All That We Could Do With This E•MO•TION
I used to be in love with you
And it is of course an audacious opening line. And it’s not even the first line of the opening track, which in some ways, is just as audacious, or perhaps more iconic, at this point, though it is perhaps a little less direct in its approach. “Stuck in my head. Stuck in my heart. Stuck in my body—body,” Carly Rae Jepsen sings, quietly, as synthesizers and a programmed drum beat flutter and ripple underneath her.
I used to be in love with you
It’s bold, and declarative. But that is, of course, the sentiment of the album. Both in lyrics and in the arrangements that surge and soar underneath them. Jepsen makes that very clear even within the first sixty seconds of the album’s start, and continues to reiterate it until literally the very last gasp of its closing track.
Bold declarations of love. Or affection. Of longing. Sometimes of regret.
And regularly of a specific kind of desire. And the place that desire comes from, and the moment or the instance the desire will take us up to.
I used to be in love with you
It is an audacious opening line. Really wasting no time getting right to the point. Incredibly bold, and confessional, it arrives when we are well into the album—deep into its second, and arguably more cohesive and satisfying half.
E•MO•TION, the third full-length album from Carly Rae Jepsen, is not a perfect album. This is not meant to be a slight of any kind. But rather, just admitting that it falters, or there are places where something does not land as successfully. But even when it falters, what it depicts is not supposed to be perfect either, I don’t think.
Love. Or, rather, ideas of love.
All of the sensations that continue to oscillate around that one big feeling, or state of being. The places that it will lead us. Or the places that we wish for it to take us to.
And that is the thing about E•MO•TION. One of the reasons that it was so impressive upon its arrival a decade ago, and one of the reasons that it remains impressive and more than that, is why it is so enduring, a decade later. Why it is the kind of thing you can return to—why it still sounds innovative today. Like a technicolor breath of fresh air. Why it provides a kind of comfort. It’s a vivid album—in how it sounds, and how big it sounds, certainly. But it is also because of the songwriting. The narratives that Jepsen has crafted and the worlds she places us in. How far she’s willing to take us within those worlds and the moment she takes us right up to.
I spend a lot of time thinking about the idea of the life of an album, and how that is not the same thing as how an album lives. The life of an album, or the “album cycle,” as is it sometimes referred to, is often short, or seemingly does not give the album in question a chance to thrive beyond a certain point, viewing the album as less of a piece of art, or a labor of love, and more of a commodity. Singles are released. The album arrives. The artist tours in support of it. The tour ends. And there is a natural rise and fall in interest or enthusiasm. Then it begins again.
But there is how the album lives beyond that cycle. What happens when something is beloved, and continues to find new listeners years later. When something is beloved, and listeners return to it, continually, even after five years. Or ten years. It doesn’t take on new meaning exactly but there are ways to listen and hear new things, or give specific parts of it different, more articulate and nuanced considerations.
The life of an album, or this short-lived cycle that musicians find themselves in, doesn’t account for the following that something will develop over time and how people will grow with the songs, and take the album with them through time, and find deeper appreciation for it.
How it can be a gateway of sorts to similar artists, or albums, or sounds. Or, it can just simply be representative of a moment. A moment that isn’t perfect, but what it depicts is not perfect, either. But maybe we don’t need it to be. Maybe we want an accurate reflection of what it is like—of love, and all of the sensations that come along with an enormous state of being.
We as listeners are invested enough to be taken along right up to a specific point. A moment. And in the honest way it reflects that, we are uncertain what is going to happen in the moment that comes next.
*
And there is of course the mythology surrounding E•MO•TION.
And I would contend that the mythology around Carly Rae Jepsen, at this point in her career, and the writing and recording of E•MO•TION, is not totally at risk of eclipsing the album itself, and the music it holds. It is worth mentioning. It certainly, I think, does play a role, at least in part, in what has made E•MO•TION as enduring as it has become. The album, though, is more than a compelling backstory.
The story itself is relatively well known, or well documented at this point, and perhaps a more concise way to describe it is Jepsen’s efforts to not entirely retreat following the unprecedented success of her 2012 single, “Call Me Maybe,” but rather her stepping back far enough in an effort to intentionally find her away again, as best as she was able to—she was given time, and some creative freedoms, but was still of course encouraged and fostered by her label, and management, in a number of areas relating to the creation of the album.
And it would have perhaps been easy to believe, or perhaps people were anticipating, that Jepsen would fall prey to becoming a “one hit wonder” following the ubiquitousness of “Call Me Maybe.” Other singles released from the album, Kiss, failed to gain traction, though it seems unfair, retrospectively, to have expected them to do so.
After the tour in support of Kiss wrapped in 2013, Jepsen auditioned for, and was cast in the titular role of Cinderella on Broadway, starring opposite Fran Drescher. It was during this time, allegedly, as an act of “rebellion” in response to the pressure she was feeling to try and match, or surpass the success of “Call Me Maybe” with whatever she did next, she recorded an “indie folk” album, though she quickly scrapped it. “I needed to get that out of my system,” she is quoted as saying. “I made really weird music.”
This would not be the last time Jepsen has recorded and shelved or scrapped an entire album’s worth of material—she admitted to doing something similar in 2020, as she was finding her way towards the album she would go on to eventually release in 2022, The Loneliest Time, and its companion collection, 2023’s The Loveliest Time.
And this is of course part of Jepsen’s mythology. How prolific a songwriter she is. The hundreds of songs that were in consideration, at different points, for inclusion on E•MO•TION. The unreleased songs, or early iterations of songs that have since evolved into something else, that have found their way onto the internet.
Following her scrapped attempt at a musically inward turn, while still on Broadway, she and her longtime guitarist and co-writer on a number of songs, Tavish Crowe, began to reach out to artists or producers for potential collaborations, including Rostam Batmanglij, who at the time was still a member of Vampire Weekend, Devonte Hynes, and Ariel Rechtshaid, among others.
The album’s working title, as it was coming together, was Eternal Summer—pulled from the title of one of the songs included on the scrapped indie-folk album. At one point a contender for inclusion on E•MO•TION, the song was ultimately cut, and she was encouraged by her A&R to title the project E•MO•TION, stylized in capital letters and phonetically spelled.
E•MO•TION was deemed a “commercial flop” upon its release. Issued in Japan in June of 2015, the album did not make its way to the United States until August—some contend this two-month delay, or botched rollout, contributed to what were seen as poor sales. Others have speculated releasing “I Really Like You” as E•MO•TION’s lead single was a misstep. The song itself is, objectively, one of the weakest on the album—I’ve always considered it an attempt to recapture some of the musical exuberance or enthusiasm of “Call Me Maybe,” but it certainly never reaches those heights, despite its best effort.
But in releasing “I Really Like You” ahead of the album’s arrival in the U.S., it potentially did no favors to Jepsen, w/r/t showcasing the growth in her songwriting, and the depth of the project overall—that it was, and still is, an album that was meant to be taken rather seriously.
E•MO•TION, upon its release, may have fallen short of what Jepsen’s label, or management, may have wished for it, in terms of numbers, but it did quickly establish Jepsen as both a cult favorite, and a critical darling, with music writers noting that through the album, and perhaps the difficulties it faced at first finding an audience, or being as widely embraced, Jepsen used the opportunity to re-established herself as a “pop star for grown-ups,” which is something that I had also, upon listening to E•MO•TION for the first time in the summer of 2015, and when writing about it, noted.
E•MO•TION arrived in the world in a number of different configurations—a product of its time, in a sense, in terms of special or deluxe editions boasting additional tracks. The album proper, at its core, is a dozen songs, with five extra placed at the end if you listen to the expanded version. Prolific to a fault, Jepsen released an EP of b-sides from the album’s sessions a year later—something she had gone on to do for both E•MO•TION’s immediate follow-up, Dedicated, and her most recent album, The Loneliest Time.
