Carly Rae Jepsen • Kiss

guess crj has a vault now

an alleged vault of 200-250 tracks

to be fair who the fuck doesn't

The last few songs on this album are getting unjustly trashed in this thread. *pouts*

Yeah, they're inessential but still great.

maybe being in rainy season tokyo for the past week is what helped me really get inside of this album on recent repeats. i retract all my prior lukewarm statements.

i'm sorry, i'm sorry, i love you, i didn't mean to say what i said...

personally i love "warm blood" and feel like it works well as a good late-album slowburn.

"boy problems" has become a real favorite, "making the most" remaining the best of the standard issue and maybe the whole lot. i think "all that" (which i agree benefits from its sequencing, even though for me it functions mostly as a build up to its excellent bridge) through "warm blood" is the real tour de force (the buzzfeed couplet being the album's one real regret, imo), i think "when i needed you" is fine but one of the lesser songs, and a bit clunky as a closer...

bonus tracks are solid but imo "love again" is the only real competition "making the most" has, the detail/thoughtfulness of the whole arrangement and that chord progression (plus all that space) in the verse would have been a great change of pace on the album. also think it'd work well as a closer, both as something that sums up what came before but also stands apart, and as a lyric as well (agree that "run away with me" would work well that way, too, much better than "when i needed you" does. but it's great as the opener it is.)

"When I Needed You" is essential for, if nothing else, the way Carly self-actualises midway through the chorus.

One of the more beautiful moments on the album imo is when she sings "And I cannot control it / The way you're making me feel" in "Warm Blood" and the music proceeds to slide giddily upward.

WTF "When I Needed You" is amazing.

(xpost)

i like "when i needed you" (i like everything on this album now), just in the camp who thinks these sessions had a better closer or three (even limited to the small fraction we've heard)

btw i really love "warm blood" for how the sound of it seems to simulate circulation, heartbeats etc. sounds recorded from inside the body. i also think it really embodies what it feels like to make yourself vulnerable to someone else

― insufficiently familiar with xgau's work to comment intelligently (BradNelson), Monday, July 6, 2015 10:13 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Warm Blood is a triumph. Rostam, Tegan & Sara, and CRJ should win a thousand grammy's for that shit. i've played it 42 times in 3 days and i can't get enough. really excited to see more pop production from Rostam in the future. he/they really nailed this one. curious who is responsible for what on the track.

ha, i've only just looked at the credits, obviously i dislike the vampire weekend co-write. surprised sia co-wrote "boy problems", it seems to have too many words and is not lumbering enough to have come from her.

didn't care about warm blood at first but it's been my obsession lately (song with gimmie love, which I thought was just ok at first). la hallucinations is the only song I still don't *love* but this album is totally one of the best straight-up pop albums of the past few years and there are very very few albums I've played as much as this in quite some time

same with gimmie love*

i didn't like Warm Blood at first either & the arrangement still feels slightly clunky but it's really grown on me. LA Hallucinations is definitely the weakest on the main album to me & i'd much prefer Favourite Colour to be on the album over it

Warm Blood reminds me of n/a's cover of Pumping Blood on ILX pre-covers LULU -- the Lou Reed/Metallica album

"Warm Blood" is my favorite.

Ha-- I can hear the VW influence. It's god-pop like "Ya Hey," vocal distortion and everything.

there's one particular note she hits that sounds exactly like Ezra

yeah. the cadence and melody of the entire first verse, but especially that last bit of "where would you find the room"

song is perfect.

One of the more beautiful moments on the album imo is when she sings "And I cannot control it / The way you're making me feel" in "Warm Blood" and the music proceeds to slide giddily upward.

o t m

Has DJ Q heard "I Didn't Just Come Here To Dance" yet?

for me, for Boy Trouble, i actually think its quite interesting/possibly impressive to *not* hear the Greg Kurstin/Sia stamp all over this track. their work is incredible but gets almost formulaic -- you can hear their signatures all over their J.Lo tracks, Charlie XCX, Beyoncé tracks, etc. on the one hand its fun to hear their identifiers, but on the other hand i am guessing that their writing work with CRJ was much more collaborative and more of a two-way street than it would've been with J.Lo.

