Emotion (Carly Rae Jepsen album)

Background

Following the sudden worldwide success of "Call Me Maybe" in 2012, Jepsen found that the song had become "[this] huge, ginormous thing that really overshadowed the rest of our project" and further singles issued from Kiss failed to gain any traction. Jepsen viewed it as an opportunity to reflect and step back from the overexposure, and to discover what direction to take with her next album. She met with her record label and management after The Summer Kiss Tour wrapped up in late 2013, stating: "'I want you to put your faith in me that I'll come back when it's ready,' and they did and I'm very lucky to have a team that wasn't about trying to mass produce things and was really more looking at the quality of it."

Jepsen spent time regrouping; searching for a "detour" that came to be in the form of a Broadway role: "I thought, how amazing would it be to take a left turn, somehow, and still come back to this? [...] but 'left turn'—I didn’t know what that meant." She was approached by the producers of Rodgers + Hammerstein's Cinderella to audition for the titular character, and was formally offered the part after auditioning in Los Angeles and passing callbacks in New York. Jepsen assumed the role for twelve weeks from February 2014 to June 2014, and during this time she decided to handle her own A&R. With help from guitarist Tavish Crowe, Jepsen began emailing artists she admired to see if they were interested in collaborating, including Tegan and Sara, Rostam Batmanglij of Vampire Weekend and Shellback.

Writing and development

Jepsen went into writing Emotion with the intent of crafting a project that wasn't mass-produced, opting to take her time with the project due to her dissatisfaction with Kiss's constrained timeframe of two months. In June 2013, Jepsen told Idolator she had been working on her third studio album since "the day Kiss was turned in". She shared that the record would incorporate pop and folk music, and channeled Robyn, La Roux, Kimbra and Dragonette as influences for the studio sessions. It was confirmed that she was working with her past producers, Josh Ramsay, Ryan Stewart and Max Martin while meeting with new ones like Benny Blanco and Stargate. It was tentatively due for release in the first quarter of 2014 but was pushed back. Jepsen stated that she would not rush the album, instead taking her time to make sure it was of quality.

Eternal Summer was an entire indie pop effort that was scrapped before she put work into Emotion:

"I made an indie album that probably no one will ever hear. I think there is a natural rebellion when you have success in one are(a) to completely rebel against that. I needed to get that out of my system, I think. I made really weird music. But I didn’t want to release that album. It felt not like the move I felt like making. At first, when I was in L.A. [working on the new album], I was making very pure pure pop again, kind of almost Kiss. I wasn’t feeling that. The indie album was too hot, too cold. Emotion felt like the right balance."

Lyrical and compositional inspiration for Emotion stemmed primarily from 1980s pop music. Jepsen sought to channel a "heart-on-your-sleeve sensibility" reminiscent of the era after having attended a Cyndi Lauper concert in Japan, further exploring its themes through "old-school" Prince and Madonna records on morning runs before rehearsals for Cinderella. An epiphany came to Jepsen after writing "Emotion", the second track on the album, where she realized that '80s pop combined with a more alternative production was what she was seeking.

Several publications noted a "surprising" collaboration between Jepsen, Ariel Rechstshaid and Dev Hynes after she shared a photo of the three on Instagram. Jepsen felt a desire to "color a little outside of the lines, and try some sort of collaborations that people wouldn’t necessarily pitch," stating that it's a "gift" to have artists from different realms of music come together to express a new idea. Rechstshaid has stated that as pop and indie music converge closer and closer, a new space opens up for experimentation within: "We were so far outside of what is considered the mainstream, doing our thing, and those lines have just started to fade over the past five years. Getting me and Dev in the room sort of implied what she was after."

Jepsen contacted Hynes through his management stating that she was a fan, which Hynes found hard to believe at first: "people just say that [...] I didn’t know how involved she was with things." Hynes was eventually "won over" by Jepsen after demonstrating her vocal ability and work ethic. Hynes credited her with genuine intentions of wanting to "develop a new aesthetic" and not pursuing "Pitchfork-approved artists" just for the sake of indie credibility: "I can tell when that’s happening because people will ask me to do one thing and then want it changed. Whenever that happens, I know you don’t actually want what my songs sound like, you just want how people reacted to them."

Throughout the process of the album, it was revealed that 250 songs were composed. Jepsen announced the title of the album on April 11, 2015 and released the cover artwork on April 15, 2015. The track listing was revealed on June 2, 2015.

Promotion and release

The album's promotion was kicked off with a live performance of the album's lead single, "I Really Like You" at Good Morning America on March 5, 2015. On April 4, 2015, Jepsen performed "All That" at Saturday Night Live. On May 1, 2015, Jepsen performed "Run Away with Me", "E·MO·TION", "Your Type", "Black Heart" and "Gimmie Love" at a show in Beijing, China. On the release date of E·MO·TION in the United States on August 21, Jepsen performed "Run Away with Me" on Today. During her tour in South Africa in October 2015, she performed "Run Away With Me" on Idols South Africa.

Singles

The album's lead single, "I Really Like You", was released to the iTunes Store on March 2, 2015. The song reached the top 40 in Australia, Canada, Japan, and Netherlands, and has reached number 39 on the US Billboard Hot 100, number 3 in Ireland and on the UK Singles Chart, and number 1 on the Scottish Singles Chart. The music video was released on March 6, 2015, featuring Tom Hanks and Justin Bieber.