And you can see why, in both instances—bonus tracks, and b-sides, some of the songs were cut from the album’s final sequencing. But there are other songs that are just as good, if not better, than what made the cut.
There is the mythology surrounding E•MO•TION—its long gestation, its arrival into the world, and how it has continued to live over the last decade. And its history, or compelling background is of course interesting for some to know, and it does provide context that is helpful up to a point. But just to a point. All of this weight leading up to the moment before you press play and hear the enormous blast of the saxophone on the cathartic opening track is—it’s never at risk of eclipsing the album because it was that good at the time, and it is that good now, still. Maybe even better.
It’s impressive, really, how vibrant and urgent it has remained.
*
Something that I think about often—perhaps too often, for my own good, and the good of those around me. Specifically my best friend who I think has grown rather weary of me finding ways to bring this up in conversation, specifically when we talk about contemporary popular music. But something that I think about often is the idea of the Kingdom of Desire—which is to say how Carly Rae Jepsen moves through the worlds she creates in her songs, what she is in search of, or rather, whom she is in search of, and the moment that she’s willing to take us to.
My attempts at writing about music were not exactly in their infancy when E•MO•TION was released. I had been writing about pop music, analytically, for over two years, and that had been, apparently, good enough or compelling enough, to land me the role of the “back page columnist” for a locally produced arts and entertainment publication. And that work was apparently goodflov enough or compelling enough to get me hired as a writer for the local newspaper.
I tell you all of that to tell you this—it takes time to find your voice on the page, and I most certainly did not have the articulation and the vocabulary that I possess now, so my reflection on E•MO•TION, while positive, is also rather casual in its tone.
I stop short of saying that I am embarrassed by going back and reading anything from at least the first two or three years of both music writing, or any of the other things I had published that were not about popular music. It is humbling, though, to see who I was, and to recall the way that I worked, and the time I put into things, in comparison to how I work, and the time I put in, and the thought that I put in, today.
What I noticed, though, in revisiting my assessment on E•MO•TION, written and published shortly after the album was released, was that even in how borderline flippant I came across, I had both understood, and somehow misunderstood, the way Jepsen is only willing to take us so far in her narratives.
What I understood is that there is a hesitation on Jepsen’s part, as a songwriter. We are brought, as listeners, right to a very specific moment. What I had misunderstood, or was just simply not in a position to understand, and appreciate, was the why. I had erroneously thought it was because she did not wish to reveal too much about herself to her audience. And there might be truth to that. Jepsen is, anecdotally, a more private individual than her peers in some regard.
But something that I think about often is the idea of the Kingdom of Desire—specifically in how Carly Rae Jepsen moves through the worlds she creates in her songs, and what she is in search of, or whom she is searching for. And about the want.
There is an essay in the fifth anniversary edition of They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Adburraqib about Carly Rae Jepsen, and about this notion of desire, and want, and how it is depicted in pop music, set against the backdrop of, amongst other things, Abdurraqib traveling to Toronto to watch Jepsen perform with orchestral accompaniment.
There is an essay, and I am always referencing it, whether I am talking about Jepsen’s music, or about other pop music written around this idea.
“It has been said that pop music desires a body,” Abdurraqib writes. “A single, focused human form as an object of interest. E•MO•TION fails in this, I suppose, because its primary characters are desire and distance. Want may be a machine that lurches us toward a newer, more eager want, but the idea alone, pointing at nothing specific, doesn’t sell records. This is one theory as to why Carly Rae Jepsen,” he continues, “despite her ability to home in on a feeling and make it flourish, isn’t the biggest pop star in the world.”
Throughout a bulk of E•MO•TION, there is an idea. There is a pursuit. There is a figure—the object of her affection. There is an ask. Or a want. And she only reveals so much. So much about the practically off-stage character whom she longs for. And we are taken—pulled, sometimes, to the moment just before it feels like something is going to happen.
Because there is always an ask. Or want. A need. There is always desire. And as the album continues to unfold, you do understand the dynamism of the want, or the desires, and how Jepsen asks—sometimes subtle, or coy; but often, she is bold, or audacious. A kind of fearlessness that comes from surrender, and chasing after something, towards whatever is going to come next.
She always brings us right up to a point. A specific moment.
There is always an ask. There is an ask as the album begins. Jepsen pleads, as we listen, for someone to run away with her. She demands that someone, in their fantasy, dreams of her, and all that they could do with “this E•MO•TION.”
And there is an audacity to just how bold, and how enormous, “Run Away With Me,” E•MO•TION’s opening track, and one of its finest moments, begins, and how Jepsen manages to sustain that kind of exuberance and voluminous, triumphant feeling.
I don’t think there was a time in the last decade that the blaring, opening notes to “Run Away With Me,” blasted out on a saxophone, were not exhilarating to hear, and let wash over you.
Musically, the song, in opening with this towering burst of excitement and bombast, knows how to tread a line—it, structurally, cannot be that enormous for its entirety. And, after hearing those notes, ascending as high as they can take us, we’re quickly pulled back down into a place that ripples with reserve and mild tension.
And in knowing how to tread that line, it is not unexpected in how “Run Away With Me” gradually builds—the stakes rising just a little once the song arrives at the “pre-chorus,” before the tension is released completely, at the arrival of the chorus, where the song travels to towering heights. There is a catharsis to it—a kind of beautiful, powerful thrill that surges, and it has never become less impactful, or less exciting to hear, even after a decade.
The verses to “Run Away With Me” slink and skitter along with the slightest bit of percussion, and a warm textured synthesizer underneath Jepsen’s vocals—with additional elements arriving, and building the momentum, the closer it gets to the chorus, which both in how it sounds, and in what it asks, is a bold, declarative statement.
And what I realized this time, in listening to E•MO•TION with an analytical, or more thoughtful ear, for the first time in a decade, is that the first minute of “Run Away With Me” works as a thesis for the entire album. It shimmers and dazzles—blindly bright at times in how it sounds, and the aesthetic Jepsen cultivated seemingly effortlessly in the creation of the record. But it also reveals so much about her interest in writing about want, and desire. About the ask. And the need. And the moments she will bring us to.
And there is a sensuality to “Run Away With Me,” as there is throughout E•MO•TION. It is not outwardly though. It’s coy. It’s playful. Jepsen is not bashful in how she writes about love, or longing, but there is a bit of a bashfulness to how she writes about physical intimacy.
She is, as the song begins, practically writhing with want, directed at the object of her infatuation. “Stuck in my head, stuck in my heart,” she begins quietly. “Stuck in my body. I wanna go, get out of here,” she continues. “I’m sick of the party. I’d run away,” she confesses. “I’d run away with you.”
It is a huge reveal, and she does continue with this ask, though in continuing, there is the indication that this other character, in this moment with her, is uncertain.
“This is the part you gotta say all that you’re feeling,” she implores.
And that’s the thing about “Run Away With Me,” and about Jepsen, and the Kingdom of Desire. We are brought to this point where she sets the stage, but we are never certain what is going to happen in the end. Because she, as the song keeps unfolding, and growing in exuberance, releasing the tension that simmers in the choruses, continues the ask. Or the desire.
“Take me to the feeling,” she demands when the chorus explodes. “I’ll be your sinner in secret. When the lights go out,” she continues, “Run away with me.”
“Hold onto me,” Jepsen pleads, in the song’s bridge. “I never want to let you go.”
And there is, and perhaps it simply comes with love, or songs that are about love, and all of the sensations that come with the feeling, a possessive nature to what Jepsen depicts. The chase, or dash, towards something. Or someone. The need to be held, and never let go of, both figuratively and seemingly literally. The kind of haze of want, and desire, that descends when you are overcome with amorous feelings towards another.
As she continues to do the further into the world of the album we’re taken, there is no clear resolution, or answer, in the end as the final notes ring out on “Run Away With Me.” We’re taken right up to the point. With the ask. “Run away with me,” she demands.
