Carly Rae Jepsen

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Japanese certifications (RIAJ): @owlcity & @carlyraejepsen, Good Time 2x Platinum (500,000).

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Sunny Sunday (in front of her home in L.A.):

 

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Japan gets all the good stuff

Includes "Cut To The Feeling" - released on September 13th.

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Huffington Post:

 

Cole Delbyck Entertainment Writer, HuffPost

Remember when Carly Rae Jepsen invented pop music?

Don’t fact check us on that, but, for some, there’s a distinct before and after when it comes to Jepsen’s place in the pop goddess history books. Ever since the Canadian singer threw a wish in the well with “Call Me Maybe,” the world dialed back with rapt attention and a thirst for more perfectly crafted pop confections. 

Luckily, Jepsen did that and then some with the critically lauded “Emotion” in 2015, which showed the world she had much more to offer than just an irresistibly catchy chorus. The ’80s synth-inspired album landed Jepsen on a number of “Best Of” lists and in the hearts of fans, many of them LGBTQ listeners, who resonated with her stories of heartbreak and, yes, really, really, really liking someone. 

Sitting on a surplus of more than 200 unreleased “Emotion” bops, Jepsen wasn’t done just yet. The reception was so overwhelmingly positive that the 31-year-old released a Side B, featuring eight new songs cut from the original album. Then, she dropped the new single “Cut To The Feeling” in May, as part of the soundtrack to the animated film “Leap!,” becoming a de facto song of the summer contender. 

But when we spoke to Jepsen, who recently headlined a concert for “M&M’S Spotlight” series, it became clear that accolades and saving pop music from Ed Sheeran isn’t what drives her to create. It’s finding that musical “spark,” as she puts it, and sending the love she receives every night onstage right back to her her fans.   

 

I saw you perform at Terminal 5 in New York City last year and it was low-key the best night of my life. 

Mine too. I loved that show and that space. I wanted to take the big disco balls home with me. 

You wrote over 250 songs for “Emotion.” How did you even begin to shape the record from such a massive amount of work? 

You go crazy. You spend nights listening to your own music on repeat and then you go so nuts that your friends come over and help you. You all have wine and you make little voting charts and try to figure out what feels the best. Then you try to put them in order, but you realize you have too many songs that are energy level five and you need a couple twos, so you go back. I think there’s always a point where you have to be like OK that’s the decision and run with it or you go a little nuts. 

How did you come to the decision to release “Emotion: Side B?” Also, thank you. 

The B-sides was this far-off dream that maybe some day we’d be able to share more of them. When I went into the label with my plea before “Emotion” was released, I was like, “OK guys get this. How do you feel about a 40-song album?” They were like, “No, that’s crazy. We can’t do that. You’ve got eight songs.” Somehow we negotiated and I got more than that.

Then fans kept asking in these meet-and-greet situations if I’d ever be into doing an “Emotion Side B” and the idea started taking more form. It didn’t take a lot of work to go back in and pick some ones that I wished I’d been able to share previously. 

I think I speak for many when I say we’d all happily listen to a Side C. 

Me too, but I don’t know if I’m gonna get away with it. Even with this next project, I’m already 50 songs deep and l’m already feeling that familiar longing of, “Oh, I wish there could be a way to share all of these.”

You blessed us all with the new single “Cut To The Feeling” earlier this year. What was the genesis behind the song and why did you choose to release it now? 

It was written a while back and part of the attempt for the first album, “Emotion.” I always thought it was a little theatrical in the way that I loved, but would suit something more like this movie. There were two sessions. The first time we all got together, we were pretty close ― we had the chorus in the right place, but verses needed some work. I find that happens a lot when you get together for a session and things are going great, but you come back with some perspective and dig a little deeper. It was such a fun collaboration and I’m really glad that its found its little home. 

So can you describe the actual feeling you are cutting to in the song? 

I think it’s cut the bullshit. It’s like I’m in and I want you to be just as in. Let’s stop playing games and just go for that euphoric high together because you can’t do it alone. 

What do you make of “Cut To The Feeling” being hailed as the song of the summer?

Obviously, it’s really flattering to hear that, but the song of the summer idea has always seemed a little crazy to me because I think you can have whole soundtracks and many songs. The summer is supposed to be filled with tons of music. Summer in itself is such a feeling to capture in a song and I think I’m always trying to capture that feeling. 

Every year there is this rat race to declare one song the song of the summer. Do you get caught up in that at all? 

