Carly Rae Jepsen • The Loneliest Time

well the new single "beach house" is quite the pivot from "western wind". just about stays on the right side of quirky i think. insanely sticky chorus - it's giving aqua

i wish she didn't give the quirkiest lines to some random men, i think she'd sell "i've got a lake house in canada and i'm probably gonna harvest your organs" a lot better!

hmm this is mediocre

Where are y'all located? It's not out in US Eastern yet :(

I thought "Western Wind" was hinting that the album was going in a more chill direction, but now this one... Aqua is a good comparison. Catchy but pretty lightweight

I'll be honest, my expectations were lowered once I saw the album art. Haven't heard Beach House yet, and I'm still unenthused by Western Wind, so I'm holding a wait-and-see position.

Yeah, I'm not sure about this one. Weird to hear her come out with such a weak chorus.

i'd take "good time" over "beach house" really

was expecting a lot worse based on the reaction to it

heh it's actually worse than I was expecting

the more i listen the more i hate it

Three times was my limit. Fortunately I doubt I'm in any danger of ever hearing this in the wild, so I may never hear it again.

Aqua is a good comparison

You have my attention.

Can’t see the Aqua comparison. Sounds like a decent but not great CRJ track.

there's a plastic, uber-catchy, 90s europop vibe to the chorus that reminded me of something like aqua

Oh it def reminds me of them, the europop vibe. Also male/female vocals with quirky lyrics

She comes out with bad songs sometimes. Party for One was a rough introduction to the Dedicated era for me. I was very relieved when it didn't actually end up on the record. I liked Cut to the Feeling at first but it really is just a chorus, isn't it? Let's Be Friends had that stupid dick joke/laugh in the middle. What were you thinking, Ms. Jensen?

Anyway, I don't think this is one of her bad ones! It definitely sounds musically out of character as far as her past few records. It's not like, sophisticated Carly. But I think it's a fun, funny song. If I have a criticism of it, it's that at 2:30 it gets in and out too quickly, much like the 2:41 Want You In My Room from Dedicated. I really think it could have used one more verse about boys number 5 and 8 or something. I really like the guy background singers on the chorus and bridge. So yeah, I'm on Team Beach House.

her worst song is that one christmas song she put out, just the pits

or let’s be friends, which i had completely forgotten about

Thought you meant her cover of "Last Christmas", Brad, until I looked it up. The lyrics of "It's Not Christmas Til Someone Cries" have put me off wanting to hear the song

I'm not even a scrooge about Christmas music, but yeah, It's Not Christmas Til Somebody Cries is a stinker.

all of these terrible songs are on streaming and yet utter jam “me and the boys in the band” still isn’t, it’s a cruel world

love the lyric of the new one but do not enjoy it musically, it made me think of jessie j and typing this sentence has made me depressed

cut to me in october saying “beach house sorta works in context” lol

lol

don't even hate the song as much as some of you but if the song works in context, then i'd be worried about the album

This sounds more like Black Eyed Peas than Aqua and it sucks.

Hope Western Wind is a better indication of what the album sounds like.

xp Well, the next track is about what gets done with those organs

Listening again and it’s worse than Black Eyed Peas. It sounds like a DNCE song.

This is giving me deja vu to the time Taylor Swift released ME! as the lead single for Lover
(Beach House is better than that, but I was hoping for more of a Warm Blood vibe for this album)

That was disappointing. It doesn't flow - the chorus grinds to a halt with "I'm probably going to hurt your feelings" and then the song seems to start again. It's just irritatingly stop-start. The middle eight doesn't work. It has surprisingly little Carly Rae Jepsen in it.

I enjoyed "I Want You In My Room" because it flowed well, it had some clever chords, and the production was retro without being overpowering. The chorus was like a one-two punch - it came in two parts, with the second part acting like a bonus chorus, a pleasant surprise. In contrast "Beach House" has a weak single-part chorus that just brings the song to a halt.

It has nothing to do with Aqua. It's not in the same league as Aqua. Aqua was genius. You, "Beach House", are no Aqua. If anything this song reminded me of how well-written "Happy Boys and Girls" was. To this day I still can't tell if the melancholic undercurrent running through that song was deliberate was real or exists only inside my head.

