Text Kate Solomon

She could so easily have never gotten to this point. People who come third in Canadian Idol don’t tend to end up with the level of fame that gets them answer-in-a-board-game status, unless the question is “Who came third in Canadian Idol?” But people who come third in Canadian Idol don’t tend to write folk songs about hitting on boys that morph into inescapable megahits, either. “Call Me Maybe” caught at exactly the right time. The song is a collection of standard pop elements that might, on their own, be unremarkable (drama queen strings, questionable grammar, verses that crest flawlessly and crash into choruses, the catchiest hook imaginable), but which alchemically crystallise into something so perfectly of its time that you can practically chuck on a peter-pan collar and some wedge sneakers and find yourself back in the summer of 2012. In the wake of the song’s worldwide success (“Call Me Maybe” was the best-selling single of 2012, with 18 million-plus sales taking it to number one in 15 countries and earning it two Grammy nominations), Jepsen released Kiss, an album of perky, radio-friendly songs about love and heartache that skirted EDM and bubblegum pop. Even before its popularity had waned, Jepsen was being written off as a one-hit-wonder, a short footnote in the history of pop (although she did have a minor reprise in the form of a guest spot on Owl City’s Kesha-rip-off, “Good Time”). And that could have been that. “I feel less of a desire to walk into a room and prove everything I can do versus just humbly be like, ‘Let’s make this album together’” – Carly Rae Jepsen But rather than doubling down and releasing album after album (aka ‘the Rihanna approach’), Jepsen went off-piste and on-Broadway. A stint as Cinderella in the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical helped her to figure out what was next, and it was three years before she released E•MO•TION, a glistening, 80s-inspired album that opens with a celtic off-key sax line and gets weirder from there. Having enlisted a coterie of of-the-moment producers and collaborators (Dev Hynes, Rostam Batmanglij, Ariel Rechtshaid, Greg Kurstin), yearning-in-synth epitomised the go-to sound of the mid-2010s, and E•MO•TION found its people online: critics loved it, and Jepsen side-stepped from one hit wonder to the face of ‘cool pop’, the kind of pop music that hypebeasts and Pitchfork readers alike could happily admit to liking. With both the megahit and the critical acclaim that most pop stars could only dream of under her belt, after E•MO•TION, Carly Rae Jepsen found herself asking, again: ‘Where do I go from here?’ This time, instead of retreating to the theatre, she picked up the phone. To create something that picked up where E•MO•TION left off, she turned to frequent trusted collaborators like Jack Antonoff and Tavish Crowe, but also brought in new faces. It’s no surprise that a singer with a penchant for a melancholic dancefloor filler would seek out Patrik Berger, the co-writer and co-producer behind Robyn’s “Dancing On My Own”, bringing a similar energy to stalker-anthem “I’ll Be Your Girl”, a song that will have you sending a stream of texts to someone you shouldn’t.

Photography Markus&Koala

She also bought a house. “I have a house now?!” she says, wide-eyed and bursting into song at the absurdity of it, like she’s play-acting at adulthood. “Every time I come home from tour and I see my house, I want to sing a song, like,” – and she sings – “‘Ahhhhh, I own this house, this is my house... Who lives here? I do.’” A house, a new boyfriend, and possibly a cat. “I think I have a cat... It’s actually my boyfriend’s cat that I think I adopted some point along the way?” Dedicated may not be about the vagaries of real estate investment, but it definitely is a bit about the boy. Whittled down to 15 songs, it explores the beginnings and ends of romantic relationships from all angles, the ups and downs of dating rendered in fizzing hooks and kaleidoscopic pop. It comes with a sense of security in herself. “I feel less of a desire to walk into a room and prove everything I can do versus just humbly be like, ‘Let’s make this album together’,” she says, noting a marked difference to the E•MO•TION days. “Too much ego and or insecurity gets in the way of what you’re there to do.” Although she’s always drawn on her life while writing, Dedicated is possibly her most autobiographical album. “I was at a place when making that album of kind of going through a break-up, living in singlehood for all of it, and then kind of kindling a romance with a friend that's now my boyfriend. I think the album sort of explores all of that process.” If the album was a romantic comedy, the ending would be a happy one and she laughs, feeling a bit silly, as she sums it up: “Heartbreak, lonesomeness, new love.” It does feel kind of silly to talk about huge rushes of emotion caused by people who turn out to be a tiny blip on the radar of your life, but Jepsen has made a career of wearing her heart on her musical sleeve, and when you’re in your headphones it feels very real. On “Everything He Needs”, “I’ll Be Your Girl”, and “Too Much”, she’s falling too hard, too fast. On “Happy Not Knowing”, she literally cannot be bothered: “If there’s something between you and me baby / I have no time for it / I’m happy not knowing.” There’s the point at which you’re ready to move from dating to relationship in “The Sound”, the exasperated “God you make me so tired,” a feeling that, if you’ve spent any time dating in the last five years, you will be very familiar with.