Carly Rae Jepsen—E•MO•TION
This album is, in many ways, the album Taylor Swift’s 1989 could and should have been. Carly Rae Jepsen — she of “Call Me Maybe” and Canada’s apology for Justin Bieber — joined her songwriting talents with a number of prodigious co-writers and came out with E•MO•TION. This album is about as perfect a collection of sugary 80′s-inflected pop music as you’ll ever find. Every moment of this record sparkles with immaculate production, Jepsen’s stellar vocals, and more professional-grade hooks than a bass fishing tournament. At the same time, it’s much more than that. Although E•MO•TION owes a great deal to the ghosts of pop music past, it’s at its most interesting and exciting in the moments it begins to chart its own course. It manages to transcend pastiche not by obscuring its influences, but by evolving and combining them in innovative and exuberant ways.
The album announces itself with “Run Away With Me” and a saxophone solo. It’s a choice that immediately puts E•MO•TION on a short list of pop albums and indicates that Jepsen is not interested in being conventional. The solo snakes in and out of the record’s first (and one of the best) in a stable of spectacular choruses. It’s a perfect opener that immediately grabs your attention and lets you know exactly what you’re in for. The title track is another standout that straddles the line between classic, Quincy Jones style instrumentation and more modern pop trappings — including some fantastically woozy piano work in the intro.
Also in “E•MO•TION” come the first really striking lyrics on the album. Jepsen coos out foreboding lines like “Be tormented by me, babe/Wonder, wonder how I do.” or “Drink tequila for me, babe/Let it hit you cool and hot/Let your feelings be revealing/That you can’t forget me…” It’s remarkably matter of fact. There’s no malice to her delivery, but Jepsen is unapologetic about her desire to leave a mark on her ex-man. That kind of confidence and frankness is present in various forms all over this record. Gone are the days of “Oops, I Did it Again,” “Genie in a Bottle,” or even “How You Get the Girl” in which a female pop star had to wait for her love interest to make the first move. In fact, Jepsen rarely relinquishes agency at any point on the record. This is an album about acting on desire, not inspiring it in others. It’s a refreshing viewpoint, to say the least.
To keep this from becoming a 5,000 word piece I’m going to skip a few tracks and make our next stop at “Making the Most of the Night.” It says a lot about E•MO•TION that I am physically pained to be doing this. There isn’t a truly weak track on this whole record, and it demands to be listened to end-to-end in a way that most pop albums simply don’t. “Making the Most of the Night” is cowritten by Sia — the mononymous pop queen is a songwriting force in her own right — and is simply irresistible — shout out to my Robert Palmer fans out there. From the enigmatic toy piano intro, to the urgency of the verse and pre-chorus, to the best chorus on the album, “Making the Most of the Night” shines in a collection of great pop songs. Whereas much of the album to this point has been deeply indebted to the 80′s, this track feels most at home in the late 90′s/early 00′s heyday of pop diva-dom. At the same time, the skillful combination of Quincy Jones bass, 90′s/00′s melody writing, and modern production forms something that feels undeniably of this particular moment. Really, though, that’s E•MO•TION in a nutshell. It’s a glorious mishmash of the best of the last 30 years of pop song craft that emerges as something fresh and unique.
In the murderers’ row that follows “Making the Most of the Night” (Tracks 7–12 are just one flawless cut after another) “Your Type” is a more emotionally intelligent version of “You Belong With Me” filtered through “Style,” and “Let’s Get Lost” is just straight late 80′s/early 90s pop goodness. That brings us to the two most interesting tracks on the album. “LA Hallucinations” and “Warm Blood” are both adventurous, cutting edge, and perfectly crafted. The former’s jittery darkness and bleary 16-bit flourishes perfectly fit the destructive hedonism of LA seen through Jepsen’s eyes. “Warm Blood,” meanwhile, is equally clouded. The bass pounds and Jepsen’s voice shifts in pitch and location in the mix constantly. It’s perfectly imperfect, stunningly executed, and may be the bravest track on the album, from a musical perspective. “Warm Blood” makes you work more than any other song on the album, but it’s hard not to respect the choices Jepsen and Vampire Weekend’s Rostam Batmanglij make and the skill with which they carry them out.
If there’s one weak spot on E•MO•TION, it’s “Black Heart.” It’s not a bad song, but it fails to leave the kind of impression so many other tracks on the album do. In fact, it’s position as the “worst” speaks more to the mind-boggling consistency of the album that it does to “Black Heart” itself’s quality. “I Didn’t Just Come Here to Dance” shoots for disco and works. It wouldn’t surprise me if this becomes the biggest club hit on the album. Everything about it compels you to dance — the disco beat, the driving bass, the percussive piano — and it succeeds. “Favourite Colour,” on the other hand, diffuses the album’s momentum perfectly as it prepares you to say goodbye. It’s a stunning track that blends a verse populated by gorgeous, Imogen Heap inflected chords with a soaring triumph of a chorus. The lyrics: “When I’m close to you/We blend into my favourite colour/I’m bright baby blue/Falling into you/Falling for each other” are simple but cut with deep, immediately relatable feeling. It’s another one of my favorite tracks on the album, leaving you off on a high note and sticking with you long after the last note rings out. Or, if you’re like me, it has you reaching for the repeat button to start the ride again.
E•MO•TION is an hour-long album that feels like 10 minutes. It’s a laundry list of collaborators and influences that come together to form a single, strikingly individual musical statement. It’s a great album by a one-hit wonder. By all rational metrics it has no right to be as good as it is, yet, I don’t think I’ll hear a more immediately engaging album this year. If pop music isn’t your thing, EMOTION isn’t going to change your mind; it’s a Pop record through and through. But, it’s a love letter to what has made Pop great in the past and a testament to its emotional immediacy and potential impact even today. EMOTION is the best pop record of the last 10 years and one of 2015′s best in any genre. Do yourself a favor — or favour, as it may be: throw this on your best pair of headphones and give yourself the pleasure of hearing what an ideal cut diamond sounds like.
9.5/10
Essential Tracks: “E•MO•TION,” “Making the Most of the Night,” “Warm Blood,” “Favourite Colour”
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