We’re taken up to a point and there is no clear resolution, or answer, but after a decade of shouting along the lyrics with Jepsen, and feeling the surge through your body at the opening notes, or when the song explodes in a dazzling fury around her voice—we are ultimately okay with the point we are brought to.
Want giving way to more want.
*
Carly Rae Jepsen, whether this was intentional or not, or if this is me reaching, or stretching, as I often do when giving analytical consideration to pop music, in an effort to make more out of something than perhaps really needs to be made, asks a lot of questions as E•MO•TION unfolds.
And, I mean, she asks things that are not exactly presented as questions, but are more demands or requests. But the questions, and questioning, and the imploring of another, come with where she is writing from within the idea of desire and want.
I often make the argument that there are differences between love songs, and songs that are about love. There is of course the space where those things do overlap, or intersect, but they are different—or, at least, they come from different places. A song that is about love opens itself up to being about more. Being about something larger. About the good things, yes. But also about the difficult things. Or it can be about when romance, or a relationship, is over.
The album’s title track kind of comes from that place. Teetering on an edge that forms when something is over but you are unable to help yourself from looking back and wondering.
Musically, at least in part, there are portions of the song “E•MO•TION” that attempt to double down on the bombast and catharsis found in “Run Away With Me,” and Jepsen does succeed in creating another song that plays with a kind of tension and release, culminating in something simply enormous.
The song begins flirtatiously, and with just the slightest sense of whimsy. There is this cutesy little noise that warbles through, pinging and intertwining with Jepsen’s voice, which lasts until the arrival of additional instruments, including a clattering percussive element, and a chugging guitar sound underneath—this creates a kind of restraint that builds, and then quickly bursts, in the bright, voluminous chorus, which like the song before it, ascends as high as it possibly can, in a truly stirring and impressive way.
Something that I was surprised about, genuinely, and I suppose it speaks to the time it was written, but more than once in my original reflection on E•MO•TION, I reference the debut full-length from Haim, Days Are Gone, as a point of comparison, which is not an album that I, for as much as I loved it when it was released, have returned to much at all in the decade plus that has followed.
And I bring this up to say that Days Are Gone-era Haim is still apparently a strong enough point of reference for me because even prior to re-reading my review of E•MO•TION, I noted that there is something in the shuffling rhythm and chugging guitar work in the titular track, that is reminiscent, in feeling, or vibe, to Haim.
The lighter, or breezier elements to “E•MO•TION” are not what makes the song compelling, but it does set us, as listeners, up to be I think more impressed or for there to be more impact when the arranging builds and then detonates—and then there is the dreamier, hazier, and truly the very sensual sounds that are conjured, briefly, in the song’s bridge.
There is heartbreak, or at least a kind of scorn that is depicted early in “E•MO•TION.” “Be tormented by me babe,” Jepsen demands in the opening line. “Wonder how I do? How’s the weather? Am I better—better now that there’s no you.”
And in how it is depicted—and the line that it walks, one is given the impression that Jepsen is the one who ended the relationship, and in doing so, both understand that this other individual perhaps still longs for her, and that she, too, longs in return. Though the longer we spend within the world of this song, I hesitate to say it becomes complicated, because maybe it isn’t. But it is a delicate thing—acknowledging that you are more than likely better without someone in your life, while still wondering what could have been, while still questioning if that is even something you should be spending time giving consideration to.
“Not a flower on the wall,” Jepsen explains the pre-chorus. “I am growing ten feet, ten feet tall. In your head and I won’t stop until you forget me, ‘get me not.”
The chorus, then, beckons and gets us one step closer to the point that Jepsen wishes to lead us to. “In your fantasy, dream about me,” she howls. “And all that we could do with this emotion”
She returns to the kind of coy, slightly flirtatious, slightly spurned depiction in the song’s second verse, oscillating back and forth between her feelings, when she quickly coos, “Toss and turn without me boy—let it hit you cold and hot. All my kisses, says you’ll miss it and you can’t forget me,” she continues, with the last line sliding into the first of the pre-chorus—a compelling songwriting trick that she uses here to keep the momentum of “E•MO•TION” ever pushing forward.
Whether it was intentional or not, or if this is me reaching, or stretching, towards something that is simply there for making a more compelling or thoughtful analysis, Carly Rae Jepsen, as E•MO•TION keeps unfolding, asks a lot of questions. Not of us, really, as listeners, or the audience. But of the person that the songs are directed at.
“E•MO•TION” slows down slightly when it comes to the woozy, sensual bridge, where Jepsen, in quietly asking a question, and in doing so, brings us right up to that moment. Want leading to more want. “What if I turn the lights right down,” she suggests, and she doesn’t exactly provide her own answer, but punctuates it by saying, “I feel it,” then just a line later, contends, “You feel it,” before describing a smoldering kind of moment that, in the give and take of the song, up to this point, you have to wonder how, and why, Jepsen wished to end up here again.
“You and me in the dark right now—I feel it.”
*
And whether this was intentional on Jepsen’s part, and the part of her collaborators, in the development of material for E•MO•TION, the more time I have sat with the album—and, as of late, sitting with analytically, rather than for enjoyment and comfort, what I have noticed are the recurring images, or motifs, throughout.
And, I mean, there is the overarching concept behind the album. E•MO•TION, as an idea. Love. Being in love. Desire. Want. A moment we are rushing towards without understanding entirely what comes next.
And maybe this is a reach, or a stretch, or my attempt, once again, to make more out of something than perhaps needs to be made, but throughout E•MO•TION, and even the additional tracks that did not make the final cut of the album’s proper tracklist, Jepsen often conjures the idea of driving—often at night, which is where we find her at the top of the writhing, simmering “Gimme Love.”
“Worlds fly by,” she begins, in a breathy register. “Drove by your place and stopped again tonight. I know I said that I’m too scared to try—but I still think about you.”
The fourth song on the record, and coming after the blindingly bright and unrelenting enthusiastic single, “I Really Like You,” “Gimme Love” is not an inward turn, exactly, but it does begin to bring the pacing down just a little. In comparison to both the title track, and “Run Away With Me,” it does not walk that line of tension and release; instead it remains in a steady, sensual ripple that rarely rises above a certain level.
Musically, though, even though it swirls from within this place of reserve, it does still shimmer. And that is the thing, nearly from top to bottom, about E•MO•TION, is the way it sounds—it glistens, and dazzles. At times it feels like neon lights reflecting off of a car, slowly driving down a crowded street, late at night. Both in the way the songs are structured, and in their soundscape, E•MO•TION is an earnest homage to a specific kind of pop music from the 1980s and even into the early 90s. But even in how much she tips her hat to a different era, Jepsen and her collaborators never run the risk of sounding derivative or insincere. It’s an homage, yes, but it also, at the time of its release and even now, a decade after the fact, it sounds vibrant and fresh.
And for as much maximalism can be found in a number of places on E•MO•TION, there is a kind of sparsity to how a song like “Gimme Love” sounds at times, like when Jepsen is just accompanied by low, skittering percussion during the chorus; and the other elements, like the strummed, funk-adjacent electric guitar, and the layers of different synthesizer tones and flourishes, are tasteful. Not muted, really, but they are never at risk of overpowering, or taking the song in a more musically explosive direction.
And there is an ask. Maybe less of an ask, and more of a request. Or a demand. In her writing, Jepsen thrashes from a place of want and need. A kind of antsy desire. Or a flirty kind of nervousness, which she makes clear in the rest of the first verse, and then returns to later on.
“I can’t lie,” she declares early in the song. “I like the feeling how you make me shy. I’ll share my secret and I will not hide—I know that one could be two.”
“You’ve got a hold of me the whole damn night,” Jepsen exclaims at the top of the second verse. “I toss and turn, but still I can’t sleep right. I should have asked you to stay—begged you to stay,” she continues, before returning to this bashfulness. “When I get right next to you I hear this heartbeat break in two. I feel the earthquake in the room and so I pray…fall into me.”
