\n<\/p>\n
Carly Rae Jepsen loves to squirrel away killer songs for her now-standard B-side collections. The opener to The Loveliest Time (the companion to 2022\u2019s The Loneliest Time) evinces several CRJ trademarks: a love of odd production in the drily funky guitar and playful percussion, breathy falsetto \u2013 and obsessive, intense lyrics about being willing to do anything<\/em> for love.<\/p>\n You can plot Jepsen songs on a spectrum of \u201claser-eyed intensity\u201d to \u201cdreamy reverie\u201d. This Kiss, from her first pop album Kiss (after her dreary post-Canadian Idol debut, 2008\u2019s Tug of War), epitomises the former, with EDM-era synths that rattle and gleam like arcade machines and a sledgehammer vocal performance about wanting forbidden pleasures.<\/p>\n <\/span>In Austin, Texas in 2016.<\/span> Photograph: Rick Kern\/WireImage<\/p>\n CRJ is a fiend for pure sensation who literally called an album Emotion: often her lyrics skip over any specific object of affection and cut straight to the feeling, as a song later in this list spells out. So when she sings \u201che never wants to strip down to his feelings\u201d on this pained ballad from Emotion Side B, you know it\u2019s terminal.<\/p>\n Anyone who\u2019s only ever heard the radioactively perky Call Me Maybe and (wrongly) considers CRJ a one-hit wonder might be stunned to learn that she\u2019s elite at genuinely sultry come-ons. No Drug Like Me lives up to its narcotic premise \u2013 a risky cliche to sell \u2013 with its slinky, muted boogie and Jepsen\u2019s gasped promises to \u201cblossom for you\u201d.<\/p>\n Avant garde collaborators love Jepsen, but unlike, say, Caroline Polachek or Charli xcx, she\u2019s never made leftfield cool her brand. Those moments feel more like surprise gems in her enjoyably wayward catalogue: All That, made with Ariel Rechtshaid and Dev Hynes, is a sparkling devotional that forms a perfect period trifecta with Sky Ferreira\u2019s Everything Is Embarrassing and Solange\u2019s Losing You.<\/p>\n The verse to Joshua Tree is all sharp, hungry anticipation of \u2013 what else \u2013 some kind of sensory high. Jepsen makes it worth the wait when the tension breaks into a chorus of rapturous satisfaction, \u00e0 la Jessie Ware\u2019s sultrier disco moments: \u201cI need it \/ I feel it,\u201d Jeppo sings, her unusually fragmentary lyrics evoking the strobe-lit half-memories of an ecstatic night out.<\/p>\n The cutely funky Boy Problems solidified CRJ\u2019s gay icon status \u2013 you\u2019ll seldom see a crowd yell louder than when she sings, \u201cBoy problems, who\u2019s got \u2019em?\u201d \u2013 and gave the concept a self-aware spin, acknowledging how bored her friends are of hearing about her messy love life. The sing-songy chorus sends up her predicament and is totally addictive.<\/p>\n Intended for Jepsen\u2019s scrapped second album Curiosity, Tiny Little Bows got a glow-up from its coffee shop-pop demo to the machine-tooled whirling strings and snapping bass of its incarnation on Kiss. The lyric about chasing Cupid and his dinky arrow makes little sense (how do you<\/em> think it goes with those tiny little bows? Err, fiddly?) yet hits like the best of Scandi-pop nonsense.<\/p>\n <\/span>CRJ performing in LA in 2019.<\/span> Photograph: Michael Tullberg\/Getty Images<\/p>\n CRJ had failed to clear this song\u2019s sample of He Needs Me, from Disney\u2019s 1980 Popeye film. So, naturally, she went to Disneyland and got Mickey Mouse to sign a fake contract approving it, then sent it to the publishers: \u201cThe big star boss says it\u2019s OK.\u201d They relented, and thank god, otherwise this slice of flirty madness, with its chorus that ascends like a starlet climbing a light-up staircase on a TV special, would never have existed.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2018Cause I want what I want \/ Do you think that I want too much?\u201d could be the Jeppo MO. On Gimmie Love, she lunges for, then suddenly withdraws from her crush, scared by the enormity of the feeling. It echoes within the cavernous, bass-wobbling production, offset by her effervescent vocals \u2013 and a determined cheerleader chant pivot in the middle eight.<\/p>\n No stranger to gothic intensity, Jepsen sings that she\u2019s \u201cforever haunted by our time\u201d on this sleek, sumptuous recollection of a formative romance. It was originally written for a scrapped disco album, its cool bass and enveloping sparkle hinting at a student of the French touch sound.<\/p>\n <\/span>Carly Rae Jepsen circa 2012.<\/span> Photograph: PR Company Handout<\/p>\n The Sound offers a rarity in the Jeppo catalogue: unequivocal exasperation, anger flashing as she rebukes an unpredictable lover. \u201cLove is more than telling me you want it,\u201d she sings over an abrupt beat, craving \u2013 once again \u2013 the feeling. The tender piano in the verses drives home what she\u2019s missing.