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Carly Rae Jepsen

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12 minutes ago, Dennis Reynolds said:

@ajp Did they at least upload all the photos, or it is just the one where I look like a weirdo? fall8 

I found just the one on Twitter. Now, the whole world knows you’re weird... nicki5

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Indecision and immaculate pop with Carly Rae Jepsen

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By: Alex Robert Ross

FADER.com

Indecision and immaculate pop with Carly Rae Jepsen

It took four years and 200 songs for the Canadian pop artist to settle on the tracklist for her latest album, Dedicated. Don’t expect her process to change soon.

Earlier this year, Carly Rae Jepsen took time off from doing press in Amsterdam to go shopping with her hair and makeup artist, Aga Donzik. In one store, Jepsen saw an abstract print of a woman on a pinkish background next to text that read: “I think I’m thinking too much.” She decided immediately that she had to own it, but as she was going up to pay the store attendant, she saw another, almost identical print — this one on a blueish background. She was suddenly gripped by panic; she couldn’t decide which to buy. So she ended up buying them both, hauling them across the Atlantic, and realizing that she had overthought buying a print that said she thought she was thinking too much. 

“Like, yah, y'think?” Jepsen says now, beaming, sitting in an alcove inside a white-walled office space in midtown Manhattan. “You couldn't even pick one print! One's pink, one's blue! It was so stupid, but it's a fault of mine.”

That indecision won’t come as a shock to Jepsen’s army of fans. This is the Carly Rae Jepsen who wrote 250 songs for her dazzling 2015 album E•MO•TION, waited a year to release eight (almost equally brilliant) outtakes on a separate LP called E•MO•TION: Side B, then spent two years writing, recording, tweaking, axing, and overthinking before releasing its deft full-length follow up, Dedicated. She says she’s written three songs for her next album already, but admits she’ll probably have to write another couple of hundred before anyone hears new music. 

That’s partly Jepsen being a perfectionist, making sure that every synth, hook, and bridge hits at just the right moment for her euphoric, neon-lit pop to take hold. But it’s also a matter of life experience. In the three years since the E•MO•TION tour wound down, Jepsen has been in love and felt the sting of a breakup; she’s traveled to Nicaragua to write, New York to record, and rural Italy to escape a stifling Los Angeles. Her ability to articulate emotional extremes remains intact: ”I want you in my room / On the bed! On the floor! / I don’t care anymore!” she sings on one of Dedicated’s high points. But she reveals little scars of loneliness and introspection just as often, whether she’s trying to ignore potential romance on “Happy Not Knowing” or fighting against insecurity on “Too Much.” Both on record and in person, Jepsen can dissect complex feelings with sharp one-liners.

The last time I saw you perform live was at Irving Plaza on the E•MO•TIONtour. I remember thinking that half the crowd there would have happily died on the spot after seeing that set. Was the response you got on that tour surprising or even overwhelming?

It was very surprising and it's still surprising. I think that's the main feeling that I have every night that I go out: OK, I guess this is going to be a party tonight. I feel very lucky, and I don't know how we landed in that world, where everyone comes ready to be in a room of love and enjoy the night. I feed off of that energy and it just ends up making me stoked to do the show every time.

You got off that tour in mid-2016 and spent a lot of time in L.A. before deciding to go to Italy. When did you decide you needed to have that break? Was there an emotional breaking point

I had gone through a break-up, and it was a little after that that I was like, OK, I've gotta go and get out of L.A. You have to pop the L.A. bubble every once in a while. I found that I was secluding myself anyway, and I thought it would be fun to take that energy of wanting to be alone and just go have an adventure — try and make it more of a pilgrimage of sorts. My sister had been to Italy not too long before and was just gushing about her trip, so I was like this is the spot, let's go. I hadn't done a solo travel before and I was always just, as a teen, thought that was something I would like to do as an adult at some point. It was only three weeks that we had. I was writing a lot up until leaving and as soon as I got back. So I just made a rule: no writing, [only] listen to other peoples' music, go walk and explore and try to do some fun things on my own.

It seems like your process is sort of continuous. You've said you hear melodies when you're dreaming.

I've written three songs since we started this tour — I don't know what they're for.

So how did you turn off during that time in Italy?

