How Carly Rae Jepsen’s Love Of Love Makes For Great Pop Music

On May 17, GRAMMY nominee Carly Rae Jepsen released the shimmering, exuberant Dedicated, her four-years-later follow-up to 2015's fan-favorite Emotion. The 15 tracks explore the ups and downs of love and relationships in all its forms while playing with different textures and sounds reminiscent of your favorite classic pop tracks from the last few decades.

On "Want You in My Room," she offers a healthy '80s dose of saxophone and synth, paired with the lyrics about longing to get a little closer to your crush. With "Party For One," a ridiculously catchy breakup anthem, Jepsen stays joyful as she celebrates self-love packaged as an authentically fresh sounding modern pop dance party bop.

Above the playful, candy-coated beats and lyrics, even above the songs feeling like exactly what Jepsen was meant to be performing as the cult-favorite "indie pop star" space she's carved for herself, the album reflects the main driver in her life; a love for love and relationships. Or, as her recent Rolling Stone interview put it, her "infatuation with infatuation."

"When you get to the place where you know somebody, and they've seen your absolute embarrassing worst and love you still, there's a rush and a high," she told R.S. "I try to create that with the music that I make: a feeling of a moment being so intense that you're present in it and you're nowhere else."

The feature goes in-depth into Jepsen's several-year journey that went into the new album, which, as they aptly suggested, shall hail her as "the new queen of heart-wrenching dance-floor catharsis." The pop darling explains the album's opening track, "Julien," about an inescapable "everlasting fantastical love," is the thesis statement of for the LP.

Working her way through the almost 200 songs she wrote in the process, the title track didn't make the final cut, but as the outlet details, "epitomized the album's strong emotions. Jepsen's greatest muse is 'new love.'"

As for her hopes for how her music is received, she is not concerned with repeating the hot-flash moment of pop superstardom she felt in 2011 with her huge GRAMMY-nominated No. 1 hit "Call Me Maybe."

"I would much rather have a small and mighty group of people who are getting what I love about music and connecting than a 'Call Me Maybe' ever again," she said. And as for how "true" love will pan out in her life, she is open to wherever things may go, as long as there's love, whether or not she got a ring on it, she'll be happy.

"I don't really have any rules for how the course of the adventures of my life will look. I know I'm gonna be happy as long as I've got [my] relationships in order."

You can catch Jepsen live on her Dedicated Tour, which currently has her singing her heart out in Europe, and then back stateside this summer.

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How Carly Rae Jepsen’s Love Of Love Makes For Great Pop Music

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