Emotion: Side B

Background and development

In June 2015, Jepsen released her third studio album, Emotion, which was met with an underwhelming commercial response. Despite this, the album developed a strong cult following and Jepsen grew to become a "critical darling". Emotion was included on several year-end lists from publications such as NPR, NME, Complex, and The Village Voice, and the album's promotional cycle was rounded out with a well-received performance at the 2016 Pitchfork Music Festival.

In a March 2016 interview with radio station WMSC, Jepsen expressed a desire to release some leftover material from the album's recording sessions, stating that she had been thinking of an Emotion 2.0-type release. In the process of sequencing Emotion, Jepsen and her team had to work with a hard limit of 17 tracks:

Then I got it to my top 40 and I was teasing my label, being like, "Would it be weird if I released 40 songs, after being away for three years?" [Laughing] They're like, "Yeah, that's just not gonna happen." I'm like, "Are you sure?" They're like, "Yeah, we're sure." So, OK, I had to narrow it down. We had heated debates and passionate emails back like, "Don't kill my babies!" 'cause I originally thought I got to have 21 songs and then I had to go down to 12. [We] somehow brought it up to 17 for the deluxe [edition] and it was a lot of arguing, but pleasant arguing; everyone was really understanding of where I was at. [...] The metamorphosis of the tracklists I've made for Emotion have probably changed six times. I have a little easel board with it painted on and I'd come home from a session and then I'd write down a song I liked better than having to decide which song to take out. I had to rebuild it and give it a facelift almost every week.

One of the songs not included in the album, "When I'm Alone", had its rights purchased for inclusion as the closer to 4 Walls by South Korean girl group f(x). Emotion Remixed + was exclusively released in Japan and featured two new songs: "First Time" and "Fever", which later made an appearance on Side B. In 2011, Jepsen participated in an anti-smoking campaign for her home province of British Columbia's Healthy Living Alliance coalition known as "Quitters Unite", which featured an unreleased composition that was reworked into "Store".

Release

On the one-year anniversary of Emotion, Jepsen announced that she had a "present" in the works with a release date of August 26, 2016; unveiling the EP's cover artwork. For a week leading up to its release, Jepsen posted a song teaser a day across several social media platforms. The track listing was revealed on August 24, 2016 by 7digital Canada.

Critical reception

Emotion Side B received highly positive reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 80, based on 6 reviews.

Commercial performance

The album debuted at number 55 in Jepsen's home country of Canada, and number 74 in Australia. In the United States, the album debuted at number 62 on the US Billboard 200, earning 9,000 album-equivalent units in its first week, with just over 7,000 coming from pure sales. The album also debuted at number 5 on iTunes Top 40 US Pop Albums. It also debuted at number 26 the same week on the Top Album Sales chart.

Personnel

Carly Rae Jepsen – vocals

Production

Release history

The album was released only as a digital download and in streaming format. The physical CD and Vinyl was released exclusively through Jepsen's official website.