Get an inside look at the artist behind DedicatedSideB, CarlyRaeJepsen.
The karaoke bar Break Room 86, tucked on a quiet side street in the Koreatown section of Los Angeles, feels like a well-kept secret; to even find it you have to walk past a loading dock, then down a long dark hallway to a vending machine that’s actually a hidden door.
Behind the dusty candy bars and Doritos, though, lies a strobelit temple to pop nostalgia: stacks of glowing televisions, Fleetwood Mac albums and Duran Duran cassettes shellacked to the walls, drink menus printed on vintage VHS cases. It’s a fitting space for an artist like Carly Rae Jepsen — with her singular knack for decade-spanning, sweetly retro songcraft — to sing a few bygone classics , but also to tell EW all about her fourth studio album,JEPSEN: The last time I did it was when I was in Tokyo for my video, so it’s kind of a funny coincidence that yet again today it’s [more] for a photo shoot. I think it’s time for me to just go and do a pure karaoke for the sake of karaoke.I’m all for it not being a performance but, like, a group singalong. It’s just more fun to go up with your girlfriends and be the Spice Girls together, you know?I had a mission statement for the album that I wanted to make it understated disco. Which didn’t totally end up happening — it’s got elements of the ’70s but also ’80s and ’90s — but it is sort of music to kind of clean your house to, so that’s what I titled it at first.because of a song that actually didn’t make the album but still felt like a great theme, because in my love life I’m just a hopeful romantic, always.You’ve always called yourself an overwriter. Was that more or less true on this one?, I wrote about 200 songs again and then narrowed them down to these 15 so yeah, I went a little crazy.But I think part of the journey is just what rises to the top at the end — what I keep coming back to, and my friends and family and label people. I definitely have a desire to secretly release all of them at once, but I also believe in the beauty of an old-fashioned cohesive body of work. I wish my process was different. There’s a world where I’m like, maybe I’ll just write the first 15 songs and release them and stop! But I guess I’m a bit of an overthinker and a perfectionist.No! I was pretty certain that after taking a significant amount of time after “Call Me Maybe” andin 2014] no one would remember me or care about what I did next. But that’s why it felt empowering to be like “Well, now I’m gonna do the type of music that I’m craving to share that feels really unique — and I don’t know what that is yet, but I’m gonna figure it out!”came out there was a feeling like whatever happens, it was honest and this was authentically my take on pop music, so for it to get any kind of reaction at all still kind of blows my mind.It was a wild thing to be back in a stadium. The last time was with Justin Bieber, and I was terrified. I thought, “Oh god, am I gonna feel like an impostor?” I think what actually helped give me the confidence to do those shows was just feeling the support of this [fan] family that’s been created, so when I stepped out on stage it wasn’t like the scared young 20-year-old who did it the first time. It felt like we had learned some lessons and felt some confidence that not everyone has to get it, but the people that you do connect with that that’s sincere, and that’s empowering.At this point in your career, do you think you’d even want to deal with the tabloid celebrity that comes with a certain level of pop stardom? I have experienced very briefly what it is to have an intense amount of fame, and I wasn’t too comfy with it for sure. But I think it was mostly because it happened in such a rush, and it was really shocking. Also, you don’t have a really strong perception of yourself right away when you’re starting, and it’s dangerous if you start to let other people tell you who you are before you have an idea of that yourself. So I think it was a weird time for me. Nothing bad happened, but I did feel like I wanted to cocoon myself a little bit when people would tell me “If you go to this restaurant you’ll get seen by this paparazzi,” as if it was, like, a helpful tip.I think it was also reaction to when “Call Me Maybe” hit, that I [knew] I wanted to be known as an artist, not a famous person. So that’s kind of why I said yes to Broadway — to get out of the pop bubble and into the theatrical world, which was also really exciting for me just as a little musical-theater nerd. But yeah, now I would say it’s landed in a place where I don’t really get recognized that often, and when I do it’s like, a shocking lovely thing as opposed to an invasive thing. I do get to have a love life that feels quite private, and I value that.Jack Antonoff and I have actually been talking about making a musical for ages, and a couple of the people fromhave been interested in it. It’s very much a faraway dream, but we also have it very much in sight, what we’re gonna do. And I think the fantasy is that we go away to a cabin somewhere and we start from scratch.You know what, it’s from the movie“He needs me, he needs me,” and it’sThe musical-theater part of me was like, “Can we buy this from Disney and, like, funk it up?” And we did! So that’s why that song exists.Disney is very hard to get approvals from, so I went to Disneyland and got a fake contract, and I had a Mickey Mouse there sign it, and then I sent an email to them saying, “Please! The big boss says yes!”You write so well about love, and often yearning for it from the outside. If you’re happy in your personal life, is that easier or harder to do? I was in a relationship when I started this album and then I went through a breakup and now I’m in a new relationship. I actually made a joke with my girlfriends that one day instead of doing song titles I’m just going to do the name of the guy:
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