Switched on Pop - Carly Rae Jepsen: Meeting The Muse

Episode Date: May 26, 2020

They say you should never meet your idols, that you’ll only be disappointed. We had this possibility in mind going into our first interview with Carly Rae Jepsen, the pop star who inspired us to start our podcast Switched on Pop when Nate taught “Call Me Maybe” as a case study in music theory. Six years later and hundreds of pleading emails later, the time had come to meet the muse and unpack her latest offering, Dedicated Side B. In the course of composing her last two albums, E•MO•TION and Dedicated, Jepsen wrote over 200 songs. Many of her favorite works didn’t make it on either final album, so she’s started a tradition of releasing “Side B” records on the one-year anniversary of her last release. Her newest collection of unreleased music fluidly crosses decades of musical history and spans a vast emotional range. We spoke with Jepsen over Zoom about how she curated her latest B-Side release from a massive body of work. Would this beatific figure, once described by poet Hanif Abdurraqib and the “most honest pop musician working,” live up to her reputation? Listen to find out. SONGS DISCUSSED Carly Rae Jepsen - Call Me Maybe, Julien, Party For One, Now That I’ve Found You, No Drug Like Me, Want You In My Room, Cut To The Feeling, Run Away With Me, Window, This Love Isn’t Crazy, Solo Squeeze - Tempted By The Fruit Irving Berlin - God Bless America performed by Kate Smith Vulfpeck - Back Pocket Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Euporia of Calvin Klein, the new collection Elyxir. Three new elixires perfume intense. Solar, magnetic, ball. Pulsa in the banner. Do you quiz and discover your fragrance euphoria. Welcome to Switched on Pop.

I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. And we're joined by a very special guest. Oh, I'm Carly. Hi, Carly. Hi. So, Carly, you hold a really special place for me and Nate because six years ago, we started a conversation on a road trip together,

where Nate was telling me about this lecture that he had just done for a handful of his students. I had been trying to teach music theory using all these examples from the classical world, you know, Baccarini and Handel, and not only did the students have to learn music theory, they also had to like get familiar with these unfamiliar classical pieces and I was like this is too this is a double whammy why don't we learn music theory using a song that they all already know it's the summer of 2012 everyone is listening to your number one hit call me maybe and I'm like this is the song we're going to use to learn music theory for like two hours me and 20 high school students broke down all the different musical elements of Call Me Maybe.

I was talking to Charlie and telling him about this, and he was feeding off that excitement, and he was like, we should start a podcast. Fast forward five years later, and here we are. No, that's amazing. Wow. Very cool. So, not to make you too uncomfortable, but we do sometimes call you St. Jepson, because you are the beatific presence that watches. over us all. That's amazing. They say it's always a bad idea to meet your idols because you're going inevitably be disappointed. So we thought we could maybe just start by getting it out of the way and you could just tell us the most horrible thing that you've ever done. Oh, there's a list. We, for the last many years, have been breaking down how pop songs work with some of the greatest

songwriters, producers, and other folks in the music business. So we thought this is a really fun moment because this week is the one-year anniversary of your great album, Dedicated, and you also have a new album coming out, the B-Sides, off of Dedicated. And so we thought we could celebrate both of those by getting deep into the music. Absolutely. Sounds like fun. So let's talk Dedicated, just to start. What were you wanting to accomplish on this record? I mean, I had a mission statement to start off with, but I ended up straying very far away from that.

I kind of had this fake album title called Music to Clean Your House, too. Because I thought that's when I listen to music at this age. It's not like a raging. It's like chill disco kind of sounds sounded interesting to me. But the idea of it being exclusively disco, I think, was sort of pigeonholing me because it wasn't coming out naturally. I think Julian's like the closest thing I got to it. but the rest of the album kind of went in these different directions, 90s, 80s, all the colors. I kind of felt like I let go of the roles of knowing exactly what I was going to make

and just allowed myself to play in all the genres of pop that I was attracted to. The music that I cleaned my room to is the Hamilton soundtrack, but I think dedicated would also work really well. Some of our favorite singles are Party for One, now that I've found you, no drug like me. But we want to zero in on one of our favorite songs off this record, which is Want You in My Room. Very cut to the point, that one. Yes.

