{"id":103620,"date":"2022-10-21T09:24:05","date_gmt":"2022-10-21T09:24:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/carly-rae-jepsen-pierces-the-fantasy\/"},"modified":"2022-10-21T09:24:05","modified_gmt":"2022-10-21T09:24:05","slug":"carly-rae-jepsen-pierces-the-fantasy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/carly-rae-jepsen-pierces-the-fantasy\/","title":{"rendered":"Carly Rae Jepsen Pierces the Fantasy"},"content":{"rendered":"
In Carly Rae Jepsen’s rich trove of gemlike pop songs, one 2019 track, \u201cJulien,\u201d gleams with special purity. Over a cool disco beat, Jepsen makes a promise: \u201cTo the last breath that I breathe \/ I’ll be whispering, ‘Julien.’\u201d On her recent concert tour, on stages decorated with puffy clouds and silver stars, Jepsen has updated her take on Julien, a real man she once dated. He is, she has shouted at a few shows, \u201ca dick!\u201d<\/p>\n
This bit, Jepsen told me recently, is less about attacking her ex than attacking her listener’s expectations. \u201cOh, Julien, poor guy,\u201d Jepsen, 36, said. \u201cHe’s not, like, a terrible<\/i> guys He’s just not the guy who ended up being for me, so it feels hilarious that I keep singing about him as ‘the last breath that I breathe.’\u201d These days, she wants \u201cto let the audience know to not believe too much in the fairy tale of Julien.\u201d<\/p>\n
Puncturing fantasies might seem contrary to Jepsen’s whole joyful-escapism shtick. But there’s a reason the fans at her sold-out shows have a tradition of presenting her with toy swords, as if she’s their warrior queen. Jepsen’s continually delightful career embodies the truth about great bubblegum music: Its squishy sweetness contains hard, unkillable realism. The video for \u201cCall Me Maybe,\u201d the surprise hit that brought her global fame in 2012, shows her dreaming about\u2014but not getting\u2014the hunk in her front yard. A decade later, on her introspective and varied fifth album, The Loneliest Time<\/i>the grit underlying her music’s glitter is more perceptible than ever.<\/p>\n
When I spoke with her on Zoom, Jepsen’s platinum-blond hair and intense stare gave her the slight air of a Targaryen, though a charmingly expressive one. She whirled through exaggerated mannerisms and spoke fast, in a tea-kettle rasp of a voice. Just before our call, she’d been working on a logistical problem involving the lighting rig around the large talking moon that is the centerpiece of her present tour. After she helped her team solve the issue, she said, her security guard paid her a compliment: \u201cLike, ‘I just love how tough of a boss lady you are!’\u201d<\/p>\n
The Loneliest Time <\/i>arose from Jepsen having her fortitude tested over the past few years. When the COVID-19 pandemic slowed her world down, she had to face the sacrifices she’d made\u2014broken relationships, missed milestones\u2014to the hustle of show business. Family tragedies, including the death of her grandmother, drove home that she did n’t know \u201chow to handle life shit, like when stuff gets hard,\u201d she said. On the album’s opener, \u201cSurrender My Heart,\u201d she recounts what happened when she sought counsel: \u201cI paid to toughen up in therapy \/ She said to me, ‘Soften up.’\u201d<\/p>\n
Describing that therapy session to me, Jepsen imitated the mind-blown emoji to demonstrate how the \u201csoften up\u201d <\/i>advice hit her. Over the years, she said, she had baked herself into a \u201ctough little cookie\u201d who appeared \u201chappy all the time\u201d: \u201cNot just for my career, but also for my family, I very much felt that pressure to be like ‘ Everything’s good; I’ve got it.’\u201d<\/i> \u201cSurrender My Heart\u201d signals a shift, calling for vulnerability not from a lover, as her music typically does, but from herself. The synth-pop arrangement is unsurprisingly anthemic\u2014but Jepsen sings with a trembling tenderness that feels new. \u201cIt was almost a prayer,\u201d she said of the track. “I want<\/i> to be open.\u201d<\/p>\n