And that is one of the asks. Or demands. Or request. The place where Jepsen comes from in the chorus. “Gimme love,” she pleads to this off-stage character. “Gimme touch,” she continues. “Cause I want what I want—do you think I want too much?”
“Fall into me,” she commands. “And then gimme love…gimme please,” she concedes. “I want what I want, but with you, it’s what I need.”
And, maybe, again, there does not need to be a resolution. Or an answer. To any of the questions, or request that Jepsen makes within the slinking, writhing atmosphere of “Gimme Love.” But we are left wondering. She has made the ask. And we wait alongside her for the answer.
Want giving way to more want.
*
I stop short of saying that E•MO•TION was a map, or blueprint of sorts, for Jepsen’s career direction over the last decade. I mean, in a sense, it was, in terms of the labor she puts into projects—writing hundreds of songs, and taking her time in between albums (four years, and three years, respectively), but E•MO•TION, at least in how it sounds, and the real homage it pays within that sound, is not something that she has directly tried to recreate on subsequent albums. She still makes pop music. Pop music that’s often enormous. Pop music that often shimmers. She still writes, regularly, from various corners of The Kingdom of Desire, but she has continued to grow as an artist and push her sound forward.
I tell you all of that to tell you this—Jepsen, across her last three proper studio albums, knows her strengths, or understands at least when something will be the most successful. I don’t believe she is opposed to ballads, or slowing things down, but she doesn’t spend a lot of time in those spaces. She in fact spends the least amount of time in those spaces on E•MO•TION, because yes, “Gimme Love” brings things inward just a bit, and later, on the album’s second half, there is another more insular moment in the glitchy, cavernous “Warm Blood,” but she definitely thrives, as a performer, in a place where there is room to be energetic and exuberant. Sometimes music does not need to be subjected to analysis or any kind of deeper evaluation. Sometimes it is just about the vibe, or the feeling. Pop music, especially, is intended to be fun.
And it often would like it if we had fun along with it.
The most inward turn on E•MO•TION arrives near the end of the first half, and it isn’t even a ballad so much as it is a R&B-inspired smoldering slow jam. “All That,” in its much slower tempo, does bring the breakneck pacing of the album down—not to a crawl, but rather gives us just a little bit of time to catch our collective breath. Propelled forward by both a strong bass presence, and keyboards that do truly twinkle, “All That” swells and swoons, and pleads, often with a kind of theatricality, the more it unfolds.
“All That” is one of two songs that Jepsen collaborated on with indie R&B auteur Devante Hynes, who, during the 2010s, released a handful of critically acclaimed albums under then name Blood Orange—the second song was the jubilant “Body Language,” which Jepsen cut from the sequencing of E•MO•TION, though released as part of the companion b-sides collection in 2016. In the information about the writing and recording, and the overall development of E•MO•TION available on Wikipedia, it states that Hynes was, after initially being contacted by Jepsen, skeptical at first—though she, allegedly, won him over with both her vocal abilities and work ethic. He realized that she was sincere in developing the album’s aesthetic, as opposed to just looking for “Pitchfork-approved” artists as a means of seeking a specific kind of credibility.
And there is of course an R&B slant to the music Hynes was making as Blood Orange, especially around this time, following the release of his very successful Cupid Deluxe, but there was also something haunting, and unsettling about the nature of his compositions. So at first, he doesn’t seem like an unlikely collaborator for Jepsen, but perhaps a surprising one. However, his ear for more inward turned arrangements and rhythms is what makes “All That” as well executed as it is, in terms of a kind of meticulousness—it knows just when to hang, or glide, with more sparse accompaniment, and it understands what is necessary to push it up just a little through a few more additional layers, or a slight ascent in the melody.
There is a specific era of R&B that I often think of—from the late 1980s and into the early part of the 1990s. A kind of sensualness, yes, of course, I think that is a given, but in that sensual nature, or in that desire, there is also an ask. Or a pleading. At times, a desperation. Jepsen, on “All That,” certainly walks that line—the ask, and the pleading, that does occasionally, as the song continues, and builds as it is able to, become rather emergent in its requests.
“I wanna play this for you all the time,” she begins. “I wanna play this for you when you’re feeling used and tired. I wanna make the best so you want more,” Jepsen continues. “Just let me in your arms.”
She continues these sentiments, and increases the intensity of them in the second verse. “I’ll be your lighthouse when you’re lost at sea,” she exclaims. “I’ll keep my light on, baby. You can always come to me. I wanna be the place you call your home—just let me in your arms.”
The quiet, smoldering nature of “All That,” specifically in the verses, makes it seem, perhaps, unassuming in some ways, which is why its chorus, and the stirring nature of the bridge, are the elements that make it an impressively constructed song. “Show me if you want me, if I’m all that,” Jespsen asks with her voice reaching a higher, breathier register in the chorus. “I will be there. I will be your friend,” she assures, while the song’s instrumentation slinks and glistens around her.
It isn’t like there is no saccharine, or cloying, lyricism to be found on an album such as E•MO•TION. I think that is to be anticipated. I guess it’s what the artist does with it that makes it compelling to listen to—and given the kind of pleading, emergent nature that Jepsen continues to foster in “All That,” it shouldn’t be a surprising that it does lean into some more cliched writing during the bridge, but the song itself is so well put together as a whole, it is easy to show it some grace.
“When you need me I will never let you come apart,” she promises, while an E•MO•TIONal progression on the piano trails right under her vocals. “When you need me, I will be your candle in the dark. When you need someone,” she asks. “Let me be the one.”
And there is the want, leading to more want. The desire she is chasing after here. The assurances she is giving, and seeking in return. And we, as listeners, again, are slowly, sensually brought up right to a point. A moment.
*
Because of E•MO•TION’s multiple editions, with extra tracks available here and there, all of which, regardless of whatever version you did end up with, are tacked on at the end, it presents a challenge to give real consideration to the album’s true closing moment, “When I Needed You.” And it does make sense, I think, given the way that E•MO•TION opens, with a huge blast, that it does close with something not as equally as bombastic and cathartic, but something that does rival it in terms of excitement—not a final gasp by any means, but one big, lasting shout along.
Like a lot of songs on E•MO•TION, in their structure, “When I Needed You” is assembled in such a way that they know exactly what they’re doing, and when to do it. It really wastes absolutely no time, rushing into a low, chugging rhythm, pulsating things forward, with iridescent, and flirty, blippy synthesizer tones swirling all around. This is sustained through the verse, and the short lead up until the chorus, which, as one might anticipate, does allow “When I Needed Someone” to ascend—not too high, but just high enough to dazzle a little brighter, and achieve a kind of anthemic quality, which is certainly what makes it such an effective or well executed closing track.
And it is unrelenting, musically, and I guess in how Jepsen kind of breathlessly continues to sing—but there is little, if any, place where the song wavers in the forward momentum it has, save for the potentially ill-advised bridge, where Jepsen briefly whispers, and all the instrumentation drops out for a moment, except for the rumbling synth bass line, and tingling percussive sound. However, for as out of place, or less interesting or compelling as this moment in the song might be, it does clear a path for the song to gradually build itself right back for a short reprise of that highly energized, fist-pumping feeling before it slowly fades out.
Something that I began giving more consideration to, the longer I spent writing analytically about pop music, and specifically about pop music lyrics, was how they often do not pass the Bechdel Test. Though it is clunky, and sometimes seemingly too great a challenge to take on, to try to shoehorn a media metric, usually intended for film or television, into songwriting.
An artist like Carly Rae Jepsen, in writing from and about what she often does, is not going to pass the Bechdel Test. Which is fine. Like, pop music is often based around a vibe, and it wants to have fun. And it wants you to have fun along with it. And it maybe does not wish to be picked apart underneath an intersectional lens.
I am remiss to say that the lyrics to “When I Needed Someone” are troubling, because troubling isn’t the correct word. I guess, if anything they do present some challenges in consideration with what they present, w/r/t to agency and empowerment, and listening intersectionally.
And I have stated that there are a number of facets to what amounts to The Kingdom of Desire, and specifically the kind of desire that Jepsen writes from and regularly depicts. It isn’t always the moment leading up to something big. It isn’t always want or longing for a love, or romance, or affection, that has not happened yet. Sometimes it is the moment after. A longing for a reconnection that has not happened, and may still not. Which is where she oscillates from in this kind of dizzying push and pull momentum on “When I Needed Someone.” Because at first she does depict a kind of remorse, when the song opens.
“What if we could go back?,” she asks, her voice bold and clear. “We could take the words back. You could take my love back, and brush my hair behind my ear,” she continues, before the tone of the song shifts. “I don’t know what you wanted,” she explains. “I tried to be so perfect. I thought that it was worth it to let myself just disappear.”
And there is this device in contemporary popular music. It’s something that will always astound me when it’s done and done well. When a songwriter dresses up sad, or bleak lyrics with an infectious melody, or arrangement, so that it creates just the smallest distraction. And that the meaning of the lyrics eventually sneaks up on you.
There is an adjacency to that on “When I Needed Someone,” because you really cannot help yourself from shouting along with the chorus but it does really take some time until you realize what you are being compelled to shout along with. “Sometimes I wish that I could change—but not for me,” Jepsen confesses. “For you!,” she continues. “So we could be together, forever.”
And, like, admittedly that’s not great. And it does require a bit of a double-take, in terms of confirmation of what Jepsen has shouted within the song. However, this is where she does the pushing and the pulling. “I know that I won’t for you,” she explains. “Cause where were you for me when I needed someone.”
And there is a multitudinous nature in all of us. We want what we cannot have. We want what we shouldn’t wish for. We are complicated individuals, especially when it comes to our relationships to others, romantic or otherwise. Which is what she portrays here. This jostling back and forth, which is of course demonstrated throughout but is perhaps the most clear, or as clear as it can be, in the moments leading from the bridge, into the slow re-introduction of all the song’s dazzling elements for the final chorus.
“I don’t want to work it out,” Jepsen concedes. “No, I’m not going to, still, sometimes I wish that I could change but not for me—for you.”
*
There are five additional tracks included on what is listed on Spotify as the “Deluxe Expanded Edition” of E•MO•TION—it pulls together the extra songs made available on different iterations of the album, like the standard deluxe edition of the album, available on compact disc, which features “Black Heart,” the exuberant “I Didn’t Just Come Here to Dance,” and the smoldering, swooning “Favourite Colour,” as well as the two songs from the version exclusive to Target stores—“Never Get to Hold You,” and “Love Again.”
And there is a time and a place for bonus tracks, or special, expanded editions, or in the case of Carly Rae Jepsen, of collected b-sides released in a companion piece, roughly a year after the album’s original arrival. Admittedly, the eight songs featured on the E•MO•TION Side B EP are hit or miss. Some of them, I would contend, are good enough, and powerful enough in terms of what they evoke, to have been included on the album proper. Though, and this is something to consider for every artist, not just Jepsen, there are often times when you understand why a song was left behind.
“Favourite Colour” and “Never Get to Hold You” are not ballads, per se, but similar to “All That,” and “Gimme Love,” they do slow the pacing down because their tempo is not as frenetic as some of the other moments on the album, but they are truly fascinating, and in terms of execution, are certainly among Jepsen’s strongest and are both quite thoughtful in terms of their meticulous production and arranging.
There is a surprising sparsity and iciness to “Favourite Colour,” as it begins. Musically, there is not much holding it together at first—just a kind of muffled, pinging thump and blip coming from the drum programming, which begins to gather just a little more momentum as it edges towards the chorus. And it is, as Jepsen does elsewhere, a little anticipated—the theatricality it soars with, and the kind of release it offers, when “Favourite Colour” springs to life and begins to brightly shimmer with the percussive elements growing in intensity, and the swirls of synthesizers offering dramatic flairs. But even with as expected, or predictable as this kind of tension and release is, it is done so well that you are simply unable to fault her.
The iciness comes in the heavy processing and effects on Jepsen’s vocals—run through a metallic warble, there is a hush and chill that falls over it while she works herself up to the release that comes from when she belts out the impassioned chorus.
Even as subdued as “Favourite Colour” is, overall, at least before it all rushes together within the chorus, one of the things that does make it as compelling a song as it is, is the way Jepsen writes about, yes, desire, but also intensity. There is a very palpable nature to the feelings that she depicts, specifically in the first verse, vividly setting a scene and making it appear effortless as she does so.
“Hold on now,” she begins, right when the song starts. “This is getting kind of serious. This is getting kind of out of control…slow down now,” Jepsen continues. “Breathing heavy when it’s just a kiss. This is getting kind of out of my hands.”
And there is a tension, and a desire—both of which she continues to build off of in the smoldering second verse. “Should I stay?,” she asks. “Making love until the morning light. Making out like it’s the end of the world and I really want to get it right.”
Analytically, “Favourite Colour” is a moment on the album when Jepsen steps beyond The Kingdom of Desire—while she still wants, and desires, she seemingly gets the affection she longs for, and is indicated within the literary swooning and E•MO•TIONal rush that comes in the chorus. “When I’m close to you we blend into my favourite colour,” she exclaims. “I’m bright baby blue, falling into you—falling for each other.”
“Favourite Colour” does teeter on the edge of an inward turn, or a more pensive sound, “Never Get to Hold You” really leans into a kind of rumbling, contemplative tension—oozing with a kind of surprising melancholy and longing, and bursting with a coy kind of sensuality by the time it arrives at the pleading within the chorus.
It, musically, operates from a place of slight restraint, which creates an overall sense of tension that is never really released, even when things lift slightly for the chorus. The song is propelled forward by a glitchy, jittery, low synthesizer tone, and the thump of a beat underneath it—but before that even kicks in, “Never Get to Hold You” slowly fades itself in with this somber, kind of eerie, warped keyboard sound that is reminiscent of something coming from a music box—and, I mean, outside of the way Jepsen strikes a kind of sorrowful tension in the song, this intro is an element that does make it genuinely interesting to hear.
And while the verses to the song slowly churn in these lower tones, Jepsen allows “Never Get to Hold You” to ascend just a little when she sings the titular phrase, as the chorus slides in, and she’s joined by a number of twinkling and shimmering keyboard tones—continuing her dedication to the homage of the 1980s and 90s musical aesthetic, and the melody itself does call to mind a kind of longing, simmering balladry from that era as well.
Jepsen once again here is incredibly impressive in how she creates vivid imagery within the vignettes she depicts in her writing—specifically with the kind of urgency or desperation that courses through what she quietly sings in a surprising lower register in the verses, as well as a kind of exhaustive pleading, and yearning, that arrives when the song shimmers and swirls around her.
“Oh baby don’t you go,” Jepsen assures at the top of the song. “You know I didn’t mean it, darlin,” she continues, throwing herself further into this apologetic tenderness. “Sweet like the morning light goes late into the evening. All I want is to hold you—make you rock away this feeling for me,” she says before returning to the opening lines. “Don’t you go. You know I didn’t mean it.”
And it is hard to know from where in the relationship Jepsen is writing from. Because it feels like we are on the edge of something that has, perhaps, already started, and ended faster than she would have liked it to—brought to this place of yearning, and tension.
“Until I saw you in that thunderstorm,”¹ she explains in the moments leading up to the chorus. “I didn’t see you. I wanna be the one that’s in your arms. I wanna feel you.” And she returns to this kind of sentiment in the song’s bridge, which is unique in the sense that, unlike a number of the other bridges across E•MO•TION, the song itself does not shift, or change musically to accommodate, allowing Jepsen to more or less state her feelings plainly. “I don’t think anybody understands you the way I do,” she proclaims, before adding, “I know you’ll let it go to your head if I say I’ll stay.”
“I never get to hold you as long as I want to,” Jepsen laments in the chorus, while the synthesizers shimmer and slowly swirl around her. “Remember I told you—you’re all that I need.”
The thing that I am still always working on understanding, and perhaps appreciating more, is that sometimes music—specifically pop music, does not always need, or even wish, to be the subject of some kind of sprawling or in-depth critical analysis. Sometimes lyrics are not meant to be parsed through and dissected. Sometimes there isn’t a larger meaning to be found, or some kind of allegorical nature. Sometimes music, specifically pop music, is just based around a vibe.
Again, it wants to have fun. Or is here to have fun. And it would love it if you, too, had fun with it.
The last of these additional tracks from the different configurations of E•MO•TION, “Love Again,” is like that, I think. It is much breezier in tempo and structure comparatively, and in being placed last, amongst the five extra songs, it is like the final little jolt of energy after the more inward, or slow simmering tunes that are the real standouts from this bonus material.
It is difficult to know everything about Jepsen’s creative process, for as much as she has let us in, or hinted at, how she writes, how much she writes, and the way she works in the studio. But how does she choose one song, over another, for inclusion on the album. How does she select tracks to be tacked on at the end of different expanded editions. How does she know which songs to keep in her pocket to share a year later as part of the Side B companion collection. And what songs, many of which are discussed online amongst her fans, are just shelved, probably never to be properly released or heard by a larger audience.
There is a glistening kind of whimsy to how “Love Again” shuffles itself together—bright, and bold enough, to catch attention here but perhaps maybe not enough when held up against some of the other more dazzling pop moments on the album’s final sequencing. It is brief—three and a half minutes, and it is playful, but there is a bit of a relaxed feeling, or restrained nature to it that you don’t hear in other songs on the record. It opens with these bursts of synthesizers before it retreats inward, and does so restlessly, in the rhythm it strikes, for the verses, before stumbling its way back into something a little more gossamer—and certainly more bold, and very direct and enthusiastic in its intention.
And yes, it is fun, and a little flirty in how it sounds. And it does wish for you to feel fun, and maybe a little flirty, along with it. Lyrically, if you do wish to give some analysis to where Jepsen is writing from, it is still from a place of want and desire, of course, but really, the song itself, or at least the themes present here, serves as an assurance, and an epilogue of sorts, to the idea of E•MO•TION as a whole.
“Open up your heart to the ceiling,” she commands in the opening line, as the synthesizer notes follow underneath her. “Don’t you know this hurts for a reason? Time will take you back to believing you’ll learn to love again.”
And in that assurance, and in this reflection, there is even an acceptance, or at least an acknowledgment, about what happens when things are over. “I never meant to fight with you—I wanted us to stay together,” Jepsen confesses in the moments leading up to the chorus. “And even though my love is true, I know that we can’t be together.”
I often write about the idea of an album offering hope, or some kind of optimism, when it, at times, can seem hopeless, or bleak. An album like E•MO•TION, and an artist like Carly Rae Jepsen, is certainly not making music, or writing lyrics, that are hopeless by any means, or bleak in any sense. However. E•MO•TION exists in a kind of nebulous, or ambiguous place. Want giving way to more want. And a chase for this desire that seems just out of her grasp. So if anything, as the album, or at least this expanded version of the album ends, with “Love Again,” there is this small flicker of hopefulness in the wake of a desire caught, then slipping through the fingers.
You learn to love again.
*
I used to be in love with you
And it is of course an audacious opening line. It’s bold and declarative. But that is of course the sentiment of the entire album. Both in the lyrics and in the arrangements that surge and soar underneath them. Jepsen made this all very clear from even within the first sixty seconds of the opening track. And she does continue to reiterate it until literally the very last gasp of the closing track.
These bold declarations of love. Or affection. Of longing. Sometimes of regret. And regularly of desire. A specific kind of desire and the place that desire comes from.
The moment, and the instance, that the desire will take us up to.
Something that I am often thinking about, w/r/t a number of albums, is when one hits its stride. Two impressive, or genuinely interesting songs back to back is one thing, but if that kind of energy or momentum can be sustained for even just one more song, in a row, it does create something remarkable—a kind of joy, I guess. Or excitement. Of, like, knowing what’s coming next, and then coming after that, and how it all feels.
The buzz you felt the first time you listened returns to you, no matter how many times you have played the album from start to finish over the decade that has elapsed.
And I would argue that E•MO•TION, as an album, really hits that stride at the top of its second half, with the slow-burning urgency of “Making The Most of The Night,” the enormous, iridescent pleading of “Your Type,” and the writhing, playful sensual nature of “Let’s Get Lost.”
It is funny, in a way, that in 2015, that I saw so many similarities between the Haim sisters, and their debut full-length, Days Are Gone, and Jepsen’s E•MO•TION. I mean, I guess they both, anecdotally, have a firm grasp and understanding of a very specific kind of pop music—something infectious, and often huge, and fun, in feeling, that leans into a slight 80s and 90s R&B and Top 40 aesthetic.
I tell you all of that to tell you this. That upon its release in 2013, I guess I really liked that Haim album a lot—and apparently revered it enough to make it a point of reference. In time, I have, of course, become a much more thoughtful and articulate writer, and I really try my best not to make those kinds of well-intended comparisons, but it happens. Even in passing it happens. And I tell you that to tell you that I use Carly Rae Jepsen, and E•MO•TION, specifically, as that reference now.
Something else about Haim—and this was new information to me, upon reading up on the creation and release of E•MO•TION, is that the lyrics to “Making The Most of The Night” were originally co-written by Danielle, Este, and Alana Haim, along with Sia Furler, before Furler passed it along to Jepsen; she’s also credited as writing the bridge to the jaunty and rollicking breakup anthem, “Boy Problems.”
And I suppose I can hear echoes of Days Are Gone-era Haim in at least the way the chorus sounds, and is structured, in terms of a kind of unrelenting groove that it slinks into, though the swirling and at times creeping urgency and restlessness of the verses are truly Jepsen’s.
There is something eerie about how “Making The Most of The Night” opens—and I mean I guess that, eventually, describing it as eerie makes sense based on one of the lyrics that has always baffled me in the chorus. The song opens quietly, with a swaying, chiming sound, before the percussive elements come shuddering and rippling in, creating a rhythm that is kind of based in the big silences that hang before the next snare hit pings. “Making” gathers its momentum, though, and gathers it quickly, because there is this dramatic flourish, and rush, in the bit right before the chorus arrives, skittering and exploding.
And I am hesitant to say that any of it feels out of place, because none of it does, but also, it feels very loose in how it is connected. If that makes sense. Not like it’s three pieces of different things kind of cobbled together to create something new, but it is three pieces that seem unalike at first—specifically how you get from the first, to the third, with the eerie and smoldering way the song opens, to the dazzling, emergent nature of the chorus.
And something that makes this run of three songs so impressive, or memorable, on E•MO•TION, is the lyricism—or the vivid storytelling. The moments they place us in, respectively. Or if not moments, a palpable kind of sensation, which is more where “Making The Most of The Night” takes place. In this kind of blind urgency to surrender within someone else—a line walked between a tenderness, and a kind of lusty desperation.
Right from the beginning, there is this kind of sexual tension depicted, where you are not entirely certain what, if anything, Jepsen’s relationship to this person is. “You and me—we’ve been hanging around for the longest time,” she starts. “I know when you’re down,” she continues. “Know what you need to get you high. Top down—like the wind through your hair on a summer’s night. Outside. All your fears—leaving them behind.”