Oh, I always think that’s a dangerous trap to get into. I think it can be a really easy thing to slip into a formula and referencing songs that have worked before, especially in the Los Angeles writing scene. It takes all of the heart out. All of the fun out. There has to be an initial spark or inspiration that’s stemming from something actually authentic inside you, and then you can go into all the rules and think about it. I think its a much more exciting place to just be coming at music always from the need to write it versus the I’m going to sit down and mathematically work out how to make money off this approach. That’s just going to kill you.

In a perfect world, “Cut To The Feeling” would remain on the top of the charts from here to eternity. Do you ever get frustrated with the commercial performance of a single or feel like your music is underrated? 

I think that there was a transition from the height of “Call Me Maybe” into new music afterward. It’s just a different reality as a human you experience, but I’ve actually learned to quite love and prefer the reality I’m in now. I’m not playing these massive stadiums with more Justin Bieber fans [than my own] and you kind of don’t know where your place is. We’ve been able to create this home within our touring family and the audiences that come who get it. It’s a little more intimate and less No. 1s, but I really don’t need those to be happy. 

What about can you tell me about the new music you’re working on? 

I’m writing so many songs, but I’m enjoying the process of it. I’ve worked with some people who I’ve admired for years, Patrick Burger among them. It’s been trudging on new ground for me. I’m not trying to make it exactly like I’ve done before and that’s always an exciting time for growth. 

Are there any particular genres or sounds that you’re playing with this time around? Your last album was so heavily inspired by ’80s pop music.

I have this total attraction to almost subtle, I-can-clean-my-house-to-this music sort of disco right now. But wherever my goal and destination is isn’t always where I end up landing. Sometimes I’m like, “We’re going to make a song like this,” but on the way there I make a left turn and it turns into a mamba. I don’t always know where I’m going, but that’s a fun discovery for me. 

What is unique about your fans? I’ve appreciated how most of them seem more interested in uplifting you than tearing other artists down. 

I find that to be one of the biggest gifts of this thing that in a world where there’s a lot of name-calling and judgement flying around, but for some reason we’ve landed in a place where everyone is kind and loving. I find that so incredible and I don’t know where that came from or why, but I feel so lucky to have that surrounding us. 

Why do you think your music has resonated so heavily with the LGBTQ community? 

I don’t know for sure, but I feel very, very fortunate for it. There’s nothing like that feeling when I’m onstage, and you can’t really explain it. It just feels like such a lovely thing that I’m one little part of. I hope that in turn everyone feels my love straight back and appreciation for that. 

Your fans have bestowed nicknames upon you like Carly Slay Jepsen and Carly Rae Jesuspsen. Do you have any personal favorites? 

You are making me laugh with these. My sister is in college just recently and her nickname was Katie Rage Jepsen. I don’t know about my own, but I would say any time someone’s put effort into making a T-shirt or a sign with one of those on it, it makes me feel so overwhelmed with joy.

 

 

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I'm curious on whose house this is...

It very Hollywood Director looking

 

[trashmagic 6,841]

RELEASE CRJ4 ALREADY

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3 hours ago, trashmagic said:

RELEASE CRJ4 ALREADY

I think the album is done. It's just up to Interscope to pick a release time. CRJ has been doing a lot of vacationing for the last 3 months...and I think any current studio time is for side projects with other artists. 

With Japan getting Side B+ in September. I think the new album will be pushed to 2018 now.

 

[Memorial Address 11,106]

Me and her are born a year apart, it's kinda crazy. If you ask me. 

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2 hours ago, ajp said:

I think the album is done. It's just up to Interscope to pick a release time. CRJ has been doing a lot of vacationing for the last 3 months...and I think any current studio time is for side projects with other artists. 

With Japan getting Side B+ in September. I think the new album will be pushed to 2018 now.

 

I wish she'd release Side B+ with even more songs. Bitch better gives us Eternal Summer 

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Me:

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CRJ will be in NYC on August 16th to be on the Today Show (NBC) promoting Leap! The Movie. No word on if she will be performing. 

 

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CRJ took in one of the LA Shows of Maggie Rogers. 