There's no beating around the bush in that song. This is a collaboration with one of your longtime collaborators, Tavish Crow, and the ubiquitous producer, Jack Antonoff. What's the story behind Want You in My Room? The fun thing about Jack is that we're both. come up music in this really playful manner. So we're sort of like kids, like, we dance the song out. We don't just like sit down and write it. We're like shouting things across the room

becomes this really playful thing. And I think he just said sort of like, I want you in my room. And I went, on the bench, on the floor! There's not a lot of people you feel safe enough to be that outrageous with. But he creates a space where you feel very comfortable to do that. I think the first idea, again,

was sort of something like that. I think the pre was something that I'd started with Tabish a while before. And I kind of do that. I kind of collect ideas and then I'll kind of trade them in when I feel like they belong in a different space for a new project. And so this was like an old idea that I reused, basically. So you're saying like this song was sort of Frankenstein together from different elements, like one idea for the verse, another for the pre-chorus.

Yeah, I write a lot that way. But I think the heart of the song came together that day with like, Jack in the room. Yeah. I think that was just the pre- that I kind of stole from another idea that I'd had with Tavish while writing on the road together. Let's listen to the first verse. This is such a vibey track. We've got these cowbells, sequenced drums, chorusing guitars. What is the vibe that you're going for here? I think like, Jack and I both kind of have this same sort of niche of what we like, like kind of like squeezed, you know, the band's squeeze? Dempted by the fruit of another.

Love squeeze. I think maybe a little bit of like that was sort of attractive to us at the time. The magic I think about writing with Jackie is that he kind of takes over the production side, so I won't speak too much to that. Like I said earlier, he allows you to like really go to some weirder experimental places than I would allow myself to go with anybody else because he makes the room really safe and he's not afraid, like it doesn't feel scary to say a stupid idea out loud because it might just be brilliant. You know, you just can't tell. Sometimes it's like a very close call in a way. But

yeah, I think Jack said that that's one of his favorite verses, too, when we were talking about it later. He's like, where did that come from? And I'm like, I don't know. That's the beauty of it. And this is where you introduce the metaphor that will probably carry throughout the rest of our conversation, the metaphor of keeping this window open. And I feel like there's many ways of reading this. Could you tell us a bit about this metaphor and where it comes from? I have a problem when I fall in love with somebody. I don't ever stop, even if we're like broken up like 10 years past. Like it's just like a constant like, I'm always going to love you in some kind of friendly way.

And so I think that is sort of the metaphor for that of like just whenever you're feeling low, I'm always here in some capacity. Even it's just as a friend, you know? It also fits very nicely in the fact that you know, come into my room, the window is open. Like it makes it visual as much as it is also a metaphor for where you're at. Yeah, I think I'm very youthful when I think about romance and the idea of like almost that high school level where you like sneak through the boy's window at night seemed kind of cute to me. I love that. I don't know. I've never really done it before, but it sounds adorable. Throwing pebbles at the window cell?

Yeah. I'm 34. I'm like, don't tell your parents. It's funny because I think what you're describing that sort of childlike feeling and nervous anticipation is echoed in the. your vocal timbre, like the way you sing in this verse, Charlie and I were noticing there is a very specific tone. It's light and breathy, maybe like an open window. I don't know if I thought about it that much, but maybe, yeah. Well, it's probably good you didn't. It would have been forced. Yeah, I think with dedicated in general, I've been able to sort of explore different ways of singing, a lot more falsetto than I ever used before, what I call my Disney voice.

your what voice my Disney princess voice oh fun I'm dancing walking around on those what are you calling and then just like some more mysterious like adult tones too

it was fun just not have one toolbox you know here we are in the verse and we're in like high school anticipation what's going to happen this romance let's move into

the pre-course. Ooh, the song opens up. Yeah, actually, I was just trying to think when I was listening back to it. That used to be different lyrics to that melody. A song called Four Leaf Clover. A little four-leaf Clover. And it was a bad song at the time.

But I knew that there was something to those melodies. And Jack is always very generous with letting me be like, I might have this old idea of it is really weird, but do you think it could fit? And he really liked it, so he kind of changed the lyrics to fit the new meaning of the song. You have this lovely line. I want to press you to the pages of my heart. That was the four leaves clover part. I thought when I was little and I would collect four leaf clover's, I would put them into a book.

So I kind of thought that still really works, though, for like love stories and for what romance is. And that same thing I said, eternal dedication to whoever I fall in love with. It's like, well, you're part of the story now forever. And I'm going to cherish you. This is something that we feel like you're quite talented at is writing a line that feels like you've heard it a thousand times, but it's entirely new, right? Like, whether it's, call me maybe, or whether it cuts the feeling. When I heard press you to the pages of my heart, I'm like, oh, yeah, that's immediate. I know exactly what you mean. And yet I've never heard those lines.

How do you think about writing at the in-between of the personal and the universal? Well, I think it's a two-part thing. I think it's definitely a desire to connect. So you want to say things that people can make of their songs, you know? It's not just about kind of the offering. It's about the connection. So I think that's number one. Also, I kind of collect words like throughout my whole life.

Like I'll have a conversation with a girlfriend and she'll just say something. And I'm like, one second, I have to go write it down. That was amazing. I'm like, I'm very annoying that way. I'll get distracted at dinner parties because I'm like, oh, you don't even know, but you just said a brilliant thing. And so, yeah. I have like a little kind of cookie jar full of phrases that I like,

and I try to fit them in to different songs. So in the pre-chorus, we're kind of moving away from the Disney Princess, starting to get a little more confident. Let's play the chorus of Want You in my room. So, yeah, we've left the Disney Princess far behind. This chorus starts in a really surprising way with a vocoder processed vocal. What was behind that choice? I don't know. Jack's

so gifted up the vocoder. It's like one of his specialties, I feel like. So we wanted to find a way to incorporate it, I believe. I don't remember exactly. I think, like I said, sometimes the beauty of writing with Jack because it's just sort of like, this song happened and we were both here for it.

No one remembers how it appeared. But yeah, that one, I think that was kind of the part of the song where we were just dancing and pointing at each other and, like, shouting things. And I can't explain it. Yeah. It's not very professional. but it was really fun.

It was very joyful. One of actually my favorite experience of the whole album was making that song. And I kind of also really wanted to kind of have like a come-hither song. I usually am so coy with how I talk about romance that it was sort of nice to be like, what if I just came out and said it?

We're not dealing with the moment of romance. This is still about anticipation, right? And it's like it's that heightened emotion. It's kind of a liminal space. It's declaring what you want, but it's still, like, is it going to happen? And that's a really exciting, I think, relatable feeling. Yeah, I think because I would never be bold enough to actually say that to somebody in person. There had to be some fantasy to it.

It had to be, like, in your imagination, this is what I would say. But I wouldn't be terrified. Maybe having that line I want you in my room sung by a vocoder makes it even safer to say, because it's a little bit anonymous. I actually wonder, is this a line when you perform live? Is that a line that people all jump in on together? It feels like it's inviting me. Yeah.

I mean, we're very lucky at our shows because there's very few lines that I don't have everyone singing with me. That's kind of part of the joy and the gift that I'm given back is just like it becomes like a big little sing-along. We kind of tend to geek out on little musical details. And one that we really liked here was how the little little. lyric slide on through my window is kind of supported in this subtle way by the harmonies that are happening underneath. We go from E flat to B flat, F major, F sharp diminished, up to G minor. And that moment where it goes from F major to F sharp diminished to G minor to G minor, is like this surprising sonority to hear in a pop song,

but it's like it makes that line slide on through my window feel even more kind of enticing because you're like this harmony is sliding into these chromatic places that you wouldn't expect. Right there, I hear it and I'm like, God, Jack is a brilliant man, but that was definitely his part. I kind of just mostly focus on like top line and stuff. So that's where I bow down to him for knowing what to do. I make you feel good. But simultaneously, your vocal is also sliding into that note. And so it feels like whether that was an intentional part or it just came intuitively,

it does evoke the lyric so wonderfully. Oh, thank you. All right. We got to move to one of the most fun parts of the song. We got to check out the outro. I love me as sax. I'm a sax. Saxo.