And it is vivid, isn’t it. I mean, she is not really in a convertible, racing through the night. But there is this portrait that is painted of an urgent kind of attraction that you are teetering dangerously close to the edge of falling completely into, and willing to do anything to go over the edge. And in the moments leading up to the chorus, there is this rush, and the emergent nature of the song reveals itself. “Baby, I’m speeding and red lights I’ll run,” Jepsen proclaims. “What I got—you need it. And I’ll run to your side when your heart is bleeding,” she adds, before making what straddles a line between a sentiment and what could appear like a borderline warning.
“I’m coming to getcha, to getcha, to getcha.”
And it does make me laugh. And has made me laugh for years now. Once I realized what Jepsen was saying in the chorus. I understand the sentiment, I think. Or the intention. It comes from this place of passion, and immediacy. It’s well meant. And again, I do not think it is something that is supposed to be analyzed too much, or unpacked. But as the chorus begins, Jepsen belts out, “I know you’ve had a rough time, but here I come to hijack you—hijack you and love you while making the most of the night.”
Hijack.
It is surprising. And strange. I guess. It leaves little if anything to question about her intensity. It is just a genuinely interesting phrase turn, that takes me, albeit briefly, out of the world of the song.
“Making The Most of The Night,” with that kind of exaggerated sense of passion, or romance, also is structured with a balance for theatricality, not just in the eerie opening, and the way it quickly careens through the verse, into the build up for the chorus, but in the way the song slows itself down into a dreamy kind of haze for the swoony bridge, where Jepsen coos a sprawling series of assurances, “Baby take my hand now, don’t you cry. I won’t let you stay here—I won’t let you hide. No more tears. Don’t waste another day,” and then with incredible intentionality, builds itself back up in to the skittering, vibrant intensities of the chorus.
And maybe it is intentional on Jepsen’s part, and the part of her collaborators, in the development of the material for E•MO•TION—the recurring images, or motifs, that appear throughout. There of course is the concept behind the album, overall. Of E•MO•TION, as an idea. Of love. Being in love. Desire. Want. A moment we are rushing towards without understanding entirely what comes next.
And maybe this is a reach on my part to once again make more out of something than perhaps needs to be made. But throughout E•MO•TION, Jepsen returns to the idea of driving. Often at night. It is, perhaps, more a metaphor in how it is depicted on “Making The Most of The Night,” but it is certainly more literal on the dazzling, slinky “Let’s Get Lost.”
I’ve honestly never really been fond of the first few seconds of “Let’s Get Lost.” There is this muffled little noodling melody that you can barely hear before the rest of the song comes into focus—there’s something silly about it, and truthfully, about the way the song ends as well. But the smoldering and swaying Jepsen sustains throughout, once it gets underway, making these small grievances a little more forgivable.
The rhythm to “Let’s Get Lost,” is among the most flirtatious and playful on the album, as it does trot, or skip around with a kind of aloofness, while an equally as coy melody is plunked out on the keyboard—a kind of urgency, and want, kick in when the chorus arrives, with a little more robustness and depth added in while Jepsen belts out the song’s titular expression. And for as many songs on E•MO•TION have a bit of a musical restlessness to them, or continue to shifting their tone, “Let’s Get Lost” really remains in within the restraint of the verses, and the hopeful, shimmering bombast of the chorus, and later, after the bridge and into the final chorus, a soulful saxophone solo.
“Let’s Get Lost” is a song that does firmly belong, lyrically, in the state of desire. Of want giving way to more want. Of a chase. And a moment that we are brought to, but never going beyond it. And it is one of the places where Jepsen is pleading. Or hoping. And she does this elsewhere, too, on the album, but she does play the role of a kind of shy, unassuming girl—perhaps too unsure of herself to make a move, and hinges on the potential of the object of her infatuation taking that first step.
“I was never one to want to put my trust in someone else completely,” she begins while the synthesizers flutter around with precision underneath her. “And I was always one to want to up and run when someone said they needed me,” she continues, before sliding into this brief moment before the chorus, where she layers her vocals on the word “you,” and adds, “You could be the one.”
“I was always shy and careful,” Jepsen explains in the second verse. “I was sure that you would never look at me—never wanted to discourage everything your eyes encouraged silently.”
The chorus arrives in the form of a command, then, and it places us in a moment with Jepsen and this other individual. “Baby let’s go get lost, I like that you’re driving slow,” she tells us. “Keeping my fingers crossed that maybe you’ll take the long way home. Let’s get lost—I don’t want to let you go,” she adds before, again, hoping that this person will take the long way home.
And there is the implication, based on the rooster call sound effect that plays at the end—the other thing about “Let’s Get Lost” that I am not terribly charmed by, that Jepsen has moved beyond the want giving way to more want, and that she has gotten what she has desired. Though we are not entirely certain. Regardless, like “Making The Most of The Night,” something that Jepsen does here, and does well in both places, and certainly elsewhere, is that she vividly captures a feeling. A sensation. The urge to fall headlong into something. To surrender. To do so with a smoldering urgency.
*
I used to be in love with you
And it is of course an audacious opening line. It’s bold and declarative.
But that is of course the sentiment of the entire album.
Want giving way to more want.
There is of course a risk to it all. The want. The desire and the longing. These declarations. The moment we are in, with Carly Rae Jepsen, and the moment she’s willing to take us to. She makes these huge asks, or demands. Run away with her. Get lost with me. Dream about me. I am going to hijack you in a, like, affectionate and romantic way, so we can make the most of the evening ahead of us.
“I want you to miss me when I’m not around you,” she proclaims in what I would contend is the album’s finest moment, the kaleidoscopic “Your Type.”
In terms of how it is arranged, I would content that “Your Type” does bring together all of the elements that work, and work well, from how E•MO•TION sounds—it is maybe not as inherent in its nod to the 80s and 90s inspired pop in its aesthetic as you are able to hear elsewhere, but the homage and intentions are still there. It also, and seemingly effortlessly in how it does it, combines the feelings that Jepsen has worked to convey, musically, across the album. It begins with a low, coursing synthesizer ripple before a steady, hard-hitting drum beat comes in. It isn’t a fast-paced song, exactly, but it does move at a quicker tempo compared to other moments, and there is, even when that rhythm pauses, a kind of urgency that the song moves with.
In how it introduces additional little flourishes into its layers, “Your Type” can’t really take its time, because of how breezily it moves, but it is very deliberate and intentional with the way you can hear other elements working their way in—additional synthesizer lines that are light enough in tone to offset the heavy, lower notes from the beginning, which act is a quickly played bass line. And by the time Jepsen has reached the large, declarative statements prior to the burst of the chorus, the fluttering around of these other melodies and tones does give the song the slightest sense of whimsy or playfulness, which doesn’t exactly disappear within an instant once the anthemic, shout-along moment of the chorus arrives. But she is in command of how the song feels, and even with the charmed, sauntering nature the song has prior, it quickly becomes as powerful and impactful as other similar moments, like in “Run Away With Me,” and the titular track.
“I used to be in love with you,” Jepsen states plainly the second the drum hits. “You used to be the first thing on my mind. I know I’m just a friend to you,” she concedes. “That I will never get to call you mine.”
And, yes, Jepsen, at times throughout E•MO•TION, dabbles with a kind of sensuality, though it is never over the top in how it is stated. Because she, at least in these songs, is more concerned with a subtle, slow-burning want and desire. It’s what she does well. An ache and a longing. A feeling. A kind of nervousness that comes from being around someone you are attracted to, but have not quite yet found it within to confess to them what it is like when you are near them.
And like how, musically, “Your Type” pulls together the best little bits and elements from E•MO•TION as a whole, the intention of Jepsen’s lyricism does the same, in the way it makes these big, grand statements of want and desire, and a need. And she takes us right up to the moment.
Want giving way to more want.
And there is an urgency, and a kind of breathlessness to the admission Jepsen makes as she inches closer to the revelatory nature of the chorus. “But I still love you I’m sorry,” she begins, as if she cannot get the words out fast enough. “I’m sorry I love you—I didn’t mean to say what I said. I miss you. I mean it. I tried not to feel it but I can’t get you out of my head,” she continues, and then adds something that, at first, seems like such a huge declaration within the context of the song but it is, on its own, I think something we all wish for. “I want you to miss me when I’m not around you.”
