QUIET CONFIDENCE
Carly eschews a persona
If the media coverage is to be believed, just two albums into her career, Carly Rae Jepsen is already in the midst of a fullblown identity crisis. Most of the mainstream and industry-obsessed coverage of Jepsen has limited itself to (often snidely) wondering if her obituary will list any other accomplishments beyond Call Me Maybe.
Meanwhile, reviews in places like Pitchfork and The Verge have heaped praise on her new album, Emotion, while also openly wondering if a pop star without a persona can even really be considered a pop star — or at least be a successful one.
There is some truth to Jepsen as blank space. In a world where every pop star is a multimedia empire unto themselves, she doesn’t spend much time on crafting anything other than songs.
At least part of why that one-hit wonder talk has been allowed to fester for so long is because she only ever pops into our attention for her music, and has yet to definitively establish a brand beyond crystalline pop vessel: shimmering, perfect and entirely clear.
But it’s not entirely fair to say that the only thing that emerges from her music is an almost infallible ear for pop hooks.
Most often, Jepsen evinces an attitude of simple assertiveness, crackling confidence cut not really with modesty but with nerves, worries and a shrugging certainty that some things just won’t really go our way.
Even Jepsen in her most fulsomely expressive is slightly hedged: eager but restrained (call me, maybe; extremely excessive liking), powerful but private (“I’ll be your sinner in secret,” she promises on Run Away With Me, Emotion’s opener), angry but still yearning (When I Needed You vacillates between wanting to change “not for me, for you” and raking the same person over the coals for abandoning her).
Her feelings always emerge, strong and true, just not undeniable.
As a singer she is rarely perfectly one thing.
Quiet confidence is not a state that seems to play well in the current pop climate: even an admission of vulnerability is simply beyond what’s capable for most personas.
It seems telling, then, that as Taylor Swift makes it her life’s mission to be seen with nearly every self-assured woman who has her ever walked the earth, Jepsen is just self-assured enough to open her gates to any collaborator she can find, then carefully edit their output — there were reportedly 250 songs composed for this one album, which displays only 18 even in its most deluxe edition — and then not even give them feature spots. The most prominent cameo to emerge from this round of songs is Tom Hanks in the Really Like You video, a man who essentially embodies a slightly older-school ideal of fame, showing you his craft without telling you all about who he is.
All of which is to say that the people who are clamouring for a narrative surrounding Jepsen aren’t wrong to note its absence; it’s just that the lack of effort might be the vibe she’s creating — not in the always-patently-false authenticity sense, exactly, but the aura of someone who is perfectly content to let their work speak for them.
That might not be a winning gambit in an era of fractured attention and big, bold impressions, but it’s something different for someone who’s patently trying to play with the biggest stars on the block.