Bluntly speaking, we don't know anything about Carly Rae Jepsen. It's mysterious, perhaps even ironic, that as our on-demand modes of consuming media become more and more microscopically tailored to the individual listener or viewer, pop music has become sneakily dependent on the artist - or, more specifically, the narrative surrounding that artist. Should the absence of a narrative matter when the music is this good? I'm a fan of Lovato's she's at Jepsen's level as far as the pure vocal ability to sell a hook, and she sells the hell out of "Cool For The Summer." But what's that 27 million disparity about? Why does Demi get to 19 on the Hot 100 (already modest for a pop song of this ambition) and Carly doesn't chart at all? Why is nobody showing up for this album? Right now, that very video is sitting at just shy of 5 million views on YouTube for comparison, Demi Lovato, who is of a comparable level of celebrity as Jepsen (but still without a world-conquering hit like "Call Me" to her name) released her "Cool For The Summer" video a week later, and it's now at about 32 million views. You're wishing you could run down the streets like Jepsen in the homemade-looking music video, jumping into fountains and sharing the song's uncontainable joy with everyone in the general vicinity. It in fact does have a cadre of critically respected writers and producers behind it, but when you put on headphones and press play on "Run Away With Me" you're not thinking about what a great Shellback hook that is.
It's such a competent piece of work, every moving part not only well-oiled but possessing the kind of charisma that not even the most cunning Swedish megaproducer can create in the studio. TION would be the biggest, most inescapable pop creation of the year.Pop music, like any other mainstream art form, is not a meritocracy, but if it was, Jepsen's follow-up album E Barely anyone bought Kiss, the rushed-into-production album the song eventually lived on, but in our streaming- and singles-dominated world, who cares? Whatever work had gone into writing that exuberant, endlessly repeatable chorus had paid off Carly Rae was a star, Scooter Braun was rich, karaoke bars would never be the same. What's more, there was something about that song's success that felt unquestionably earned - no matter the Justin Bieber-abetted machinations to place it in the center of the pop cultural dinner table, most people could hear "Call Me Maybe" and feel that the people involved in its creation were good at their jobs. It was one of the few moments in pop music where even would-be detractors and snobs had to shrug and concede its superiority. By the end of 2012, it was accepted as a historical fact that Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe" was objectively the song of 2012.