Carly Rae Jepsen - Topic

After Carly Rae Jepsen released her critically acclaimed album E·MO·TION in 2015, it became “a modern touchstone for a new crop of pop-leaning artists and legacy acts,” as NPR noted, adding that “the blast radius of E•MO•TION is expansive.” The album also inspired an abundance of memes — extending the cultural cachet that Jepsen earned from the ubiquity of her Grammy-nominated blockbuster hit “Call Me Maybe” (from her U.S debut album Kiss), which not only climbed to No. 1 on the iTunes Singles charts in over 47 countries, sold over 20 million singles worldwide, and was certified Diamond in the U.S., but was referenced by everyone from former secretary-of-state Colin Powell to Cookie Monster.

Jepsen’s new album, Dedicated, retains the joyful, hook-filled feeling of its predecessor. But where E*MO*TION, which featured the platinum single "I Really Like You," was an ’80s-influenced synth-pop classic that Rolling Stone called “a pop masterclass” and Stereogum called “indisputable, unfuckwithable pop genius,” Dedicated has a more ’70s-inspired feel at times (though the album defies categorization as a whole). At one point, Jepsen was sure she was making a disco opus. “The title was going to be ‘Disco Sweat,’” she says with a laugh. “I really bought into it.” But Jepsen had a change of heart thanks to her travels over the past two years, which included writing trips to the Swedish countryside (“It was spring and there were fields of flowers, homemade breads, and kittens running everywhere”) and a beach in Nicaragua, where she surfed and stayed in a cabana-like casita. Then there was an Eat Pray Love-esque solo vacation in Italy. “I had so many songs,” she says. “I needed some space to walk around, reflect, eat pasta, and get to know myself a bit.”

Eventually Jepsen landed on what she thought was a finished album, “but then I just kept trying to beat it,” she said. “It became like a Tetris game of replacing songs when something new started to feel like it was winning.” Working with a crew of trusted songwriters and producers, among them John Hill, Jack Antonoff, Captain Cuts, Kyle Shearer, James Flannigan, Patrik Berger, and her longtime collaborator Tavish Crowe, Jepsen indulged in more sonic experimentation than she has in the past. “Whatever my mood is in life, it very much affects what I’m writing,” she says. “So maybe one of these emo songs fits, one of the disco songs fits. We can use three infatuation songs, but beyond that people are going to be sick.