Carly Rae Jepsen • Dedicated

"my home is your body, I can't stay away" <--- finally, a love song for Cronenberg fans

make that two songs! that broke my brain a bit.

not to knock the songs on this one too harshly but I think she just about nailed the song selection for the "real" album

jesus christ she did it again

there are quite a few songs on here i have no idea how she could have chosen "feels right" over for instance.

hence "just about" lol

"window"!!!!! what was that!!!!

xps Interesting, I feel the exact opposite. For me the back half of Dedicated is a bit patchy, but after one listen I love this one all the way through. Which is a pleasant surprise bc I thought Emotion Side B was significantly weaker than the og album (except for Cry, which is all-time).

Man, Now I Don't Hate California is sooo lush w/the twinkling synths and wave sound fx. I wish it went on for twice as long. Also side B is only five minutes shorter than the album proper!!

"stay away," wtf... how is this happening

i agree about the back half of dedicated being a bit patchy and this one being more consistent

back half of dedicated is all jams except "feels right" which is almost too linear of a "jam" to be a jam, but it ruled live so whatever

anyway thrilled to have another perfect collection of crj songs somehow, HOW IS SHE SO FUCKING GOOD

For me the back half of Dedicated is a bit patchy

imo "Feels Right" is the only sour note on the whole thing. "Right Words Wrong Time" and "Real Love" ar etop tier for moi.

lol xp

like "heartbeat," what's up with that glistening backdrop, where did it come from

the strings on "summer love"

Gonna have to put the entire Dedicated set on shuffle for a few days to sort this out. What a trial.

the early-new order instrumentation of "let's sort the whole thing out"

Can't wait to check this out. Dedicated never really bit me. Maybe I can cobble together my own tracklist between the two of them.

"comeback" is donna lewis-core

i like that she put "felt this way" and "stay away" together on the tracklist. variations on a theme

Oh man, this is so much better than last year's record.

I liked, didn't love, the Dedicated album and idk you guys most everything here seems left off the album for a reason. Like Dedicated is lesser than Emotion, so are the leftovers.

"summer love" is an unreal mirage of a song

dedicated isn't lesser than emotion, looking forward to hearing the b-sides

"this love isn't crazy", "window", "heartbeat", "let's sort the whole thing out", "comeback", "solo" are all great and the rest is still solid. feels about equal to dedicated in quality overall which is very good if not emotion-level

this rules

Fun interview:

https://amp.theguardian.com/music/2020/may/22/carly-rae-jepsen-lockdown-listening-my-fridge-caught-on-fire

Too early to say which songs I would have preferred to see on the A-sides release, but "Let's Sort The Whole Thing Out" would definitely have been one of my favorite tracks from that album. I might have also put "Felt This Way" on the album proper.

i would replace "feels right" with "summer love" if i cared to do such a thing

I don't love all of this (even Carly can't sell "I'll be your special somebody/God I love your body") but from "Heartbeat" through to "Now I Don't Hate California After All" makes a super solid stretch and those two particular songs (+ "Let's Sort The Whole Thing Out") are among my favourites she's done.

It’s buried near the end, but Solo is the big euphoric pop banger here.

"Solo" bugs me a bit for some reason I can't quite discern

i know we're still talking about side b but i was just thinking about how "happy not knowing" is the best song ever

Definitely a highlight

guess who also has a quarantine album in the pipeline

i put off digging into dedicated for a long time, and i just realized it was the monochromatic cover putting me off. emotion is overflowing with color, so monochrome felt like a bad turn. but i'm listening to it now and it's just. remarkable.

does anyone else have this experience with carly where she seems to have an uncanny ability to go through my mental listening history, pick out sounds i've liked but wish there were more examples of, and then make perfect songs from them? is this just me?

I can't say I feel you on the second point exactly (she does use a lot of cool sounds tho), but I used to feel like albums with black and white covers somehow made the music more drab

As for Side B, "Comeback" is my big keeper from the album

"julien" is such an incredible song

julien,
it was more than a fantasy
to the end

will a more perfect lyric ever be written?

through the
last
breath
that
i
breathe

omg the sheer euphoria of the chorus coming in after the bridge, I can't tell if it's just me but the harmony that goes up instead of down sounds like it's mixed just a biiiit louder and it gives it so much lift

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCrxhRe2d2w

she's the greatest

How dare you (post this right before I was going to).

I will probably never listen again but this is adorable

I love them too! I just hope she isn't hurting herself as much as it sounds like. Also, I didn't realize that the backing vocals were so generic. I don't keep up with much dude pop these days.

But on a similar note, I have had a disquieting thought about Want You In My Room. I've been operating under the assumption that Carly herself provided the vocodered vox on the chorus. But what if it was Jack Antonoff and the song was more of a duet? Under so much processing - would it matter? It kind of gives me chills (the bad kind). Is there any evidence to support or debunk this?

― ☮ (peace, man), Wednesday, May 22, 2019 12:41 PM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

i don't have liner notes in front of me but i've been assuming the robotic voice in the chorus is him. i... don't think this makes the song a duet any more than his "whoaaoh"s on "out of the woods" would

― american bradass (BradNelson), Wednesday, May 22, 2019 12:45 PM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

I guess I just don't want Jack Antonoff wanting me in his room.

― ☮ (peace, man), Wednesday, May 22, 2019 12:48 PM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

I just got around to listening to the CRJ interview on the Switched On Pop podcast from last May. Not a favorite podcast of mine, to be honest, but I went back to it since it's an interview. Anyway, relevant passage: "Jack's so gifted at the vocoder." I am at peace with this fact though. It doesn't bother me like it did back then.

what a great friday album

Gonna be time for a new thread soon. Just not sure if Western Wind is a song or album title.

https://www.stereogum.com/2182604/carly-rae-jepsen-western-wind/news/