Carly Rae Jepsen
Dedicated Side B
604/Schoolboy/Interscope
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“Call Me Maybe” was the incorrigible earworm that appeared out of nowhere in 2012 to catapult its vocalist Carly Rae Jepsen from supposed obscurity to overnight stardom—or so the story goes.
The Canadian singer-songwriter had already booked some considerable experience to her résumé beforehand: a third-place finish on the fifth season of Canadian Idol and a solid first album (2008’s Tug of War). However, the serendipitous social media intervention of fellow Canuck Justin Bieber soon fast-tracked Jepsen’s fortunes and those of “Call Me Maybe” in 2011.
Via an interconnected three-tier label deal with 604, School Boy and Interscope Records, Jepsen’s sophomore set—and international debut—Kiss (2012) introduced her to the world off the back of its glossy stock à la “Call Me Maybe.” Buried underneath the super production bluster of Kiss was Jepsen’s lyrical wit.
Upon attaining several gold certifications globally with Kiss, Jepsen used the wiggle room afforded to her with its respectable commercial returns to plot a more ambitious follow-up. With Emotion (2015), Jepsen recast herself as a cult phenom by addressing a void in the collective pop music consciousness that yearned for rapier-like song structuring replete with day-glow hooks.
Subsequently, she found herself standing in a class all her own. The demure sales for Emotion could not diminish that the long player managed to accomplish a rare feat—uniting record buyers and the music press in unanimous praise behind one artist and their album.
Sensing her subtle triumph in the battle of ideas in the musical marketplace, Jepsen marked the occasion with Emotion Side B (2016). Pushing at the boundaries of the extended play format, Jepsen gathered eight Emotion leftovers and made them available in both physical and online iterations. Given that the digital age had all but obliterated the art of the B-side—the physical CD singles that once held them were long gone by 2016—the impeccable material on Emotion Side B struck a collective nerve. Further acclaim and fan hysteria ensued.
Last year, Jepsen extended her authority as a singular talent with her fourth LP, Dedicated (2019). That rousing collection bested Emotion by expounding on her strengths while retaining her edge as a top-tier song scribe. It was not a matter of if, but when a “Side B” for this affair would manifest itself—Jepsen had confessed to generating upwards of 200 songs for Dedicated.
The equivalent of an atom bomb impacted yesterday when Jepsen unleashed Dedicated Side B. There has been justified adulation across the board for this so-called EP that is, for all intents and purposes, a full-length album.
As it was with Emotion Side B, the collaborators who appeared on Dedicated Side B’s parent record are all in attendance on its corresponding effort. It is a diverse crew of writer-producers and some of them have history with Jepsen—the likes of Jack Antonoff, Dev Hynes, Pontus Winnberg, Sean Douglas and Ariel Rechtshaid will stick out to those perusing the album credits.
But, if anyone is still under the illusion that Jepsen is a producer’s kewpie, they are sadly mistaken. It is Jepsen who knowingly elected each co-writer and tunesmith on Dedicated and Dedicated Side B for the sole purpose of ensuring that the respective inventories of these records were precisely scaled to her extraordinary range of ideas and influences.
Within the first five tracks of the project, Jepsen flirtatiously pinballs between rubicund synth-pop and fizzy electro-R&B before eventually pulling both elements into a funky gestalt on “This Is What They Say.” It’s merely a fraction of Jepsen’s power to be employed across the other seven selections housed on Dedicated Side B.
For those lucky enough to get their hands on a copy of the Japanese variant, the tracklisting expands outward to 14 pieces with “Let’s Be Friends” and “Always on My Mind,” the former song forwarded as a then unknown preview months earlier in February.
Heralded by the atmospheric “Heartbeat,” the second portion of Dedicated Side B finds Jepsen wielding an even more eclectic assembly of sound and tempo. Flitting from the disco-punk of “Summer Love” to the rapid-fire new wave of “Let’s Sort the Whole Thing Out” and ending on the ambient pop-soul of “Now I Don’t Hate California At All,” Jepsen heightens the stylistic breadth and texture of Dedicated Side B beyond mere dance-pop.
Keen listeners will catch traces of Blondie, Belinda Carlisle, Kylie Minogue, Kimbra and more close to the compositional bones of these songs; Jepsen doesn’t shamelessly mimic her heroes though, rather, she synthesizes and incorporates certain sonic flourishes of theirs into her own matrix. Because Jepsen is such an adept songwriter, every cut on Dedicated Side B is a vehicle for her imagination to roam free exploring the endless facets of attraction and amorous love thematically—but with an assorted sound palette at her disposal.
In an age where most of today’s contemporary figures are content to settle for churning out soulless bops engineered for the streaming slog, Jepsen demonstrates with Dedicated Side B that the art of genuine songcraft is very much alive and well in the pop genre.
Notable Tracks: “Heartbeat” | “Now I Don’t Hate California At All” | “Summer Love” | “This Is What They Say”
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