I still have faith in Carly Rae Jepsen but I fear she has been led astray. I'm not suggesting she should be kidnapped and forced to work with Mark Ronson. Kidnapped is such a loaded word. Enticed, with cheese.

brad otm about it sounding like jessie j lol

New article.

https://crackmagazine.net/article/profiles/carly-rae-jepsen-new-album-the-loneliest-time-western-wind-beach-house-cover-story/

Despite the more maudlin theme, The Loneliest Time is wide-ranging. While her 2015 hit album Emotion was embedded in 80s synth-pop and its polished follow-up Dedicated mainly took its influence from sultry 70s disco, lately Jepsen has been less conscious of the decades she’s been moving between. “I had the playground of all the eras to jump from, and this was more just writing from the heart, in whatever direction the songs wanted to go,” she explains of the new album. She was also more intentional about the lyrical content not just being about a boy or nursing a crush. Instead, she became more self-reflective and analytical of her own behaviours. “It excited me to have those moments of flirtation on the new album, but also broaden the spectrum of what the subject of a pop song was allowed to be,” she declares.

The Loneliest Time sees the pop star breaking the mould again. Jepsen’s insatiable curiosity is what’s helped her remain a creative force, and on this record, that meant mixing the wistful 80s pop of Belinda Carlisle with horn-flanked funk numbers and victorious disco jaunts. But it was also important for her to not be seen as one-dimensional. For instance, recent single Beach House is the antithesis of the soothing ambience of Western Wind. One of the singer’s most playful tracks, it’s a campy pop anthem that finds Jepsen and her bandmates larping as boys going on bad dates. “This is a song for the girls!” she asserts with a wide grin. It also features some of her most absurd lyrics. “It was the shortest straw-pull for who had to sing, ‘I’ve got a lake house in Canada, I’m going to come harvest your organs,’” she snickers about the song’s lyrics. But while the track veers toward being lighthearted, there are harsh realities within it. “I wanted to highlight that feeling when you’re disenchanted after being on a dating app for a hot minute to be like, ‘That guy’s just going to… he’s going to wreck me.’”

The video has sold the song to me a bit more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLvVbazi0B4

Listening to it again I often wonder what it was like for OG Gary Numan fans circa 1982 or so. I wasn't turned on to Gary Numan's vibe until the late 1990s, just when he finally got his mojo back, but from essentially 1981 until the one-two punch of Sacrifice in 1994 and Exile in 1997 he was a nobody. I have the impression that by the late 1980s his OG fans had moved on, but there was a period post-Telekon when he was in theory a major pop star, albeit only in the UK, but with an increasingly limited mainstream appeal.

And yet his fans stuck with him, because they could remember the first time they saw "Are Friends Electric" on the Old Grey Whistle Test or whatever. They could remember how it made them feel and they wanted to recapture that. Just like the first time I had a Dragonflight and a click frenzy in Cookie Clicker. I will never recapture that feeling, but I remember that I had it. I remember what it was like. I eventually found out I could maximise my clicks by sacrificing grandmas, but it didn't feel the same.

I came to the Carly Rae Jepsen music machine much later in life, but I clearly remember the point in time when it dawned on me that "Call Me Maybe" was one of the greatest pop songs of the early twenty-first century, alongside Death Grips' "I've Seen Footage". I remember exactly where I was. The surroundings. The thing is that while Gary Numan had some good tracks on I, Assassin and even Warriors he then settled into a rut where each album had one good single, one good b-side, and lots of filler, and that's the feeling I have with this new song. It's like "I Still Remember" or "My World Storm" or something.

The video is delightful. I didn't think much of the song as a song, but as a comedy sketch it's great.

Sorry but I don’t think Carly has it in her to make as many godawful album covers as Numan, which if you ask me was half the experience

Ok, music video is great. Almost makes me like the song.

I didn't think much of the song as a song, but as a comedy sketch it's great.

The Lonely Island Effect!

