‘Emotion’ wins a new set of fans
There’s a certain sort of anxiety that comes with success. Four years ago, Carly Rae Jepsen dropped her single “Call Me Maybe” and the world ate it up. It was a nearperfect pop song with an impossible-to-resist chorus that went nine times platinum. But what next? “I think at the beginning it probably was a feeling sort of like pressure, or something I couldn’t quite define,” says Jepsen during a phone interview. “It felt like, ‘Oh my God. This is such a gift.’ But at the same time, ‘Oy vey.’ ”
The pressure was probably particularly acute after “Kiss,” Jepsen’s second album, which garnered some OK reviews, but never really went anywhere. (For the record, Jepsen calls the album a “fun challenge” — something she’s proud of but also something along the lines of “OK, let’s make an album. We’ve got two months.”)
Afterward, Jepsen seemed to sort of disappear. But that break, according to her, was intentional.
“I wanted to take a step back and say, ‘OK. Well, that was one side of pop that I love, but why do I really love pop music? What is it about it that isn’t just a generation of young people but can have maturity to it as well?” she says.
By all measures, her plan worked. Last summer, Jepsen released “Emotion” (her third studio album) to broad critical approval. The album reveled in the sounds of the ’80s — sax solos, power ballads, twinkling synths — and landed her on several year-end lists.
It also did something else.
In a recent interview with Cosmopolitan, Jepsen, who just turned 30, dished about the usual stuff — her recent role in “Grease Live”; recording the theme for “Fuller House,” the spin-off of the beloved ’90s sitcom “Full House”; how she feels about “Call Me Maybe” some four years later. But what stood out most was when the magazine asked her to describe her “average” fan.
“It’s more people my age, and I think for my bandmates and myself, there’s something about being able to (perform) for people who are more close in age,” she says. “It feels gratifying.”
“Emotion” seems to have endeared Jepsen to a whole different set of fans. If you need any proof, consider this: When Jepsen plays the Warfield on Feb. 27, she’ll be doing so as one of the Noise Pop 2016 headliners. In retrospect, this all makes sense. Jepsen collaborated with a number of indie tastemakers on “Emotion,” including Dev Hynes, Ariel Rechtshaid and Rostam Batmanglij, and the ’80s nostalgia no doubt skews a bit older. (At least, Jepsen says, those are the sorts of songs that seem to hit her in just the right way.)
“What I loved was how potent some of those lyrics were — how heart-wrenching, how everyone’s tea leaves are just right there on their sleeve,” she says. “In music today, everything is a little more coy, but I wanted that romance and that fantasy, and I think that a lot of people (my) age do.”
If this transition is at all surprising, it’s likely because Jepsen has always been a bit hard to pin down. Back when “Emotion” first came out, more than a couple of critics wrote pieces praising the album, but griping that it didn’t do much to reveal who Jepsen really was. Over the phone, though, Jepsen seems fine with that.
“I don’t put too much energy into that side of it,” she says. “I don’t mind the idea that people haven’t been able to stereotype me as one thing or another because I don’t see myself as just one thing. There’s a freedom to that for me, in having a bit of a personal life and also getting to have a professional life that is very much around music.
“If you’re really looking for who I am, it can be found in the album and in the songs more than in what I wear or who I’m hanging out with.” So, what next? Well, with the caveat that it could all change — “God knows with ‘Emotion’ I wrote so many things before I landed there” — Jepsen, who considers herself a songwriter “first and foremost,” says she’s reaching even further back this time, finding inspiration in “understated” disco beats.
“Almost like Feist meets the Bee Gees, which sounds really strange,” she admits. “But I dunno, I’ve been having a lot of fun with it.”