I can't help myself. There's one on every album. And I want to do more, but I'm told, like, hold it back. No, no. I just want to say that I think whoever in an A&R or whatever is telling you that there's too much saxophone, I think they're wrong. We are having, so this is such a fun moment. And I think what's really nice is, as a listener, it feels like an obvious callback to your earlier saxos, especially something like run away with me. And so it feels like there's sort of this through line that I'm catching. between these records.

I mean, it's really fun. I have an incredible saxophone player on the road with me, Jen Binaika, who's been with me for like eight years now, my God. And he's kind of a shy guy. Like, he's the one that, like, you just know he's going to be chill throughout the bus life, through everything. But we let him do the sax solo on stage. And something happens to him.

I don't know what it is. But, like, he's literally on his back spinning. Like, and it's the best part of the show, in my opinion. I just love seeing how it kind of transforms people into their, I don't know, their full, crazy, intense emotional selves. It seems like the song is giving people a lot of permission to stretch beyond their own emotional comfort. He truly spins on his back. You need to see it. It's amazing. I do need to see that. Especially if you know the guy personally. It's such like a, yeah, you would never expect it.

I like hearing about the genesis of this song because now I can almost read. like a dual meaning into it. It's want you in my room in the sense of like, I want that romantic relationship. But hearing you keep talking about the room where you and Jack made this song as this place of like freedom and possibility, it makes me also think that this is like a song about a safe space for creativity or something. Like I want you in my room so we can make music together. Yeah, exactly. I think I think the music video kind of represents that too. It was very important to me that the band was a part of it. And so we actually had them as like different furniture playing.

Like the saxophone is like the plant. And like Tavish is like, I think he's a chair with his arms playing like his guitar. And it was funny on the day of the shoot because I had asked him to come join it. And Tavish about three hours into like sitting in his chair was like, couldn't anyone have done this? And I was like, but we knew it had to be you. Thank you so much.

I'm sorry, it's hot in there. Yeah. That's great. What a great celebration of collaboration. Dedicated is a wonderful record, and we really enjoy it. Per your instructions, I have been listening to it while cleaning my house recently because I'm at home a lot and I'm making a lot of miss. Yeah.

What else you're going to do? But you have a new record arriving, and we want to talk about that right after the break. Maria, you have a podcast now and you need to start acting like it. What's the first step as a podcaster? Well, you have to ask lots of questions. I'm Maria Sharpova, and I'm hosting a new podcast called Pretty Tough. Every week, I'm sitting down with trailblazing women at the top of their game to discuss ambition, work ethic, and the ups and downs that come on the path to achieving greatness. I have a few pretty tough questions for you.

Okay. Ready? Ready. Do not sugarcoat something for me. No. No. No. We'll dive into their stories and get valuable insights from top executives, actors,

entrepreneurs and other individuals who have inspired me so much in my own journey. Pretty tough is your front row seat to the women who have demonstrated the power in being unapologetic in their pursuits. I hope you'll join us. New episodes drop Wednesdays on YouTube or in your favorite podcast app. Immigration may be Donald Trump's signature issue. President Trump is now targeting predominantly democratic cities for ice raids and deportations. Dozens of protesters clashing with immigration and customs enforcement agents in many

We will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came. But what we want to do in this space is talk about America and politics beyond the current president. So what do most Americans think about deportation and border security, period? I think that Americans are definitely against the kind of violent displays that we've seen in the street from ICE. When it comes to the question of deportation, the answer is more complicated. My sense is that people want order at the border. They don't like the idea of having no idea who's coming into the United States at any given time. The view on immigration from the bottom up instead of the top down.

That's this week on America Actually. Every Saturday in your audio and video feeds. You have a brand new release. Yes. Well, I mean, I have a reputation with my label. I'm just like, I think at this point it's kind of common knowledge that I'm a bit of an overwriter. What do you mean by that? Well, I write all the time.