"Run Away with Me" was released as the album's second single on July 17, 2015. The music video for "Run Away with Me" was released on July 17, 2015 and directed by Carly's boyfriend, director David Kalani Larkins. The video was filmed in Tokyo, New York City, and Paris. The track was premiered on Hit FM in Spain on June 22, 2015.

"Your Type" was re-released as the third official single on November 9, 2015 (in Europe). An official remix package was released on December 11, 2015 in Europe and Oceania and on December 18, 2015 in North America. Its music video, directed by Gia Coppola, premiered November 3, 2015 and follows Jepsen on a Cinderella-inspired story where her character fantasizes about becoming a pop star.

Other songs

Critical reception

Emotion received mainly 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 78, based on 23 reviews. Matthew Welch of Entertainment Weekly gave the album a A- grade, writing "Her effervescent follow-up [is] an '80s-inflected collection of sweetly breezy dance-pop baubles. Emotion is the sound of a girl who's had her career-defining smash; now she just wants to have fun." Jim Farber of New York Daily News gave the album a three out of five stars, feeling that "Due to the era the album fetishes, the music sounds inescapably chintzy.... Jepsen’s improbably young voice helps distract from that." Siri Svay of Music Connection gave the album seven out of ten stars, writing "Jepsen has crafted an album embedded with catchy bubblegum pop tunes that will get stuck in your head while you’re soaking up summer sun by the pool." Sasha Geffen of Consequence of Sound gave the album a B+ grade, writing "Emotion rolls out banger after banger, all while sustaining a remarkable level of complexity and compassion for everyone in Jepsen’s solar system."

Peter Tabakis of Pretty Much Amazing gave the album a grade of A-, opining that "Emotion is an old fashioned eye-opener. It's the shiny birthday present stowed in a random closet, hidden in plain sight. It's also the best gift you never asked for, or even knew you wanted in the first place. That she succeeded in making a near-perfect pop album seems insane... Emotion is so good, it’s formed sky-high expectations out of thin air." Corban Goble of Pitchfork rated the album 7.4/10, commenting "Emotion is as solid and spotless a pop album as you're likely to hear this year.... but Emotion fails to tell us who Jepsen is or wants to be." Evan Sawdey of PopMatters gave the album 6/10 and said "Emotion is still a very pleasing album if not just a shade overambitious, clearly trying too hard to make the same genius pop moments that Kiss churned them out with effortless flair." Kevin Ritchie of Now Magazine gave the album 3/5, writing "For all its unexpected sounds and catchy choruses, Emotion falters in its lyrical blandness." Jon Caramanica of The New York Times gave the album 3/5, stating "Emotion is full of pure cotton candy--delicious, distractingly sweet and filling, with a mildly suspicious aftertaste.... [The album is] full of excellent songs that seem to give up about two-thirds of the way through. Jonh Bell of The Line of Best Fit gave the album a 7.5/10, commenting "Emotion has all the tenets of a successful pop record, but feels more cultivated than previous work." Stephen Carlick of Exclaim! gave the album an 8/10 and judged that "Emotion demonstrates how little improvement could be made on her sharp, consistent songwriting abilities. These are perfect pop songs; a few more rare glimpses of their rougher edges would make them all the more spectacular."

Dan Weiss of Spin gave the album an 8/10 and judged that "This is music for flash mobs, a valentine to crowdsourcing, and a public engagement proposal to the universe." James Rainis of Slant Magazine gave the album a four out of five stars, commenting "With an uncanny melodic gift that enlivens even the most tired sentiments and a chameleonic ability to seamlessly transition between disparate production styles, Jepsen proves she's worthy of those comparisons [to Taylor Swift and Rihanna]." Maura Johnston of The Boston Globe gave the album an 8/10, commenting "An album that’s incredibly enjoyable even as Jepsen stands on the precipice of heartache." Heather Phares of AllMusic gave the album a four out of five stars, commenting "An even more consistent album than Kiss, Emotion further defines Jepsen as an equally stylish and earnest pop artist." Ryan Dennehy of AbsolutePunk gave the album an 8.5/10 and judged that "Emotion goes to great lengths to prove the advantages of being manufactured, with every piece interlocking with machine-like precision with its surroundings. It's astonishingly effective, and like the best pop, demands to be listened to ad nauseum in order to gawk at the sheer audacity of the accomplishment." Penfold of I Probably Hate Your Band gave Emotion 7.5/10 and said it "sees CROJO cut her hair short, dump her boyfriend, throw out her wardrobe, and grow into the girl she always wanted to be. Set your Spotify to private, pop in those headphones, and waste an hour in an '80s dream. You will not be disappointed." Annie Zaleski of The A.V. Club gave Emotion a grade B+ and said "Emotion will propel her to superstardom—but even if it doesn’t, she can at least rest easy knowing she made one of 2015’s most interesting, effervescent records." Nolan Feeney of Time said that the album is "probably the closest we’ve come to a modern She's So Unusual in some time."

Commercial performance

The album debuted at number 16 on the US Billboard 200, earning 16,153 album-equivalent units in its first week. In Canada, the album debuted at number 8 with 2,600 copies sold in its first week. In Japan, the album debuted at number 8 with 12,189 physical copies sold its in first week. On April 2, 2016, Jepsen revealed via Twitter that Emotion was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of Japan, having sold over 100,000 copies there, these copies represent physical sales of the album only. The album entered the UK Albums Chart on September 25 at number 21 with sales of 106,000 copies in addition to streaming figures. On February 24th, 2017 the album was certified gold in South Korea.

Personnel

Credits per the liner notes of Emotion.

Packaging