Every time the clarion saxophone of “Run Away with Me” with Me” by Carly Rae Jepsen blares, it is an invitation to a little paradise of a queer club. One such space is the now-defunct Today x Future in Cubao, where the crowds screamed the chorus “Baby, take me to the feelin’! I’ll be your sinner in secret!”
Jepsen’s E•MO•TION, released in 2015, is a quintessential, walang tapon album. Its 12 songs (not counting the deluxe edition and bonus tracks), sparkling with synths and starry-eyed with ‘80s nostalgia, never run low on euphoria. The eponymous track, which gave the record its thrust, says it in a nutshell, “All that we could do with this emotion.” The unabashedly silly “Boy Problems” would unfailingly prompt me and my friends to punctuate every “Boy problems, who’s got ‘em?” with a “Me!” The ballads like “All That,” “Your Type,” and “When I Needed You” shout with peak yearning. The record truly spoke to an inner world of wild, unadulterated feelings and fantasies that don’t even have to materialize.
E•MO•TION became a true cult classic, and Jepsen was embraced as pop’s latest unlikely hero. It never quite beat the charts, but it endeared itself to critics and built a stalwart following.
The Makings of a Cult Classic
When Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” was released in September 2011, it became so inescapable that it boxed her in as a one-hit wonder.
Instead of chasing another blockbuster, Jepsen sought to reinvent herself. She told me and other journalists in a 2015 roundtable interview: “If I look at who I was yesterday and who I was last year, it’s like a completely kind of ever-changing thing. I think that reflects the music that I do, too.”
Carly Rae Jepsen performed in Manila in September her Gimmie Love Tour, in support of her album E•MO•TION. Photo by Paolo Abad
One of the first sparks Jepsen picked up was at Summer Sonic in Osaka, where she saw Cyndi Lauper live in 2013. Something about the 1980s pop songbook held Jepsen spellbound, so she looked to the greats: Lauper, Madonna, Prince. E•MO•TION would become awash in neon hues and retro textures, echoing the enduring sound of that era — a 360-degree turn from the bubblegum pop and EDM-laced bombast of her previous effort.
Making the album led Jepsen to tread more adventurous paths. At the time, she recalled being into Solange’s “Losing You” and Sky Ferreira’s “You’re Not the One,” and eventually to Dev Hynes (a.k.a. Blood Orange) and Ariel Rechtshaid (whose work with Haim’s Days Are Gone kind of resonates here). The result was the dazzling ballad “All That,” where both were credited, and “When I Needed You,” which Rechtshaid co-produced with Dan Nigro, who co-wrote songs for Ferreira’s Night Time, My Time. Rostam Batmanglij (back then, still a pillar of Vampire Weekend) lent his hand to the pretty left-field but sultry “Warm Blood.” Sia had writing credits on “Boy Problems,” and on “Making the Most of the Night,” with the Haim sisters.
Allying with critically adored artists and producers somewhat gave a sheen of underground cred to Jepsen’s work. As The New Yorker’s Carrie Battan wrote, “Jepsen, the woman behind one of the biggest songs of this century, now resembles someone whom she never had the opportunity to become at the beginning: an indie darling.”
Over 250 prospective tracks, including songs produced by Max Martin and Jack Antonoff, had to be whittled down to the track list of 12+. Outtakes overflowed to the equally winsome E•MO•TION Side B, which was released thanks to fan clamor. This was a strategy that she continued to employ for her later releases, Dedicated and The Loneliest Time.
Cut to the Feeling
Fans have exalted Jepsen as a sword-wielding Joan of Arc-like knight (see: the meme campaign-turned-concert tradition “Give Carly Rae Jepsen a Sword”) and even wrote dissertation-like contemplations about her catalog (A Scar No One Else Can See by Max Landis). But there is no mythology propping up Jepsen, who isn’t just built to be pop royalty, leagues away from how we live or look. Her draw is this façade of relatability. Listening to E•MO•TION now, the joy it distilled feels as urgent and untouched as it was 10 years ago. No black hole in the golden cup, so to speak. Many who might unfairly consign Jepsen to her “Call Me Maybe” era will have to reckon with the artistic legacy of this landmark record. From “Run Away with Me” to “Favourite Colour,” we latched onto what felt all too familiar. Our own stories somehow got woven in between the lines of her songs. Characters in our own lives stood in for the “you’s” peppered throughout the lyrics.
E•MO•TION became a true cult classic, and Jepsen was embraced as pop’s latest unlikely hero. It never quite beat the charts, but it endeared itself to critics and built a stalwart following.
With all its guileless romanticism, E•MO•TION is about feeling for feeling’s sake — distilling the ecstasy, longing, and heartache from all the drama. It’s also in this same landscape of emotions, wrested away from hyper-specific storytelling, where queer listeners might find sanctuary and catharsis. As writer Michael Waters reflected in an Electric Lit essay, “Jepsen’s concern is with celebrating desire in all of its forms, especially desire that lacks an endpoint — she captures the excitement, the fear, the stomach twisting that comes with impossible love.”
As E•MO•TION found a place in the queer canon, it also cemented her status as a gay icon (“the gift of [her] career,” she said in Jessie Ware’s Table Manners podcast). And it gave the queer community anthems to rally around and dance to, wherever, whenever.