Even when I don't have a project right now, I'm writing. Like, I just, it's very therapeutic for me. It's my greatest joy. So it's not just like this is my job. It's like something that I am very passionate about. So I put the truth is, by the time emotion was ready, I had 200 songs to select from. And same with dedicated.

So that's a lot, right? My publisher says I store songs in my cheeks like a chipmunk. I love that. But it was really hard to select because there was a lot of different, like, places that I experimented with. And it wasn't enough for me just to share the one. I kind of was like, I always kind of knew that I wanted to be a two-part album. And it was really fun to do that with emotion, too, with the side B. I once said when I was done this album, like, would it be weird to release like a 50-song deluxe?

Like, yeah, that's weird. No one does that. Okay. We'll start with 17, and then we'll get to the other. the rest later. And it's kind of fun to do it on the one-year anniversary and kind of making a tradition of that in my own books. You're not alone in that. The songwriter Irving Berlin had what he called his trunk songs, which was literally a trunk filled with hundreds of songs that had never been published. And occasionally he would pull one out and it became like, God Bless America,

a song that sat in his trunk for 30 years. And then he was like, let's try this. And then it almost became the national anthem. That's amazing. I have an entire, I call them like albums that I've buried in my backyard. Like I have an entire album called Disco Sweat. But no one will ever hear. It was really fun to make, though. I think I really turned to like my friends and family for helping me like select the ones.

But cut to the feelings, a good example of that. That was the song that was never going to come out. And I did like a voiceover for a cartoon and they were like, do you have any tunes? And I'm like, well, this one's very like theatrical. I think it could work. So that's sort of how I roll. So say you have hundreds of songs buried in your backyard. How do you choose which ones go on the album?

I go a little crazy. But that's sort of when I do turn to my friends and my family. We have like these listening parties at my house where I just feed everyone and give them like copious amounts of wine and like hope that they will like have opinions about it if they want to. And I have very passionately opinionated friends who are generous enough to give me the time of day to like listen through, not all 200 a time, but like a couple new ones when we do a couple. And and then they all send in their votes to me. Like my bandmates do. My manager does. And then like my girlfriend Alex, I mean, she sends me notes in the night. And so, you,

but surely there starts to be at least, I think, like a common six to eight that are all kind of resonating with people. And that really helps me. And then I kind of just pick the rest of myself. They're my favorites and fill in the blanks of like what's missing from the album. And I really don't, I take the album quite seriously as like it being a whole body of work that I really, I don't know, that I really want to get right. So if there's like, I'll rate the songs for energy level. And if there's too many fives, then I'll think what's a two? where we put the one.

And then I also like rate the songs on subject matter. Like I'll give each song a word. Like what in my room was sex. Interesting. And then I'll kind of look for all the different emotions. Is there color coding involved? I could show you the board. There's a board?

Oh my God. Yeah, I do them all this huge board. Like when you're trying to catch a serial killer or something, you're like connecting. Yeah, it's like a beautiful crazy mind. Actually, it's embarrassing because I have them out about my house and I forget. And if I ever have somebody come over beforehand, I would be like, don't look at that. I promise I'm okay. There are a lot of songs that we could talk about on B-sides,

but we wanted to select one that was a personal favorite and actually happened to continue this window metaphor. You have the second track off of your B-sides of Dedicated is called Window. So could you just tell us a little bit about the story? of this song. How did it come together? I was a really big fan of that song Backpocket by Wolf Beck. Oh, yeah. You read this song? I loved it. I loved it so much. And I am kind of famous for like when I love a song, I dig into like, who made this?