 

 

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I can't believe how much I overlooked Emotion's bonus tracks  Never Get To Hold You is slaying me hard now

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25 minutes ago, Cosmic Love said:

I can't believe how much I overlooked Emotion's bonus tracks  Never Get To Hold You is slaying me hard now

A total of 27 songs have been released from the E.MO.TION Sessions. There is so much to love and something for everyone 

 

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I Love her

 

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At Movie Premiere in LA:

 

 

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With Maddie Ziegler:

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Vulture.com Interview:

Carly Rae Jepsen on Her Relationship With Fame — and That New Album

By Jordan Crucchiola@jorcru

It’s been approximately 26 months since we’ve gotten a full-length Carly Rae Jepsen album, and her musical output in 2017 has been, despairingly, minimal: Jepsen contributed vocals to the song “Hate That You Know Me” on the new Bleachers album, Gone Now, but the only new solo sound we’ve heard from her since 2016’s Emotion Side Bis “Cut to the Feeling.” Jepsen decided to release the single — left over from more than 200 that she recorded for Emotion — in May to accompany her latest nonmusical endeavor, a voice-acting role in the new animated movie Leap!

“It’s such a theatrical piece,” Jepsen told Vulture about her decision to lend “Cut to the Feeling” to Leap!, which tells the story of a young orphan (Elle Fanning) who trains with Jepsen’s character to become a prima ballerina. “I kind of had dreams of it being in a musical, so when this opportunity came up, it just felt like the perfect home.” In advance of Leap!’s August 25 premiere (and while we wait for her tour with Katy Perry), Vulture spoke to Jepsen about the Carly Slay army, working with Jack Antonoff, the phenomenon of being a mainstream artist with cult appeal, and when you can expect that new album. (Yes, she’s working on it.)

When “Cut to the Feeling” came out, I saw this incredible tweet that said, “if you play cut to the feeling at zero volume, gays within a 0.5-mile radius will still be able to hear it. science is fascinating.” As someone who maintains a pretty private life most of the time, when did you become aware of this intense, cult Carly Slay fandom?

I don’t know if it’s me versus just having a night of celebration and losing ourselves in the music together. What I love so much about the performances lately — for the last round of things — is that it didn’t really feel like all eyes [were] on me. It felt like we were just at a group sing-along together, and I was one little part of it. That’s much more of a comfortable place for me to be. But you’re right. Every night we go on stage, and the band boys and me look at each other and we’re like, “How did we get so lucky to have such kind, excited, exuberant people here, who have learned the words to some of the songs that are more like B sides?” It’s crazy, but I love it, and it’s my favorite part of the whole thing.

Another thing I’ve heard around the internet and from a few friends is, “The calendar doesn’t tell you when summer starts. Carly Rae Jepsen tells you when summer starts.”

That’s almost too much pressure!

It really could be. So if that’s a calling card you’ve developed, do you feel a nudge to create in a direction that aligns with that summer aesthetic, or to maybe create against it? To intentionally do something different?

It’s a really good point. I am in the middle, right now, of working on things for my next album, and my process is a crazy one. I wish that I could have a different one, but I just can’t seem to. I write and I write and I overwrite, and part of the reason of doing that is to flesh out the fear-based songs that are like, “Here’s what’s expected. Here’s what I want to do.” The more I listen to that, it leads to, “Here is the obvious decision,” and the obvious decision is always to make something that you’re proud of, that you love, that you feel is the best work you can do. I want to know that I’m going to feel the same way about Emotion whether people kind of change their minds and hate it, and it’s the same for this next one. You can’t base so much off of the positive or the negative, or you start to believe that as your own opinion of your work. It’s a sacred thing to hold onto, that strength, and the rest is just, like, bonus!

I was listening to an NPR interview you did in 2015, where you talked about the process of writing your last album in a way that was reactive to, but also independent of, “Call Me Maybe” and the beginnings of your career. With a couple of years to digest that experience, do you feel like the new work is its own thing, or is it answering to previous work you’ve done?

I’m not worried about that, because I don’t think I want to make the same thing twice. In terms of how will people react to it: That type of thinking is very unhealthy. I think if you’re looking to just have your ego boxes checked and [hear] people saying all the right things, it’s a really dangerous energy to bring into the studio. However, one of the things I love most about music is connection. When I’m writing a song that feels like a journal entry, and I’m being like, “Oh, this is like everything about what’s going on in my life, and I’ve explained it so well!” — that song might not [have] the same importance to me as a song where, when I play it for you, you’re like, “Oh my God, this explains everything that’s going on in my life, and it means so much to me!” I find real joy in that — in being able to connect with mutually felt experiences, not just my own.

You do elicit a very high empathic response to your songwriting — fans feel like they know you and you’re writing to their personal experiences. Do you feel like your fans are actually getting the “real” you?

I feel like every year, I’m painfully stripping closer and closer. Also, I’ve made some changes in the way I look at the business and my place in it. I don’t care that much about maybe some of the things that I should care about, but the ultimate thing for me is caring about leaving something good after I die. So I’m not really worried about how well it sells or how well it does. The game is fun, yes. I understand the game. But I’m never going to sacrifice what I think is the quality of something to win. I think the only way to really win at the game — and by the game, I mean the business — is to win it authentically, almost by accident, because it just was a true version of yourself. I’m not going to be satisfied if something works and felt like it wasn’t me, you know?

What was behind the decision to voice-act in a project like Leap!versus acting live? Did it have anything to do with your desire to stay — at least relatively, compared to other pop stars — out of the public eye? 

Going into it, I was just like, “Oh, I haven’t really tried anything like this before!” And ever since watching My Little Pony and realizing that wasn’t actually a pony, I was like, “I want to have the job that does that.” But when the opportunity came, I don’t think I was thinking about it in terms of a chess match: “If I do this, it will look good over here, later on.” I just wanted to do it because it seems fun, and that’s generally how I make most of my decisions. But it’s strange, because I think you did tap into something there.

I think with Grease [Live!], I had this childhood theatrical side of me that thought I would love the experience. And don’t get me wrong. It was fun, but it was so nerve-wracking and so anxiety-provoking that I had to actually have a talk with myself. Like, “You say that you like this, because you think that you should, but maybe this isn’t actually what you like and you’re just kind of pushing yourself to do something that’s really uncomfortable.” So when I did get to do this voice-over work — my safest, favorite place is in the studio — I love that! I still love to go onstage when it’s our songs and we understand them, but my favorite thing about getting to do the behind-the-scenes work is you’re out there, but you don’t have too many eyes on you. It’s a great combination for me, you know?

It did strike me during Grease that I was seeing you in a way that I hadn’t before. There are music videos and tour performances, but seeing you on TV live was a noticeable departure.

Yeah. I was sick the night before having to do it. I was just so scared, but it was good! I think I hid myself under the hair. I was like, “There’s a lot of wig going on! No one will be able to tell!” I think my nerves really came out during the song. I had, like, no breath at all.

As far as studio work goes, when you and Jack Antonoff go into the room together, what’s the wavelength that you guys get on? Is there a creative destination in mind, or are you guys just bouncing ideas around?

I feel like we have pretty similar taste, and there’s a great friendship there that’s developed over the years. There’s also sort of an understanding and an insight into the journey of this crazy music business: You have to keep evolving in it to not kill your soul. We’ve bonded in a lot of different ways, and I can’t really explain. That’s probably why I love writing with Jack so much. It’s so not formulaic. You get in there and he’ll kind of start buzzing around and start shouting things, and we’ll look back at each other at the end of it and be like, “Why did we write this song?” And that’s always the thing. Working with someone like that, who has such a personality to his music, is such a gift, because you get to then throw in yours and spice it up and hopefully make something unique together. Some of them turn out to be weird little experiments, and then some of them turn out to be some of my favorite tunes.

I want to talk about your song “L.A. Hallucinations,” where you also refer to the industry as a game. I’m curious how your outlook on that part of the business has changed with time.

You know, I had a really interesting conversation with a girlfriend just last week about this, and she changed my thinking on it. Because I think it’s really easy to get into that tunnel effect of “Oh, L.A. is so superficial,” and “that’s so L.A.” becomes this really negative connotation. I think, coming from Canada, it was a very different experience. When you’re in a very tight, little knit bubble of working and writing songs every day, you’re kind of living these Peter Pan lifestyles that don’t offer a lot of reality. You’re not socializing with a dentist and a teacher at night; everyone is in the same game and they’re fighting and strategizing. It’s a lovely community to visit. You just need to get space outside of it. One of the things my friend said to me was, “Let’s just stop saying we don’t like L.A. Let’s just change it to ‘We love L.A.,’ and find things that we love about it.”

You do have to create community in your space. I travel so much, when I was coming home and having time off, I would just pour myself into work, rather than really establishing a life here like I had in Canada. So that’s what I’ve been working to do. I’m, like, five years into living in this town. I’m like, “Maybe I should change my attitude!” But I really am trying. Sometimes, I just want to cocoon up like a potato in my house and then fly out when I need to, but I do feel like whenever I make the decision to be brave, I always get more out of it.

I have to ask: When will you have new music? When is that next album coming?

I’ll say this: I have my own little game plan, but life’s a mystery, and you never know what could happen. I’m open to a little flexibility in that, obviously. I don’t run the show in terms of what happens [when], but I definitely feel like I’m starting to have a game plan, yes.