9 September 2015
In a world in which celebrities and musicians feel the need to sell their personal brands and intricately designed personas to a world hungry that has always pined for originality, the pop music canon is being rewritten by an album whose appeal is rooted in its lack of star narrative, its unapologetic nostalgia, and the universality of its sentimental impulses. The once one-hit-wonder queen, Carly Rae Jepsen has become a sophisticated chronicler of the human heart through the her 2015 release, E•MO•TION. An truly teenage dream, this album- even in its imperfection- has created a space for emotional vulnerability in its disconnect from the artist, much unlike the authorial-driven projects that populate the pop music world today.
Since 2011, women in the music industry have have dominated discussion more so than Carly Rae Jepsen: Katy Perry, Beyonce, Nikki Minaj, Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus, etc. The kingdom of pop is ruled by queens whose narratives have become the standard for entertainment industry news- they distract us and sustain us. As the media grappled with those understandings of intersectional feminism, Jepsen has come onto the scene with another answer to the cultural question of selfhood. Perhaps the greatest power Carly Rae Jepsen has utilized in her 2015 release is that of ambiguity. E•MO•TION lacks the narrative that 1989, Beyonce, The Pink Print and other recent releases thrive on. Compared to the frenzy of media sharks coming after every female artist who shows even an inkling of self-possession, there is relatively little to feed on when it comes to this celebrity’s personal life. Carly’s narrative is very much removed from her most cultivated work, and in doing so the signified is suspended in a swirl of poppy, upbeat, sentimentality that allows for a number of stories to fit in the space of one.
One of the common criticisms of the album is its lack of depth and lack of personal investment. The relationship between people and narrative is a funny thing and even as audiences and listeners hunger for the clarity of didacticism, they find themselves thriving in that delicious space between question and answer. However, that ever-elusive Quintessential Pop Narrative is not so much about depth as it is about breadth. Though the refrain of the album’s first single,“I really really really really really like you”, may be but inches deep, it is a million miles wide- enveloping every pining heart and the naivete of any crush that hasn’t yet crushed us just yet. In that same vein do the simple lyrics and the teen dream rhythms allow one to write their own story into an album that was made to be malleable: Run Away with Me is the party-sized distance between a starcross’d pair of dancing lovers;Your Type is whatever unrequited love we are combating in the moment, and perhaps even the ones we’ve conquered and left behind; LA Hallucinations is each young person’s battle to remain gentle and honest in the often apathy-inducing existence of emerging adulthood . Like a fine oil paint, E•MO•TION’s colors remain eye-catching and pliant- no matter how thick or thin the layers may be.
Underneath its heavily referential synth beats and electronic melodies, are lyrics that are held just shy of resolution. From the refrain of the album’s namesake, the singer invites the self-object of their romantic daydreams into a space of suspended becoming: “In your…Fantasy, dream about me/And all that we could do with this emotion/This emotion, I feel it/This emotion, you feel it/All that we could do with this emotion.” In the song, “Boy Problems”, the uncertainty of relationships and communication is exhibited in the line “I think I broke up with my boyfriend today and I don't really care/I’ve got worse problems (emphasis added).” In an age of modern love, chronicled by The New York Times (nytimes.com/modern-love) and Aziz Ansari (book.azizansari.com) alike, the search for a soulmate is mediated by a number of things that cause our broken hearts to be put on the back burner. And finally, toward the end of the album, “I didn't just come here to dance/If you know what I mean/Do you know what I mean?/If you'd just give me a chance/You’d see what I see/Do you see what I see?” The main criticism’s of E•MO•TION, it’s lack of narrative and the lack of artistic transparency, is perhaps its greatest strength: by keeping things simple, shallow, and vague, the charge of making meaning and confronting complexity is up to the listener.
Much like Taylor Swift’s 1989, and other young contemporary musicians who are remembering a decade in which they existed for a only a minute, this is an album that is seeped in an 80s-like nostalgia from its electrifying mixture of drums, horns, and synthesizers to its lyrics that fit in the dialectic impulses of Brat Pack-era movies. The fickle relationship with past and future as it navigates the nowness of youth is exhibited the capacity for feeling deeply about shallow things.
Pop music is a genre seeped in paradox: we want to hear someone else’s story so that we might make sense of our own, we want depth while shying away from universality, and we hunger for reality while iconizing our creators. Perhaps detaching the singer from the song is what we need to suspend our music in that gray state of becoming rather than letting someone tell the story for us instead of with us. In it’s navigation of retrospection, introspection and anticipation, it shows the command of anonymity that only pop music can have. E•MO•TION operates as a great record to grace mixtapes and party playlists, while on the other hand it’s clear that Carly “didn’t just come here to dance.” In its lack of specificity, a unique kind of universality is imbibed in the Carly’s neon-toned vocals: in a Seinfeldian move, this musical story about nothing (and more importantly, nobody in particular) yet encompasses anything we need it to in the moment. In its review of the album, Pitchfork cited “Drake for performative vulnerability, Taylor for performative generosity” and perhaps now, we have Carly Rae Jepsen for her performative ambiguity.
Links:
Pitchfork Review: http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/20898-emotion/
Artist Website: https://www.carlyraemusic.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment