Jepsen
Carly Rae Jepsen vaped in Sweden for a week straight before reeling off one of six singles in the marathon run-up to the release of her junior album, either the height of millennial pastiche or just another lovable quirk from the 29-year-old singer behind the decade’s most algorithmic hit, depending on which camp you fall into.
Either way, unlike her newfound penchant for e-cigarettes, Jepsen’s Emotion dances away from the bland trend aggregation of the past several years’ blockbuster top-40 albums — at times including, it should be noted, her own — gift-wrapping 2015’s best pop record to date with a refreshing sense of self.
The album doubles down on the girl-next-door relatability that marked many of the best moments on 2012’s Kiss, all the while drawing on a rogue’s gallery of left-of-center co-writers to branch beyond its predecessor’s single-minded dancefloor bombast.
Stately ballad “All That” lifts its bass licks and subtle synths from Devonte Hynes, who’s written for Solange Knowles, Sky Ferreira and Florence and the Machine, in addition to his own ’80s-indebted oeuvre as Blood Orange. It’s the starkest possible departure from your local Double-A baseball team’s YouTube parody of “Call Me Maybe.” It also pops up on the heels of lead single “I Really Like You,” the closest Jepsen comes to refurbishing her 2012 viral hit.
Vampire Weekend multi-instrumentalist Rostam Batmanglij hops behind the boards for “Warm Blood,” a mildly cheery house number, and Sia earns a writing credit on “Boy Problems,” in which Jepsen ditches a lover in a charming, ’90s-referencing fit of exasperation (“I think I broke up with my boyfriend today and I don’t really care”).
As always, Jepsen’s strong suit lies with her ability to channel with surprising clarity id, ego and the general hormonal mindfuckery that accompanies adolescence and young adulthood.
In the bouncy title track, a jilted Jepsen playfully eviscerates the former object of her affection (“Be tormented by me, babe/ Wonder, wonder how I do/ How’s the weather? Am I better?/ Better now that there’s no you?”). On “LA Hallucinations,” the Canadian transplant offers up a more mature take on the left-coast vision of “Party in the USA” (“I remember being naked/ We were young freaks just fresh to L.A.”).
Getting through the deluxe version, at 18 tracks, can prove a bit of a challenge, but that’s mostly a reflection of Emotion’s welcome heft. It’s culled down from about 250 songs recorded in Kiss’s wake, a body of work nearly rivaling the mixtape-a-week output of Atlantean trapper Gucci Mane, narrowing the track list down to an eclectic series that lets Jepsen showcase her considerable versatility.
Jepsen made it clear during Emotion’s promotional cycle that she didn’t want the same reaction she incurred in 2012, a hit the likes of which the millennium had never seen that overshadowed the rest of a solid album. Her deluge of singles and the subsequent absence of YouTube covers ensure that won’t come to pass, but Jepsen does leave listeners with a body of work unviolated by the stilted dancing and put-on chumminess of [insert 2012 U.S. Olympic squad here].
She probably won’t ever stand toe-to-toe with pop’s leading ladies, an admittedly reductive term that glosses over the fact that, prior to Justin Bieber teaming up with fellow scourges Diplo and Skrillex and The Weeknd developing a Michael Jackson complex, Jason Derulo and Adam Levine briefly represented the male pop vanguard (shudders).
After all, Taylor Swift and Katy Perry have largely scrapped the approaches that won them fame in the first place — Fearless’ small-town fairytales, One of the Boys’ unabashed raunch — in favor of gluten-free megahits that skirt the line between populism and pandering.
Emotion, on the other hand, sticks to the personal over the arena-ready and doesn’t feel any less relatable for it. There’s no gimmicks, no supermodel best friends, no dancing sharks — just feel-good, plain fun pop. For Jepsen, it’s just the right fit.