“Your Type,” certainly in the first verse, and the further along it goes, finds Jepsen writing from a place that is surprisingly, within the context of the rest of the album, self-effacing. She is often writing from a place of want or desire, but rarely does she commit to downplaying herself this much or giving in to a kind of brief flash of jealousy.
“I bet she acts so perfectly—you probably eat up every word she says,” Jepsen taunts in the second verse. “And if you ever think of me I’m probably just a flicker in your head.”
The enormous moment in “Your Type” does arrive when she really belts it out in the chorus—another bold, dazzling shout-a-long. “I’m not the type of girl for you,” she howls. “I’m not going to pretend that I’m the type of girl you call more than a friend. I’d break all the rules for you—break my heart, and start again,” Jepsen explains, before adding, “I’m not the type of girl you call more than a friend—I’ll make time for you.”
And that is, again, the moment that Jepsen brings us to, both throughout the album, and certainly on “Your Type.” The want that leads to more want. Where the chase for desire takes us. What longing does to us. Or the extremes we are willing to go for it. Jepsen makes these bold, often large statements, directed at someone with whom she is infatuated with, or in some cases, has been involved with and still wishes to be, but she, within the world of the song, is only willing to take herself, and us as listeners, so far.
In his essay about Carly Rae Jepsen performing with an orchestra in Toronto, Hanif Aburraqib says, “Desire is the living thing at the end of the tunnel, waiting with open arms, and to some, I imagine, that isn’t a happy ending.”
“Wanting leading to more wanting isn’t exactly a neatly tied ribbon but it is a certainty…once you’ve caught that which you desire, the story is less interesting,” he continues. “She gives us, instead, a never-ending chase where the only thing to fall in love with is the idea of falling in love.”
At the end of “Your Type,” Jepsen proclaims, “I’ll make time for you,” but as we wonder at the end of so many of these songs, where there is an ask, or a demand, or a declaration, what happens next. Does the person run away with her. Does she end up being driven home the long way.
Does she make the time.
And it is fascinating storytelling.
That’s the thing. Isn’t it. The stretches and reaches that I make, in analysis. Looking for something that isn’t perhaps there to begin with. Carly Rae Jepsen makes pop music—arguably, more thoughtful pop music than other artists, and perhaps better received critically. Pop music itself of course just wants to have fun and wishes we would have fun along with it. Maybe not everything has to be taken so seriously. Maybe this could just be vibe-based listening rather than anything analytical.
But there is something remarkable about Jepsen’s songwriting. And the conviction of it. The situations she puts us in alongside her. These moments that become so vivid. The places she takes us are right up to the edge of.
Because there is no resolution at the end of “Your Type.” Or any of these songs really. Just final statements, or asks, or pleas, and we are left wondering. But that’s the thing. We are okay with the never-ending chase, and the only thing to fall in love with is the idea of falling in love.
*
Tell a friend that you’re in love with them tonight.
And I have of course written about this before—very recently, in fact. And so I apologize to you, the reader, if you’ll allow me to break the fourth wall here and address you directly, as we near the end—apologies for the repetition. The story you have certainly heard before.
As the story goes, in 2017, Hanif Abdurraqib was asked to participate in a literary event based around Carly Rae Jepsen’s E•MO•TION—the writers involved were to select a song from the album, and use that as the inspiration for what they wrote. He, famously now, when he references this story, and the legacy it has, had wanted to write about “Warm Blood,” a glitchy, hazy, slower song tucked close to the end of the record. By the time he responded and said he would be interested in being a part of the event, “Warm Blood” was spoken for.
He chose “Your Type.”
An old video of Adurraqib’s reading exists online still. And given the amount that has been made out of it—but perhaps, maybe more people are just aware of a singular image of him, standing in front of a screen with the phrase “Tell A Friend That You’re In Love With Them Tonight” projected on it—the clip itself has around 3,000 views. I guess I would have anticipated there would be more.
The video, which lasts just a little longer than five minutes, finds Adurraqib introducing the piece he wrote as being about friendship, and then opting, as he often does now at readings, to sit on the edge of the stage, to be closer to the audience, and what he reads pulls in part, from his observations about Jepsen performing with the orchestra the year prior—and the way she introduces “Your Type” on stage, by telling the audience it’’s about being in “the friend zone.”
“Your Type,” as noted by Adurraqib, “speaks to the larger project that is the Carly Rae Jepsen narrative: close, but not close enough; loved, but not in love.”
Something that Adurraqib touches on, both in the original piece from 2016, as well as in 2024, when he reflected on the night he stood in front of a screen that said “Tell A Friend That You’re In Love With Them Tonight,” is that platonic love should be treated with the same vigor as romantic love. “Platonic love is vital, essential, and perhaps the one thing left in this wretched landscape that could save us all for a little bit longer than we deserve,” he wrote.
“No one is coming to save any of us except the people who have already been saving you the entire time you’ve loved them and they’ve loved you,” he said in a lengthy Instagram caption a year ago. “Thank you for saving me in the past, thank you for saving me in all the futures I can’t even imagine, until there are no futures left. I love you so much that I’ll watch this version of the world’s ending alongside you. And I won't be as afraid as I might be if you weren’t here.”
I think about this all a lot. Perhaps more than I should. One of the things that has impacted me, and is always swirling around in my head.
I am always thinking about friendship. Love of all kinds, and types. The ways we open ourselves up to one another. The ways we embrace. Both literally and figuratively.
I think about the complex, kaleidoscopic nature of how we care for one another. The ways we show and receive. I think about the ways that is reflected back to us in the media we consume, or analyze.
I think part of the endearing charm of E•MO•TION is certainly the cult status it found almost immediately after its release. It is known, but not widely known. Not a secret, but something that you are still able to surprise someone with if they have never heard it before. The line between the life of an album, and how an album lives. E•MO•TION, for me, I would like to think, would be both endearing, and enduring, regardless of its status in the zeitgeist. It is bright and fun and incredibly thoughtful—something that pop music, at times, is less concerned with. It was infectious a decade ago, and it still remains so now. An album that you never get tired of hearing—a comfort and familiarity in the moment when you hear the enormous saxophone blast of “Run Away With Me.”
A number of years ago, I was speaking with the singer and songwriter Anika Pyle and she told me that Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance (With Somebody Who Loves Me)” was what she called her “orange alert” song—meaning if she was not feeling her best mentally, or emotionally, she would put it on, as a means to try and pull herself out of whatever she was experiencing.
Without question my “orange alert” album—not even a song, but the whole thing, is E•MO•TION. And even by the end of the first side, it has started to help, or provide some kind of comfort when I am unwell.
There are albums that we wish to take with us, through time. From one part of our lives to another. We age. We change. Our tastes evolve. The way we listen is not the same as it was. What we are drawn to is different. We perhaps cannot prevent ourselves from analytically listening. There are albums we cannot, for whatever reason, take with us. Are unable to revisit. They haven’t aged well. Or perhaps they are just representative of a different moment, or time. We can acknowledge. We can appreciate. We have moved on.
E•MO•TION is rare in the sense that it grows with you. I would contend it has gotten better, or more poignant, with time and age. Admittedly, I think the mythology surrounding it adds to the kind of importance it carries, and the influence it has had on other musicians, and the audience that it has found in time. But it is a timeless album. Which is fascinating, really. Remarkable. In the fact that it pulls sounds and inspiration from a completely different era. It sounded invigorating and fresh in 2015. It still arrives that way now.
But I suppose the concepts present in Jepsen’s writing are also timeless.
Want giving way to more want. Desire. The moment we are being led to.
And we are okay with that. We, eventually, like Jepsen, become fascinated with the idea of the chase that never ends.
Being brought up to that point and the anticipation of whatever might come next.