And how do I meet them? How do we become friends? So we can maybe try something similar. And so I got in touch with Theo. He's from the band Wolfbeck. Yeah. Yes. And he kind of just came over to my house one day. I thought we were just going to like hang out, see if we had a vibe. But he brought him acoustic. And it was a really easy, comfortable write, especially for like a first time meet. Usually I like to like really establish a friendship first, but it was like instant friendship and then this idea of like, how do we get that like childlike energy from that

both peck song that I love so much into something that could feel sincere for me too. Well, let's walk through a window a little bit. And I want to start actually just a little snippet right from the intro. This is a song with some real vibe going on too. and we wanted to know what kind of vibe were you going for here. This is a different sound than what we talked about on watching in my room. We knew that we wanted to play with rhythms. That's sort of what attracted me so much to back pocket.

We really wanted to kind of like that really kind of almost prints like stop and start. That is so attractive to me. We wanted to get into bad mood. But I don't know if we really knew what the theme was right away. Like I said, I do have a reoccurring thing with this idea of like everlasting, at least friendship. So it was sort of like, Even if it's not working right now, know that I'm always here for you.

Keep a window for me open. Let's check that out in the first verse. Well, can I say sometimes boys just need a lot of compliments. Nate, you're so beautiful. You're so talented. Gosh. Thank you. I really appreciate that.

I mean, girls do too. Everyone does. Sometimes you just need someone to be like, how. Perfect are you. Right. But our fragile masculinity makes it harder for us to acknowledge the fact that we need that kind of praise. And we are deeply insecure. That's important work.

Let's jump to the pre-chorus. Love that line. I see you a different way. So take my eyes to borrow. It's kind of creepy when I hear it back. But it made sounds to me at the time. Yeah, I think it's the same sort of. theme of just sometimes people kind of get this perception of themselves and they're so locked into it.

You almost want to be like, do you even know how incredible you are? We should see yourself the way that I see you and that I think a lot of other people see you. And that's a very common, I don't know, problem, I think. There's this cool effect in the pre-chorus. You know, we get some new harmonies, the melody changes, and then we end with this kind of gap, this kind of question mark. we don't know exactly what's coming. Let's find out. Let's spin the chorus.

Kind of flips the script a little bit. Yeah, I mean, I feel like, again, it was one of those, like, sort of just games with the rhythm of the stop and the startness. And sort of, I think I was attracted almost like, not that we got there with it, but like that sort of like young Michael Jackson sort of like, I don't know, that funky kind of groove that I've never really played with before.

So it was a fun right. I mean, he was incredible. He was just so able to kind of direct it and guide it where we were supposed to go here. I love how those gaps almost feel like they take that window metaphor. If you look at the waveform of this song, which I was doing, editing it down, I was like, there's actually like a second of silence in there. It's like almost a really risky thing to do. It's very vulnerable to go down to silence.

I mean, this ended up being one of the songs that I was surprised. ended up making the running at the end of the day because it was such an unusual one for me. That's sort of why I go back to the gift of experimenting of allowing yourself to like not just think you have to make one type of pop music because this was like a perfect example of like I would have never thought that this would be my style of music but it's feeling really authentic. Yeah. You use this idea of the window and you sort of flip the script from the song we had just been listening to right?

And want you in my room it's like I'm leaving a window open for you. And now it's like, leave it went open for me. I think it's very rare that we get a song that is from the perspective of a narrator, trying to sort of tell the other person how to feel through their own eyes. Like, see things, walk in my shoes, see it through my eyes. In art, you call it like a trumplei, where you get sucked into the song. It fools the eye because it's a song kind of about a narrator telling a story to a person about how they're feeling. And then you forget you're listening to a song.

You're that sucked into it. I didn't even think of it like that, but I love that explanation. You know, something I always gravitate towards to in songwriting, ever since actually a listener of our show pointed it out is in both this song and Want You in my room, there are no gender pronouns whatsoever. There's an I and a U, but the identities of those people are never really established. And I just remember when we had this listener write us and say that as a queer man, like he always was drawn to those songs because it meant he could put his own figures into those roles.

I mean, that's the dream. I feel like, I mean, I'd go on these like long camping chips with my parents and I was little. And I would just listen to music and I would put myself in the story of every single, like, it was my song. I was to mean those words. I have lived those experiences. And I could really allow my offense. to believe it for a second.