I did, and I didn't. I was still humming things, but I was more trying to get out of the blues, as simple as that sounds, and I wanted to reconnect to that feeling you have when you're a confident child. When you don't really think about how you're perceived, you're just reconnecting and getting to know yourself a bit.I feel like the first week I was very lonely and very confused as to why I had made this decision, and by week two I was just starting to enjoy the silence of it. By week three, I was starting to want to be social. I made some friends!

Were you writing in a journal?

I kept a journal, yeah.

Do you feel like you're organizing your feelings as you're writing?

It's very much how I process what I'm going through. It's very therapeutic, in a way. And I try things on with it. It's very much the way that journals are, when you write about a feeling — that day you felt it so much, and then the next day you're like, Ah, I was being dramatic. When I say that I wrote three songs since starting this tour, they're all about the same subject from different perspectives of how I could go at it — what I wanted to feel, what I was really feeling. The sadness and the happiness of it. 

Is it difficult doing that on tour? Does tour become too much of a bubble to really feel those things?

No, tour is a very natural state for me. I really find my joy in tour. I love the socialness and the network of family that we've created. We've got an exceptional touring group, we love each other. It's almost like if you decided to take a group of people and have them live in a big house together. Every night you can pick who you want to go to dinner with or do big, group, family ones. Because of my upbringing — I have divorced parents — I would switch houses every two days. So the feeling of not knowing where I am and waking up somewhere new is really natural to me. I always joke with my parents that they prepared me for this lifestyle.

Was that part of the Dedicated process then? You were bouncing back and forth, you recorded with Jack Antonoff in New York —

He was bouncing back from New York to L.A., so we met up whenever it made sense. But we started writing in New York at his place, then we moved to a studio in L.A. for a bunch. Then I went to Nicaragua for a couple of writers camps, which I would never have done had I not been painfully single, but I was like, Let's try a new thing, we'll see what happens.

What sort of a writers camp was it?

Neon Gold Records. I wasn't part of the label or anything, but Derek [Davies, the label’s co-founder] reached out and just said we've got a bunch of producers there, we want to get a couple of artists. I always thought that it was such a corporate way of going at something that was supposed to be safe and protective, and then I saw the pictures of the beach and I was like, This could be an extended Italy! I had been asked to try a couple of these by my publishers in the past, and I'd always shot them down, and I just thought I shouldn't knock it until I try it. I'm so glad that I did. A lot of the people who were invited were L.A.-based, so it also spread out my friend menu as well. Most people were complete strangers; that's how I met the Captain Cuts boys and wrote "Now That I Found You" on the first day. We were in a mood that was the opposite of what I expected. Rather than being shoved in the corner of a room in these dark studios, we were in these casitas with not enough functioning work gear to do what we needed to do. So we came back to L.A. and did it properly. It was good enough to work on the idea, you could just hear monkeys screaming in the background. 

It was four years between the records. You posted to social media saying, "She writes something like 50 tunes for her next album, takes a break in Italy and — plot twist.... never comes back!" I think it's quite rare for a pop singer now to get off that hamster wheel so successfully. Do you find yourself having to constantly resist outside pressure to be allowed your time to work on this?

More than anything, I forget that it's a job. I know it it, but I have a passionate mission statement that I wanted to create something that I was really proud of, and I think around the time that I went to Italy, I had done a lot of stuff, but I knew I wasn't quite satisfied yet. And my process has always been to overwrite from the get-go, but I don't knock it as much as I used to anymore. I'd love if it wasn't; I'd love if it was like, Here's the 15 songs, done! I'm picky, and I'm hard on my own work so I'm trying to work out what feels right. I had a couple of things that I was excited by, but they weren't doing it, and I knew that I was starting to create that hamster wheel. It's not getting better, so I need to switch it up, and some headspace out of this will freshen me up to come back and have the energy — and some life experiences — to be inspired to write about something differently or come at it from a different angle.

On E•MO•TION it seemed like you were coming at one thing from a bunch of different angles. I wonder what you think the biggest difference is — lyrically, in particular — between the two records.

I think this one's a little more journal-entry style. I got very fantastical with E•MO•TION, which was very fun. I wanted to honor my adult years of some of the feelings that were a little more melancholy, and do it in a way that felt like it was my taste on pop. Sometimes I can hear a song back and be like, Oooh, that's very personal! And I usually am a little afraid... my main goal is still always wanting to connect, rather than [saying], Here's the story of my life. I want to share that, but equally as vital is finding something that's universally felt, because I want it to be the soundtrack to other peoples' lives in a way where they can make it their own and it's their journal. 

Is it difficult to share some of those emotions with other people, when you're writing with them and producing with them? Have you ever found that hard?

There's definitely people that you feel safer with. Tavish Crowe [a longtime Jepsen collaborator who co-wrote “Call Me Maybe”] has always been the guy that I can say the stupidest idea in the room to, and it's fine because he knows it's just a step for us. But that's the vital step in between — the silly step, the step where you just say the outrageous thing that might just be brilliant if you sculpt it a little bit. Jack I feel very safe — we're both so silly [Jepsen starts singing "I want you in my room," then shouts "On the bed! On the floor!"]. It's like [rolls eyes] okay, but maybe that could work! Let's try it! I think that's why the friendship connection is so important to me. I'll go in with a stranger, but I feel like we usually don't get a good song until we've gotten to know each other and there's a mutual respect, no egos involved, everyone knows what everyone is capable of. You're just there to be vessels for the song.

Which I guess is how you end up taking a Popeye sample...

That was a long friendship with C.J. Baron and Ben Romans, who had worked on “Emotion” with me. That song, I scribbled out the lyrics on a coffee cup — we couldn't find the paper — but those guys and me area all not-so-secret musical theatre nerds. We were all saying that one day it would be great if we could get a cabin in the woods and write that pop musical we've been talking about. I liked the angle of how, when [Olive] was singing it to Popeye, it was very like "He needs me," but more like a man needs a maid — to cook him dinner. I love spinning it on its head, like he needs me emotionally, physically, sexually, intellectually. He needs me for who I am rather than what I can do for him. And I love the idea that we could sex up a Popeye song. Why not? Give it a go. Add some fuck.

That's very Carly Rae Jepsen — taking an idea to its extreme. That’s what struck me about “Too Much,” which seems like something new for you lyrically. It feels a little like a hangover — like things have gone too far and caught up with you.

Yeah, on that song I think was indulging my insecurity. Romantically, but also just in general, I feel like there are people who can make you feel like you should be smaller. And that is one of the hardest things to express, why that hurts so much. I am not a naturally subtle person, and I feel like romantically that's a tricky thing to find the right kind of bullfighter who can not be scared of that. It's been a lesson in my life to look for the person who can do that rather than trying to make myself small.

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In an interview with Metro UK, CRJ is working on a Musical:

Carly Rae Jepsen on Emotion, writing a pop musical and all of those scrapped albums

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Emma Kelly Friday 18 Oct 2019 2:00 pm

Many artists would struggle to move on from a viral mega-smash hit without the label of ‘one hit wonder’ taped to their back.

And many would have assumed Carly Rae Jepsen would fall victim to this fate after the success of the insanely catchy Call Me Maybe, which hit number one in the UK, US, Canada, Australia and all across Europe in 2012.

But then came her critically acclaimed 2015 album Emotion, which cemented Carly as a pop music darling and revolutionised Spotify playlists and LGBTQ+ club night setlists forever. Since then, Carly has given us the sublime Cut To The Feeling, scrapped an entire disco album and released her fourth studio album, Dedicated.

However, she’s not done with her world domination plans just yet.

‘I am definitely a workaholic, but it’s also my passion, so it doesn’t feel like I’m just work-obsessed – it’s what I want to do, and I’m lucky to have found that at a young age,’ Carly told Metro.co.uk while in Finland, working with Sound of Lapland.

‘I’ll be on the road til March, we’re doing Canada, then Japan, south-east Asia. But after that, I don’t know. I’m considering moving to New York.

‘But I don’t think I’ll be jumping directly into a new album – maybe another project. I’ve been talking about writing a pop musical. That’s a really fun dream. It was a friends meeting that turned into a business meeting. We were collaborating and performing, and our musical producer was like “what do you do with the rest of your songs?”

‘It’s maybe a five, ten year plan because it would take a lot of time to create, but yeah, it’s always been something I’ve dreamed about doing.’

A Carly Rae Jepsen musical? We’re already putting pennies aside for the tickets.

However, while Carly is considering taking her music to the stage, she’s not as keen on treading the boards for it. The 33-year-old has acted before, nabbing the leading role in the Broadway production of Cinderella and starring as Frenchy in Fox’s Grease: Live, but they weren’t the easiest of gigs.

‘I really enjoyed Cinderella, but Fox Live was a little scary for me. I got through it, but I was so scared.

‘It would have to be the right thing. It doesn’t mean I’m not interested in theatre and acting, but it would have to be the right thing and that I felt comfortable.’

