Carly Rae Jepsen: Meeting The Muse

Switched on Pop

Vox Media Podcast Network

Music Interviews, Music History, Music, Music Commentary

4.6 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 26 May 2020

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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

Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for this show comes from the Genesis GB70 Performance SUV. Every Genesis is a reminder
0:07.6	to try something bold to keep growing, keep hustling. At Genesis, they've harnessed all
0:15.0	that excitement of beginnings into their performance SUV, the GB70. It's a car built to turn
0:22.4	heads with stunning design inside and out. It's packed with intuitive technology inside,
0:28.6	like the 14.5-inch infotainment system, and fingerprint recognition plus the GB70 features
0:35.2	all-wheel drive, which is bound to add a little more acceleration to your next drive.
0:40.2	Your Genesis GB70 is waiting for you. What will you begin? Learn more at Genesis.com. Genesis,
0:48.8	keep beginning.
1:04.8	Welcome to Switched On Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding, and I'm musicologist Nate Sloan,
1:09.3	and we're joined by a very special guest. Oh, I'm Carly. Hi, Carly. Hi. So,
1:16.4	Carly, you hold a really special place for me and Nate because six years ago, we started a
1:22.5	conversation on a road trip together, where Nate was telling me about this lecture that he had just
1:29.0	done for a handful of his students. I had been trying to teach music theory using all these
1:37.6	examples from the classical world, you know, Baccarini and Hondle, and not only did the students
1:46.0	have to learn music theory, they also had to like get familiar with these unfamiliar
1:51.2	classical pieces, and I was like, this is a double whammy. Why don't we learn music theory using
1:58.0	a song that they all already know? It's the summer of 2012. Everyone is listening to your number one
2:07.8	hit, Call Me Maybe. And I'm like, this is the song we're going to use to learn music theory.
2:25.8	For like two hours, me and 20 high school students broke down all the different musical elements
2:31.9	of Call Me Maybe. I was talking to Charlie and telling him about this, and he was feeding off
2:38.6	that excitement, and he was like, we should start a podcast. Fast forward five years later,
2:44.9	and here we are. No way, that's how this began. That's amazing. Wow. Very cool. So not to make you
	...

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