And so I love if anyone else can get that opportunity with anything that I make of just like, this is your song now. You know, this is your story. And hopefully you've experienced something similar. So it does feel real. Absolutely. On that note, you know, there's another moment in this song that I think reflects that it's something we only notice after listening to this song, you know, a number of times as we do.

The chorus changes. At first at the end of the chorus you sing, keep you wanting more. But then, later in the song, in the third chorus, you say, keep me wanting more. So it's almost like there's an even further blurring of like, who am I and who are you? And how are we in this together? Yeah, I mean, that exchange, I think, is something that I kind of think about a lot in romance. It's like, I like to give as good as I get kind of thing. And that's always, you know what I mean?

Reciprocity. And that's not always an easy transaction that you find. Sometimes you have someone who's more of the giver, sometimes you're more of the getter. So I think it's just like, hey, it's not just about you keeping the window open from me. It's got to go both ways. In the outro of the song, there's this musical moment that I feel like kind of reinforces that merging of the two.

It's this subtle thing that's happening there. But in the background, the guitar is just playing. this one chord over and over while all the other chords move around it. We would call that a pedal point where one thing stays the same and everything is changing around it. And it feels like it's this sort of grounding element. There's a solidity that by the time we get to the final course because of what's happening and because of what you're singing, what the guitar is doing to back it up, that merging of the me and the you and we want each other feels complete. I mean, this is weirdly another example of a kind of

hook that I had that I'd been carrying around for a while, and I didn't know where to put it. So when we got to, like, Bridgeland, I was like, this kind of works right here. And luckily, you know, agreed. So, yeah, it was, again, like, another perfect example of just, like, collecting little ideas as I go, and one day we'll find a home for them. That's wonderful. So there are so many fabulous tracks on B-Sides. We really love this one.

Window. What are some of the other themes that people are going to hear on this record? I think I tried to explore a lot of different things. I think the opening track, This Love Isn't Crazy, only ended up making the album at the last minute and is now my favorite track, actually. I wanted to open with something really theatrical. With Julie and I went really subtle,

so I wanted to kind of flip the switch on that and just be like, welcome to love everyone. We're going to have a party. Stop cleaning the house. I wanted to do in a weird way, like, acknowledge. sort of the loneliness that's from some people like it going through. So I slept in kind of a song called solo for that very reason. I can't stand to see you crying.

It's a good song that sort of hooks on to like, so what, you're not in love? We're going to shine bright on your self-dance and solo. And so I think there was a word for it. I was looking kind of for like motivational, uplifting sort of feelings. So earlier you described yourself as an overwriter, perhaps a workaholic in some.

ways, which suggests that even though you're just putting out this record, you're still writing. What are you working on right now? Tavish and I have already made an entire quarantine album. What? And it's very different. It's kind of fun. We have to like do it on Zoom or things like that, so it's been like a challenge, but a really fun one. 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 song for a minute. So I find it to be like a whole new style of going at it. I really like it. Well, that's really encouraging for us because we're viving off of this B-Sides record and we are excited to see what continues to emerge. That sounds like there's going to be something really

very beautiful on that work. So we look forward to it someday. Thank you. Carly, this has been so much fun. Thank you for joining us. And thank you for giving us a reason to talk about pop music every week for the last five years. This is all your fault. Well, I'm very sorry, but thank you so much. One more time, a huge thank you to Carly, Ray Jepsen for joining us on the show. It is such a joy to get to meet the people that inspire you. And we never saw this coming either.

Switch on Pop actually just won a Webby Award. for best arts and culture podcasts. So your gifts keep on giving, Carly. Thank you. Switched on Pop is produced by Bridget Armstrong, Megan Lubin, Nate Sloan, myself, Charlie Harding. Ashok Kerwa and Liz Nelson are our executive producers. Brandon McFarlin is our editor, mixer, and engineer.

Abby Barr does our community management, and Iris Gottlie makes our beautiful illustrations. We're a proud member of the Vox Media Podcast Network. We love hearing from you on Twitter at Switchdown Pop. Tell us what you're listening to. Tell us your favorite Carly Ray song. And we'll be back in another week with a brand new one. And most of all, thanks for listening.

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