New song “Talking To Yourself” sounds like something from Kiss? It’s good but I’m starting to think “Western Wind” was a giant red herring.

it's so much better than the other two, very kiss yeah

oh my GOD

all of the interviews i've read with crj around this record suggest she didn't drift toward any one sound with this record, there's apparently a real range, of which "beach house" and "western wind" represent the poles

"talking to yourself" has plunged me in a perfectly-synesthetically-recreated sense memory of 2012 when i was depressed and listening to crj's kiss daily, this should be horrible but for whatever reason i am really enjoying timecrushed "th1s k1ss 2.0" complete with wormhole-dilated crj vocal fx

FINALLY a good song

i sure hope "western wind" and "beach house" are both outliers

New song “Talking To Yourself” sounds like something from Kiss?

Doesn't sound much like Kiss to me. Maybe a little like their disco phase?

This new song is amazing, can't wait for the album

I can't tell if Keyes is joking or not.

i sure hope "western wind" and "beach house" are both outliers

same here, not feeling these singles at all sadly..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwZjjiD8eoE

lol i really do not like the way their voices go together, but the track is fine otherwise

v classy like "julien," love it

the coda ("and in the morning...") is fucking amazing basically

^^ I'd add "So Right" to those picks. I wasn't crazy about "Shy Boy" so I'm also surprised how much I like this album - her first side-B that rivals the parent album imo

It's the first one I've liked more than the parent album. It might be my favourite since Emotion.

idk Dedicated Side B was pretty great. And Emotion Side B was "only" an EP. So it's not like this has happened so much.

i think it's easily better and more interesting than dedicated side b, but i prefer the loneliest time as an album to this which is much more eclectic for better & worse

It took me a long time to come around to Dedicated and Dedicated Side B. Now I really love them in addition to (and as a continuation of) Emotion. Maybe that will happen to me again with Loneliest/Loveliest, but so far I haven't warmed up to either of them.

Oops got the names mixed up. "Shadow" was the one I'd call a highlight, not "So Right". "So Right" has a nice pre-chorus though

no I'm relistening now and "So Right" is a highlight too. Goddamn it everything is a highlight

“shadow” is really great…

it's so great, she and rostam have really got something

i hesitate to call it one of her best songs about having a crush (so i guess just one of her best songs) but "the architecture of this connection is your reflection / it's always following me" is an amazing pop chorus lyric

this album fucking owns

I am very much in love with 'After Last Night'.

I am very much in love with 'After Last Night' - feels like a drum and bass Joe Hisaishi theme for a Ghibli movie.

Same about « After Last Night ». I hadn’t noticed it was a Rostam co-written/produced track. It doesn’t have his usual style.

yeah also surprised it was his track. "Shadow" too. both great songs atypical of his prior productions (that I've heard)

crj and rostam:

warm blood
western wind
go find yourself or whatever
after last night
shadow

they should make a whole album together

Whoa, this album's great! Way better than the last one for me

peace, man at 9:31 31 Jul 23

It took me a long time to come around to Dedicated and Dedicated Side B. Now I really love them in addition to (and as a continuation of) Emotion. Maybe that will happen to me again with Loneliest/Loveliest, but so far I haven't warmed up to either of them.

https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/carly-rae-jepsen/2023/the-rooftop-at-pier-17-new-york-ny-73a45a39.html

can’t believe i just saw this. best crj show i’ve ever been to. pure joy

pic.twitter.com/FtLWhE8Y6K

— gabriel (@gabrielkdt) August 6, 2023

Love that.

I managed to see her twice in 8 days just recently (opening for Boygenius and then at Osheaga) and she was delightful as always.

This album is so sick

of everybody tellin' me what to do

"after last night" and "anything to be with you" are immediately my favorite ever carly rae songs.

when that bari sax comes squonking in

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XnifCyL5aU

Kollage on Good Morning America. Amazing performance, although it's just a late night song that it seems a little weird in front of the bright "summer concert series" backdrop.

Kollage has become my favourite on the album. That's a great performance of it.

does after last night give anyone else super mario 3 vibes?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwk9mrE-cFA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ho8NDNapmd4

listening through the ILM albums of 2023 and Kollage popped up, genuinely surprised that Men I Trust weren't involved with that track, it sounds just like them