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Carly released her fourth album this year (Picture: Rich Fury/Getty Images for Spotify)

Since her debut in 2008 with Sunshine On My Shoulders and Tug of War (following her coming fifth place on Canadian Idol), Carly – who hails from British Columbia in Canada – has gone from strength to strength.

Her second album Kiss was a huge hit thanks to Call Me Maybe, Good Time with Owl City and Tonight I’m Getting Over You, and while Emotion wasn’t as commercially successful, the 2015 record was a critical smash, landing on numerous best albums of the year lists and achieving cult status with fans.

So when it came to releasing her fourth studio album, Carly admits there was definite pressure.

‘I’m an album lover, maybe one of the last,’ she said. ‘With Dedication, it was a real decision I made that I wasn’t going to rush. It’s been such a rollercoaster ride. I really loved pop music, but I felt like I hadn’t found my kind of take on it yet.

‘Emotion helped that, and I was really excited to work on Dedicated, but I wanted to keep things moving. With life, love, experiences and travel, I had a new perspective on things.

‘It was a different pressure – I think it was a pressure I put on myself, knowing that I wanted to create something different but not knowing what that was yet. I loved the 80s vibe of Emotion, but I wanted to do something different, and I think we got there eventually. But did I put pressure [on myself], yes – I wrote 200 songs.

‘I mean, it was a long period of time, and I started writing immediately after Emotion, and some of those songs have four different versions.

‘I’m not saying everything I have is right there, but my process is just to write and write until I find something.’

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Carly was inspired by Lapland (Picture: Blake Price)

And writing and writing until she finds something led to Carly completing an entire disco album, which is now ditched forever – and that’s not the only scrapped album the starlet has hiding away.

Admitting there may be some other records we’ll never hear, Carly added: ‘Knock on wood, I’ve never really had writer’s block, but it doesn’t mean I don’t write really bad songs or that I don’t write the same song a couple of times.’

Dedication was released in May, seven months after its lead single Party For One,but Carly hasn’t stopped playing with the material.

Carly has new projects in the pipeline (Picture: Xavi Torrent/WireImage)

Earlier this year, she flew out to Lapland, Finland in collaboration with the Sound of Lapland to soak up the sounds of nature in the stunning region, culminating in a live recording at a stunning lake in Ruka-Kuusamo.

Carly and her band stripped back fan favourite track The Sound to include tranquil instrumentation, resulting in a totally live performance with both audio and video recorded outdoors on a remote lakeside jetty.

And the visit to Lapland gave Carly plenty of inspiration.

‘It’s been magical,’ she said. ‘There are some places that you go to where you’re just stopped in your tracks. It’s a totally different kind of beauty.

‘It was a dream opportunity in my mind, and I wouldn’t have said yes if I wasn’t so fascinated about coming, because I’m right in the middle of my US and Canada tour. My manager was like, “won’t you be tired?” and I was like “I’ll be fine, it will be worth it!” And it definitely has.’

Speaking about the performance, she said: ‘Nature is a part of my childhood and my very best memories. Here in Lapland I’ve been amazed by how the quiet space allows for ideas to float into my head. It has been unlike anything I have ever experienced.’

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56 minutes ago, idrk said:

I was watching the making of emotion and heard these two songs (second song starts where the comment is) the second song I managed to filter out from around half way through but the first one wouldn't so its just a snippet from the first few seconds

the second unknown song took up like 1/3 of the entire video so its weird how 1/3 of the making of emotion was a song we never got to heardead2

her powerful vocals in the second half of the second song when she says come backcry0 5 emotion era leaks isn't enough we need 200kesha4

 

I love the “Making of Emotion” video on YouTube. I think all the songs previewed in the video were suppose to be released on Emotion, but somehow the final results were different moo12

Who knows if we will ever hear the full versions moo12

I believe she did a similar video for Dedicated cause David was filming behind the scenes, like he did for “Making of Emotion” but nothing...I wonder, what happened? um1 Maybe all the tracks were scrapped, knowing her. dead2

 

 

 

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44 minutes ago, idrk said:

she should have a Soundcloud page where she posts all the scrapped stuff for her fanscheryl1

I do know that some songs she keeps (for future projects), some songs she gives to her publisher (to sell to other acts) and some songs go back to original writers/producers (which they can keep for themselves or leak) - These are the ones we can hope to hear one day. 

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