Duality has become a large part of Carly Rae Jepsen’s work. Since releasing Emotion Side B in 2016 as a companion piece to 2015’s Emotion, Jepsen has paired each album with a complementary record to round out and enrich the era. For the first time since then, the Canadian pop visionary puts her side A and side B together in one sprawling yet cohesive release, Day and Night.
It isn’t hard to see what sets the double album’s first half apart from its second half. Day is breezy and characterized by live instrumentation, while Night shimmers with the synthetic gloss of various dance genres. Yet, sonically and thematically, the two halves gel together really well as a showcase of Jepsen’s musical proclivities and ideas of love. Speaking to NME, Jepsen recalled her close friend and “Call Me Maybe” co-writer Tavish Crowe saying, “It’s like this amazing house party with an upstairs and a downstairs.”
Regardless of pace and instrumentation, a liveliness permeates Day and Night. Sustaining attention and momentum throughout a 24-track album is a huge undertaking, and Jepsen succeeds for the most part by keeping the mood up. And while some tracks seem only to fly by, others stand out just enough to keep things interesting.
The lead track and second single, “After All,” makes a good introduction to the album as a whole, possessing Day’s analog feel and Night’s sleek grooviness. Other parts of side A feel even more lived-in, like the string-laden psychedelic folk of “Blue Skies.” In “Burning Heart” (which was an instant addition to my commute playlist), Jepsen toys with jangle pop elements. And in “Wild Child,” she goes full folk, complete with pangs of pedal steel. The first half closes with “Just a Little Walk on the Moon,” a dreamy bossa nova cut that delivers the listener into the second half.
A Stronger Side B
Night has more banger potential, partly because the dance elements seem to respond to culture’s clamor for club-ready music, and partly because the tracks are just that dynamic and catchy. “Don’t Leave Me on the Dancefloor” has all the disco drama of an ABBA classic, but I found that the catchier songs were the ones with quirks. “Motivation,” the fourth single released ahead of Day and Night, begins with an infectious, distorted vocal hook and jumps into Troye Sivan’s kind of house-pop.
In another of the album’s standouts, “Near or Far,” Jepsen leans fully into deep house, reaching for her lower registers and injecting the percussive dance break with discordant synths. Even “No Labels, I Love You,” a groovy but otherwise uncomplicated disco-pop track, is made exciting through the earnest, almost breathless delivery in the second pre-chorus: “I think that I love you / It’s easy, I love you / It’s stupid, I love you.”
Jepsen is at her best when she does fun and sultry pop, and she delivers all that and more here, from the soulful and upbeat “After All’ to the euphoric release of the synths in the album closer, “Super Sage.” The length of Day and Night might pose a challenge for someone looking for an easy listen, but Jepsen and her collaborators reward you with surprising, eccentric elements that keep you on your toes.
She might not be able to replicate the magic of listening to 2023’s “Kollage” for the first time, but in many other ways, Day and Night is an evolved and fully realized version of The Loneliest Time and The Loveliest Time, a complex treatise on love and joy that compels us to sit with our feelings and, at the same time, dance.
Frequently Asked Questions
Carly Rae Jepsen has eight studio albums: Tug of War (2008), Kiss (2012), Emotion (2015), Dedicated (2019), Dedicated Side B (2020), The Loneliest Time (2022), The Loveliest Time (2023), and Day and Night (2026). Emotion Side B (2016) is an eight-track EP.
Carly Rae Jepsen released four singles ahead of Day and Night: “On Wires,” “After All,” “Don’t Leave Me on the Dance Floor,” and “Motivation.”
Carly Rae Jepsen worked with several producers on Day and Night, including Kyle Shearer, Magnus Lidehäll, Elias Kapari, Vincent Pontare, Wille Enblad, Oliver Lundström, John Hill, Mathieu Jomphe-Lépine (a.k.a. Billboard), Arthur Besna, Nathan Jenkins (a.k.a. Bullion), CJ Baran, and Jepsen’s husband Cole M.G.N.
Carly Rae Jepsen has not yet performed songs from Day and Night live. She is set to make her first live performance of 2026 at the All Things Go Music Festival in late September.
Day and Night has 24 tracks evenly split between two discs, running at one hour and 24 minutes. The version released in Japan features two bonus tracks, “Reaching for a Star” and “Yes.”
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