Joining the Carly Rae Jepsen Defense Squad
Review of Carly Rae Jepsen’s KISS
Carly Rae Jepsen — KISS (Deluxe)
Released September 14, 2012
I have heard for years and from so many people how underrated Carly Rae Jepsen is. Even before jumping into this album, I knew she was extremely talented just from having seen her perform in Grease Live! in 2016. And of course I know “Call Me Maybe,” who doesn’t? I would venture that it’s because of her biggest hit that she is so underrated. Whether consciously or subconsciously, I think a lot of people just can’t get past that song and allow her to exist in their minds beyond it. It’s such a double edged sword to have had such a massive hit so early in an artist’s career. The worst part is that in listening to this full album, “Call Me Maybe” comes appears to be an outlier. It’s pop-pop while the rest of the tracks have a disco-inspired dance beat that was missing on radio at the time and I would argue still is. What Dua Lipa is doing now is the closest to what CRJ was doing then, and even Dua Lipa is toned down compared to what we hear on this album. For whatever reason, mainstream radio HATES disco or anything remotely like it, so artists have to temper it within their music or find subtle ways to add it, but KISS is brave in its embrace of disco and dance pop music. Of course dance music does have its own audience, but this isn’t like EDM-type dance music that you’d hear in the club, but more akin to the way CHVRCHES was able to get palatable dance music on the radio in the years immediately following KISS.
Going in already knowing “Call Me Maybe,” it was hard to listen to it and pretend like I was hearing it for the first time. For me, it sounds so much like a very specific time in both music and in my life so it was hard to separate out my personal memories associated with all the times I’ve already heard this song. It’s not the song’s fault, nor is it the fault of CRJ that I’m a bit “Call Me Maybe”-d out. Lucky for me, there’s a song from this album that I loved when it came out initially and I still love, it’s “This Kiss.”
A song that I used to love, but now feel lukewarm about is “Good Time.” It sounds too much like an Owl City song that Carly is being featured on, which would be fine on an Owl City record, but this is a CRJ record. In fact, it’s her debut album as far as the international music audience is concerned, so I don’t think this should have been on her record if it wasn’t going to feel like her song. I’ll give it a half point for nostalgia because there was a time when I was younger that I couldn’t get enough of this song, but now adult me is willing to own my truth — that I may just be an Owl City hater. I hated “Fireflies,” and I don’t particularly love Adam Young’s voice. For the fact that he was the inspiration behind Taylor Swift’s “Enchanted,” I give him humble thanks, but that’s really the extent of my care for Owl City.
A song that was new to me and that I really liked was “Curiosity.” I read that it’s different on the album than it was on the EP, but I had trouble finding the EP version on Spotify. Other songs that I really enjoyed are “More Than A Memory,” “Turn Me Up,” and “Hurt So Good,” which I thought sounded a bit like “This Kiss” and usually I would knock songs sounding too similar, but I like “This Kiss” so I didn’t mind it. For “Guitar String/Wedding Ring,” it wasn’t one that I had heard and liked when the album was first released, but one that I’ve come to in the last few years. Personally, I think it fits perfectly the story of Orpheus and Eurydice from Hadestown (If you’re a musical theatre person and/or you love Hadestown, tell me this isn’t perfect for them.)
I like the idea of Justin Bieber having a feature on this album, especially since he produced it and I imagine having him on it would have brought some attention to her and possibly introduced her to his audience. And while I liked the stripped back acoustic moment on the album, I thought the lyrics were a bit old and boring, like how many songs are there already about how a woman is only beautiful when she isn’t aware of how beautiful she is? But this was ten years ago and at that time, we were still eating up songs like that. (“Little Things” by One Direction, anybody?)
Lyrically, “Your Heart is a Muscle” and “Wrong Feels So Right” were interesting and I think they show the strong writer CRJ is. “Wrong Feels So Right” even sounds a bit like a transition song, showing where she might go sonically in the next record. Wanting to hear this album out on its own, I haven’t looked into her next album after this yet, but I’ll be listening out for the sound we start to hear on this song.
I didn’t really care for “Tonight I’m Getting Over You.” I thought the production was too intense and it took me out of the song. The electronic/dubstep sounding beat feels really dated to me now in 2024 whereas it was right on trend when this album initially was released.
Overall, I tried to remember this is essentially a debut. Before this, she did have an album that was released only in Canada, but this was her first album released internationally and her first on her label School Boy, which is part of Interscope, so she was still working on finding her sound and style. However, for a debut, there are big names in the writing credits of this album, including Matthew Koma, Max Martin, and Bonnie McKee.
When I found out that this record was produced by Justin Bieber and Scooter Braun, alongside Jonathan Simkin, it made a lot of sense why I think this didn’t launch CRJ’s career the way a lot of people thought it should. Regardless of my personal feelings towards Bieber and Braun, I don’t totally trust their sense of what is “good” and “bad” in terms of both music and marketing. Frankly, I don’t think they set her up for success with this album. I don’t think “Call Me Maybe” was right for a single, it doesn’t sound like the rest of the album and I hate when outliers are released as singles and it gives a false sense of what the rest of the album will sound like. And I feel bad for CRJ that her biggest hit has become a joke song now, I fear it’s effected her current success or lack there of. Not that she hasn’t found success and an audience who adores her, but I think we can all agree that she should be at a much higher level than she is and I blame Braun for that.
Overall, I think this album might have just been ahead of its time. Hearing it now in 2024, it doesn’t sound totally off from what the other pop girls are doing, but then I remember this album came out over 10 years ago. Which could be another reason for the less-than-inspired production and marketing choices Braun made, maybe he just didn’t know what to do with her. It makes me sad that for one reason or another, others haven’t given her this deep dive and appreciation she deserves.
Editor’s Note: Okay, when I said I didn’t look ahead at her discography, that was a wee bit of a lie. I did look at the Wikipedia page for her next album, EMOTION and it looks like, even if it wasn’t the huge commercial smash she may have wanted, it did have an impact. Maggie Rogers said she was directly inspired by that album to start making music, so it’s very likely we might never have had Maggie without Carly. And for that alone, more people should be talking about CRJ for being ahead of the curve and inspiring artists then that we love now.