Part of what she’s opening up about is quite dark. Sometime in the past few years, another family member of hers died suddenly. For privacy reasons, she’s not discussing the details, but the new song \u201cBends\u201d does sketch out the aftermath. A dial-tone-like beat from the experimental pop producer Bullion conjures numbed shock; warm, wafting choruses evoke what she called the \u201csad, communal feeling\u201d she shared with family members. At a playback session during which she revealed new material to her team, she hesitated about debuting such a personal track. \u201cAt the very end of the meeting, when people are grabbing donuts and [leaving],\u201d she recalled, \u201cI was like, ‘Ahhhh, I also did this<\/i> song.’\u201d<\/p>\n
The album’s fun moments have an uneasy tinge too. On the irrepressible \u201cBeach House,\u201d a cast of male vocalists play shady suitors, including one dude who’s \u201cprobably going to harvest your organs.\u201d The song is inspired by Jepsen’s own short period on dating apps: \u201cOne of the real fears is you go on a real date and you fear for your life,\u201d she explained. Counterbalancing that cynicism is \u201cSo Nice,\u201d a laid-back ode to a lover who is really polite. When her managers suggested that the song was too sweet, she went and added an even sweeter bridge. The extremity is the point. \u201cThere’s a creepy element to it, where everyone’s like ‘What’s the catch?’\u201d she said. \u201cDot dot dot … nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n
A similar idea underlies many of the album’s songs about returning to an old flame\u2014a story line that is \u201csongwriter’s gold\u201d not because it’s romantic, but because \u201cit’s dangerous,\u201d she explained: \u201cYou can kind of be addicted to the bad kind of love.\u201d The string-laden ecstasy of the album’s title track\u2014\u201cIs this nirvana?\u201d Jepsen and guest vocalist Rufus Wainwright sing\u2014is, for example, a parody of a happily-ever-after. \u201cI don’t think that’s how running back to your exes in the middle of the night, in the pouring rain, really works out,\u201d Jepsen said. On the standout \u201cBad Thing Twice,\u201d a Fleetwood Mac\u2013ian bass line pulses restlessly as she sings about astrology and ill-advised attachment. \u201cI’m embracing the qualities of Scorpio, which aren’t always wonderful ones,\u201d she said. \u201cI thrive on a little chaos.\u201d<\/p>\n
The album’s biggest curveball, \u201cGo Find Yourself or Whatever,\u201d certainly shows off her sting. The casually funny title\u2014like \u201cCall Me Maybe\u201d so long ago\u2014demonstrates Jepsen’s knack for capturing how people really talk, and a friend-slash-ex of hers inspired the withering lyrics: \u201cYou feel safe in sorrow \/ You feel safe on an open road.\u201d (Only later did she realize that she might also be describing herself.) A wistful folk ballad complete with a banjo breakdown, the track hardly delivers the pep her listeners crave. Yet when she played it at her New York City show a few weeks ago, her rowdy audience grew hushed, before erupting in a wave of cheers.<\/p>\n
At another point in the show, Jepsen threw her blazer on the ground and acted mad about the fact that The Loneliest Time<\/i> would come out on the same day as Taylor Swift’s new album. Fans cackled at the subtext. Jepsen, firmly a cult figure these days, has never reached the level of enduring fame that Swift enjoys. But Jepsen was only pretending to be resentful. \u201cShe She’s a lovely artist; she it’s not like throwing any shade, \u201dshe told me of Swift. She added that after \u201cCall Me Maybe,\u201d she felt pressure to compete with other singers, as if they were rivals for a throne. But \u201cit’s not that way,\u201d she said. Pop, she has learned, is \u201clike love. It’s limitless.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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In Carly Rae Jepsen’s rich trove of gemlike pop songs, one 2019 track, \u201cJulien,\u201d gleams with special purity. Over a cool disco beat, Jepsen makes a promise: \u201cTo the last breath that I breathe \/ I’ll be whispering, ‘Julien.’\u201d On her recent concert tour, on stages decorated with puffy clouds and silver stars, Jepsen has …<\/p>\n