In the latest episode of Vox’s “Switched on Pop,” Carly Rae Jepsen tells the hosts that she has already made a “quarantine album” after just releasing “Dedicated Side B.” Are you ready for more dance-cry music, Jepsies?
When asked by hosts Charlie Harding and Nate Sloan what she’s currently working on in quarantine, Jepsen responded: “Tavish [Crowe] and I have already made an entire quarantine album. And it’s very different. It’s kind of fun.”
The singer-songwriter says the album was conceived over just Zoom calls. “You kind of write differently that way. You have more time to have space in between the decisions you’re making and more time to kind of be away from the songs for a minute, so I find it to be like a whole new style of going at it and I really like it.”
Jepsen also talks about how she’s constantly writing, revealing that by the time her album “Emotion” was ready, she had 200 songs to choose from. “It’s kind of common knowledge that I’m a bit of an overwriter,” says Jepsen. “It’s my greatest joy.”
So how does one pick 12 out of a couple hundred songs for an album? She throws listening parties with her closest friends and family—”with copious amounts of wine,” says Jepsen—and they send in their votes on which songs are the best.
“I take the album quite seriously as, like, it being a whole body of work,” she says. She ranks songs by “energy level,” giving each track a numerical ranking and plotting the track’s placement from there. She also breaks them down by subject matter, assigning a keyword to each song. “‘I Want You In My Room’ is sex,” cites Jepsen as an example. “I’ll kind of look for all the different emotions.”
Newsflash, Carly: Your music just might be our greatest joy too.
Listen to the “Switched On Pop” episode here:
Still from “Want You In My Room” MV
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