The 400 Project

I don’t know if anyone caught my title from my last article, but it’s a lyric from the song Let’s Get Lost by Carly Rae Jepsen.

If you don’t listen to Carly Bae Jepsen’s stuff (not a typo, she’s bae), well I feel both sorrow and excitement for you. Sorrow because you don’t already listen, and excitement cuz you now can experience it all for the first time. Something that I’ll never be able to do again.

Now I can understand if you’re a male who feels like listening to Carly Rae Jepsen can seem a little un-manly, and that’s why I’ve titled this article Guilty Pleasure. Depending on how these go I might make it into a mini series of sorts. It’s not a straight up guilty pleasure though, because you really ought to like her music. Let’s go back to where it started for me, as it probably did with most Jepsen fans:

Call Me Maybe

You probably don’t think you need to listen to any more of her music because you’ve heard Call Me Maybe about a zillion times. As did I. At weddings, at bars, at parties, the internet, on the radio, countless places and times this song has played. I went through a multitude of feelings with this super catchy hit.

• What is this song?
• Hey, this is actually pretty catchy.
• OMG, haha it’s everywhere!
• Alright, enough Carly.
• … Then after a hiatus…
• Man, this actually pretty fun and I don’t care if people know I like it.

Cue the snapchats of my Spotify “now playing” window with Carly and a pink background sent to some of my friends.

The song then got added to my ‘good vibes’ type playlist and conversation began between Matt and I about how the song was catchy, fun, and an all around good song began. So I did what I do with most artists I find I like a single from, and listened to their entire album. It was alright. I picked out one or two others I thought were good. Then a new single was released on Spotify from Carly Rae’s new album coming out called Emotion. Things were happening.

I’m not entirely sure what track it was, however I feel like it was “I Really Like You”, another one of her big hits. But that’s besides the point because that’s not what I want to talk about here. If you are judging your Carly Rae Jepsen experience based off her big hits, just forget you heard these songs and start at the beginning of Emotion and go on through the whole Deluxe album. Right after you’re done, jump on over to Emotion Side-B and then come back here and say thank you.

Emotion and Emotion Side-B have a super chill catchy vibe, bringing with it a ton of 80s musical influences with a modern twist. The best thing about these albums hands down is this though:

THE LAYERING

There are sooo many intricate musical instruments, ranging from saxophones and synth to slap bass and melodic guitar picking. I swear every time I re-listen to one of these songs I catch something new, which makes it such a joy to re-listen to over and over again. Your favourite song switches each time, and I’ve probably had every line stuck in my head at some point. I can remember when the album came out I literally could not get the chorus of LA Hallucinations out of my head for two days straight. I’ve always been a sucker for catchy choruses and Carly has nailed so many on just one album. It goes without saying that it’s her vocals that bring forth the catchy cuteness that is Carly Rae Jepsen, but the musical compositions and upbeat vibes will have you coming back time after time.

She dropped another nuke when releasing the Side-B EP, sharing eight more songs that didn’t make the original cut. Before releasing the entire EP through Instagram and other social channels she shared snippets of the songs alongside some old film clips, which I thought was a neat way to get people excited. I did a little bit of reading and caught wind that she and her collaborators wrote 250 songs for Emotion. That’s intense. It makes sense seeing the three year gap between her albums, but boy is that a lot of writing and producing. I can’t imagine having to narrow that down to the 15 that were on the deluxe album. So yeah, sign me up for an Emotion Side-C and Side-D, just keep them coming.

I’ll leave you with this kickin’ track. It might be the first time you see her music in a different way and start diving deeper into this talented lady’s repertoire: