t figure out what in the world “I’mma hijack you” means. Surely not the worst on the album (I promise, I will get to that), but definitely off-putting.
Your Type
Oh, unrequited love. Turns out Carly’s new man isn’t her man at all — he doesn’t feel the same way. The pre-chorus is particularly devastating: the “But I still love you, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I love you,” is a complete return to her True Repetitive Form, a real punch to zee gut. And the chorus practically winds you — she realizes she’s not the type of girl for him and she’s not going to pretend that she’s the type of girl that he calls more than a friend, even though she’d break all the rules for him. There’s no entitlement, or malice on her part, just a resigned sadness, and the hint of the hapless hope that his heart will turn around.
Let’s Get Lost
It’s a sweet reprieve from the devastation that is “Your Type.” In many ways, this is the redux to “Run Away With Me” — the song even ends with a tapering saxophone solo — but with more bated limerence. She sings a little quietly, the production isn’t particularly complex. She’s “keeping her fingers crossed that maybe [he’ll] take a long way home,” a line that can be read straight as Carly hoping that this guy she likes, who is driving her home, will take a detour so that they can spend more time together, but that I like to read as a metaphor for her hope that he will admit his feelings for her, so she doesn’t have to. It’s soft and hopeful, but still a bit fearful. There’s a vulnerability to it that I really appreciate.
LA Hallucinations
We’ve made it to the second-worst song on the album. I’m sorry, but this is a work of complete cacophony that entirely betrays the tone that the album has so carefully curated thus far. The production is awful, the vocals are strained, and the theme is uninteresting. I love you girl, but I do not care about your Los Angeles escapades. An immediate skip and one of only two songs from the album that I do not have saved on Spotify.
Warm Blood
I don’t have much to say about this one. It’s certainly better than “LA Hallucinations,” but that’s hardly a feat considering how much of an utter disaster that song is. The lyrics are fine, but I don’t enjoy the distorted vocals or the instrumentation in the slightest. It’s just O.K, overall.
When I Needed You
The older, hotter sister to “Gimmie Love.” The heart is fickle and, as much as one learns, the motions are motions for a reason — she misses her new ex-man. But! She knows she deserves better — he wasn’t there for her when she needed him! This song very effectively encapsulates the circular reasoning and games we play in our head when we try to make sense of romantic situations — the cadence of the lyrics reads as somebody talking and then remembering something they forgot, then correcting themselves, then interjecting again… it’s kind of like a drunken tirade. Or a therapy session. Or a journal entry. It’s raw and it’s messy and it’s, ultimately, real.
Black Heart
And we’ve made it to the worst song on the album. There is no aspect of this song that I enjoy. I hate the production, the lyricism is simple to the point of insult, and the ad-libs are extremely unnecessary. All I need to hear are the opening synths, and my fingers are already reaching for the skip button.
I Didn’t Just Come Here to Dance
It performs a neat balancing act — it ups the ante on “Let’s Get Lost,” but refuses the explicitness of “I Really Like You.” Ultimately, Carly didn’t just come to dance — she wants to smash. And wants to smash this mystery man in particular — Joe and Tino are calling her over, but she is simply not interested. She doesn’t say any of this outright, but the lyrics and intonation culminate in so much innuendo that it becomes uendo™. This is a side of Carly that opposes her usual innocent persona, and she knows this, taunting the boy for most of the song’s duration (“I didn’t just come here to dance if you know what I mean. Do you know what I mean?”). The beat is also quite fun — I think this might qualify as oonts-oonts music, but I’m no expert. Either way, it makes me want to dance! And I do mean dance.
Favourite Colour
Another one of the album’s best songs and a perfect album closer. The imagery in the chorus is fantastic… “I’m bright baby blue, falling into you, falling for each other”…? Chills! There’s not much I can say that could do the song more justice than it already does on its own.
In summary…
Emotion is a great album. Duh. There are flubs here and there, but nobody is perfect, word to Hannah Montana. Regardless, Ms. Jepsen has a way with words that we do not give her nearly enough credit for, in my humble opinion. If you haven’t listened to the album already, please do yourself the favour. I mean, seriously.
you’re right and you’ve already said it but pretend you haven’t yet and this is me encouraging you to say it
Her discography is honestly immaculate. Not too many people get POP the way she does.