Were Tegan and Sara really involved in "Warm Blood". Based on wikipedia the writing credits apart from Rostam appear to be Tino Zolfo (who apparently used to be in soulDecision, though not at the time of "Faded") and presumably this guy:

http://joecruzmusic.com/

from a brief scan of this http://coverlib.com/entry/id771435/carly-rae-jepsen-emotion-japan it doesn't look like anything they worked on made the album

Were Tegan and Sara really involved in "Warm Blood"

an early report (guardian i think) suggested they co-wrote the song but i guess not

"Making the Most of the Night" is today's earworm (HEY!).

heh, seems like it was just a punctuation error

eventually recording more than 200 songs split between alt-pop practitioners such as Hynes (on the devastatingly lovely slow jam All That), Ariel Rechtshaid, Tegan and Sara and Vampire Weekend’s Rostam Batmanglij (the lyrically dark Warm Blood), and gold-plated hit-makers such as Sia (the 90s-referencing Boy Problems), Max Martin and Greg Kurstin.

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/apr/23/carly-rae-jepsen-zero-i-sound-gritty-vaping-for-a-week-call-me-maybe-emotion

that piece is not great but i'm sure the writer knows how commas and conjunctions work

Lol at two of the songwriters shouting themselves out on "I Didn't Just Come Here To Dance".

xposts: I think Kurstin is easy to spot but Sia has not written anything else like "Making The Most Of The Night" or "Boy Problems" lately, as far as I am aware.

The choruses on those songs don't have a lot of space I guess? is how I'd put it which is unusual for Sia since her choruses tend to be spacious for the sake of maximum belting.

One of things I've always liked about Carly is the way that almost all of her choruses feel very "chatty". Which feels to me like it swims against the tide of most current pop music and certainly against the Dance Producer ft. Sia etc. and Pitcbull etc. orthodoxy, where the choruses are declaratory, either from a balcony Evita-style or from a podium at the center of the dancefloor.

Carly's songs feel like they're addressed to the specific listener, whereas Sia tends to sound like she's addressing a large audience which includes the listener.

This trend is also present in the way she often seems to enjoy rhyming relatively long words or phrases by current chart-pop standards e.g. "sentimental" and "detrimental" on "This Kiss", or "television" with "this position" on "I Really Like You" (though that particular aspect doesn't apply in the specific case of the Sia co-writes here). This is not by itself admirable or exciting or anything, but it can lend the songs a nicely sculpted or chiseled quality (c.f. the stapled-together effect of e.g. "Chandelier" and a lot of other declaration-pop), like, even if the message or vibe being delivered is "generic" or somewhat surface-level, a lot of care has been taken in its articulation.

oh i keep meaning to mention that i love that "boy problems" isn't directly about boy problems at all, but conversing with one's best friend about boy problems

so that one's sort of literally chatty

I've reversed my position on "I Didn't Just Come Here to Dance," so I now like every single track on this album.

yeah i didn't like "i didn't just come here to dance" at all when i first heard it but it fucking RULES

I feel like it's the best example of full bore EDM-pop meets diva-house since Dawn Richard's "Faith".

But with more early 90s Robyn S / CeCe Peniston vibes

my bad on the Tegan & Sara credit on Warm Blood -- i got that info from Wiki which i guess is not a reliable source.

my fave Sia write in the past bit is "Expertease (Ready Set Go)" for Jennifer Lopez. its a bonus track, Prod. is RedOne and Oakwud, and you can very clearly here the Sia factor in lyrics/topline/delivery/cadence etc. etc.

oh yeah and if i'm being picky and trying to find anything to dislike about this record, its the fade outs on most tracks. wish there were conclusive ends to the tracks rather than the lame fade...

I was thinking that something about the heavy landslide thud of the production of "When I Needed You" reminded me of Ferreira's "Heavy Metal Heart" - so of course they share a producer.

Love the way she sings TO-GETH-ER! FOR-EV-ER!

i never listened to 'i really like you' that much pre-album but god damn

who gave you eyes like that/
said you could keep them

That's almost up there with the greatest eye-related pop lyric ever:

You talk, talk, talk to me
Your eyes touch me physically

Can not stop listening to this all the way through repeatedly

Out of the songs currently on Spotify "Emotion" is the best one IMO.

God damn "Favourite Colour"

i dare you to watch this and not fall in love

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeccAtqd5K8

partially filmed on the exact sidewalk in shibuya where this album started fully clicking for me :'D