Pop Great Carly Rae Jepsen Puts Her Own Lyrics to the Test
Find out if pop great Carly Rae Jepsen knows her own lyrics.
The singer-songwriter, songbird also spills on her unreleased LPs, preferred deep cuts, and her seminal forevermore stand-out pop-culture phenom, “Call Me Maybe.”
And the timing could not be more Carly. She has just unleashed Day and Night, her new 24-track double album, released September 18 — a project big enough to finally give her famously overflowing songwriting habit room to breathe on the main record instead of waiting for a Side B sequel.
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Carly Rae Jepsen knows a thing or 200 about writing songs.
The pop great puts her own lyrics to the test while talking deep cuts, unreleased material and the song that changed absolutely everything.
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That excess has always been part of the fun with Carly. During the E•MO•TION era, she famously wrote more than 200 songs before narrowing the project down. Then came E•MO•TION: Side B. Dedicated eventually got its own Side B too. Carly has never really had a shortage of songs; the problem has usually been figuring out which ones get to leave the vault first.
That is why the unreleased-LP talk lands. With this woman, “unreleased” does not mean a handful of leftovers. There are whole alternate Carly universes sitting behind the official discography, which is exactly how songs like “Cut to the Feeling” could miss the original E•MO•TION tracklist and still emerge later as one of her most beloved stand-outs.
Then, of course, there is “Call Me Maybe.” Released in Canada in 2011 before becoming a worldwide monster the following year, the song is approaching its 15th anniversary with the kind of cultural afterlife most pop records can only dream of.
Carly’s relationship with it has taken the scenic route. She has spoken openly about burning out on the song when it was everywhere and feeling pressure to prove she could do more than that one very specific flavor of bright, playful pop. Years and albums later, she can look at it with nostalgia and gratitude instead.
There is also a perfect little punchline to this lyric-test setup: in a recent interview, Carly admitted that “Call Me Maybe” is actually the song she forgets the words to. The global sing-along that millions of people can probably finish at karaoke without blinking? Apparently even its own writer can have a moment.
Images: Does Carly Rae Jepsen Know Her Lyrics?
The deep-cut discussion is almost as important as the giant hit because that is where Carly’s career has become something far stranger and better than a normal post-smash trajectory. E•MO•TION turned her into a full-on pop-head favorite, and her audiences have spent the years since treating album tracks, Side Bs and one-off releases with the same devotion most crowds reserve for singles.
Now Day and Night stretches that instinct across two distinct sides and 24 songs. Carly has described the project as a fuller display of her musical tastes, with Day opening into brighter, more organic territory while Night leans harder into sleek electronic pop. Rather than cutting another mountain of songs down to one neat little album, she let the sprawl become the point.
So yes, the question is whether Carly Rae Jepsen knows her own lyrics. But with a catalogue this deep — plus vaults apparently deep enough to require their own zoning laws — perhaps the real miracle is that she remembers as many as she does.
Dig into the lyric challenge below as Carly revisits the songs, deep cuts, unreleased music and thee pop-culture forevermore that is “Call Me Maybe.”
Does Carly Rae Jepsen Know Her Own Lyrics?
The interview puts Carly’s own catalogue to the test while opening up a wider conversation about deep cuts, unreleased records and the long life of “Call Me Maybe.”
Source: “Does Carly Rae Jepsen Know Her Lyrics?”; Carly Rae Jepsen interviews with ELLE, NME and The Ringer.