<\/p>\n Not to accuse co-producer Jack Antonoff of recycling, but this song\u2019s bass\/percussion intro very much recalls his work on Lorde\u2019s Hard Feelings\/Loveless. Anyway, it sets up a fantastically feral CRJ moment: \u201cI wanna do bad things to you!\u201d she rhapsodises, with teeth-baring pep to rival early Madonna and robotic zip out of the Daft Punk playbook.<\/p>\n Jepsen\u2019s lead singles have sometimes failed to recreate former glories: see Call Me Maybe redux I Really Like You, a red herring for the depth of Emotion. But for the first taste of The Loneliest Time, she ditched her bangers-first approach for this gorgeous, dusky Rostam collab, a pandemic rumination on memory.<\/p>\n <\/span>Charli xcx (left) and and Carly Rae Jepsen in LA, 2018.<\/span> Photograph: Scott Dudelson\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Charli has form for drawing out unexpected sides of well-known artists, and the first taste of mixtape Pop 2 showed off an unusually, captivatingly desolate CRJ. The pair spun a tale of powerless self-sabotage in relationships, their Auto-Tuned voices fluttering \u201call alone, all alone, all alone\u201d over AG Cook and Easyfun\u2019s tweaky ghost-in-the-machine ballad.<\/p>\n Jepsen may be as good a successor to Kylie as we\u2019ve ever had: a beloved, benign pop presence with an endless thirst for cheeky disco. Shy Boy is Minogue-worthy: a commanding, tart invitation to the dancefloor, although CRJ fabulously overplays her hand in a wordy bridge that reveals just how frazzled desire has left her.<\/p>\n One billion times better than a song written for an animated kids\u2019 film about a ballerina should be, Cut to the Feeling is raw Jepsen ID: she\u2019s sticking her hand straight in the socket of desire, and conducting it through the rowdy, euphoric chorus, written at peak leaping-around tempo. It\u2019s basically Run Away with Me 2.0, but this is a song about overcoming reason, so just give in to it.<\/p>\n The first time I heard Call Me Maybe I thought it \u201cwasn\u2019t that catchy\u201d. Like biting into a chilli and declaring it \u201cnot very spicy\u201d, only to be left weeping and demanding pints of milk, its delirious strings, pogoing beat and Carly\u2019s nuclear-force yet endearingly innocent crush got the better of me. And rightly so.<\/p>\n Emotion arrived a year after Taylor Swift\u2019s 1989, the latter laden with lyrical Easter eggs that clearly identified her songs\u2019 subjects. Emotion hit certain listeners hard because it felt so free from subtext, hungering instead for BIG FEELINGS shot straight to the heart. The brazen sax and \u201coh-oh-whoa \/ OH-OH WHOA!\u201d of RAWM are a direct hit.<\/p>\n The moment a crush becomes reality is rare and beautiful. Often, it simply never happens. If it does turn into a relationship, that moment of tingling anticipation can still only happen once. Here, Jepsen and Rostam precisely capture the feverishness of finally being so close to someone\u2019s face, you can feel their breath. Their subtle rapture softens the arpeggiated judder of Robyn\u2019s Call Your Girlfriend into a beat that rushes like adrenaline, the song\u2019s body heat contrasting the parched desperation in Jepsen\u2019s voice. It skips the cathartic peak of many of her hits to circle this precious feeling, willing it to last as long as possible.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 20. Anything to Be With You (2023) Carly Rae Jepsen loves to squirrel away killer songs for her now-standard B-side collections. The opener to The Loveliest Time (the companion to 2022\u2019s The Loneliest Time) evinces several CRJ trademarks: a love of odd production in the drily funky guitar and playful percussion, breathy falsetto \u2013 and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15977,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[9432,102,9429,9434,9433,9430,3963,9259,9431,7469,7014,2118],"class_list":{"0":"post-15976","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-carly","9":"tag-hits","10":"tag-jams","11":"tag-jepsen","12":"tag-jepsens","13":"tag-popeye","14":"tag-rae","15":"tag-ranked","16":"tag-samples","17":"tag-slow","18":"tag-smash","19":"tag-songs"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15976\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15977"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}19. This Kiss (2012)<\/h2>\n
18. Cry (2016)<\/h2>\n
17. No Drug Like Me (2019)<\/h2>\n
16. All That (2015)<\/h2>\n
15. Joshua Tree (2022)<\/h2>\n
14. Boy Problems (2015)<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
13. Tiny Little Bows (2012)<\/h2>\n
12. Everything He Needs (2019)<\/h2>\n
11. Gimmie Love (2015)<\/h2>\n
10. Julien (2019)<\/h2>\n
9. The Sound (2019)<\/h2>\n
8. Want You in My Room (2019)<\/h2>\n
7. Western Wind (2022)<\/h2>\n
6. Charli xcx \u2013 Backseat (ft Carly Rae Jepsen) (2017)<\/h2>\n
5. Shy Boy (2023)<\/h2>\n
4. Cut to the Feeling (2017)<\/h2>\n
3. Call Me Maybe (2012)<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n
2. Run Away With Me (2015)<\/h2>\n
1. Warm Blood (2015)<\/h2>\n