Disclaimer: This essay is half-baked. While I wanted to write about the B-sides publishing strategy it kind of turned into a “Carly’s impact on pop” post, with all the Fantano quotes. So the text kind of bounces from one of these themes to the other without setting down into either one.

Carly Rae Jepsen has a fairly unique publishing strategy among modern musicians. While many explore and develop a unique “sound” for each album (thus defining that era of the artist’s career), Jepsen devotes two albums to each “sound”, releasing an album of “B-sides” almost exactly one year after each new album.

But let’s back up a bit. Carly Rae Jepsen? The girl who sang ‘Call Me Maybe’? She has other songs?

Yes, that Carly Rae Jepsen. While most people might know Jepsen from the way her 2012 single “Call Me Maybe” went viral, she has by now built up both a veritable discography and a dedicated fanbase.

Carly Rae Jepsen’s Discography

  • Tug of War (2008)
  • Kiss (2012)
  • Emotion (2015)
  • Emotion Side B (2016)
  • Dedicated (2019)
  • Dedicated Side B (2020)
  • The Loneliest Time (2022)
  • The Loveliest Time (2023)

Carly has also achieved some success with music critics, especially with the 2015 album Emotion. YouTube music critic Anthony Fantano gave it “a strong 7”, both Cosmopolitan and Popjustice gave it first place in their respective “best albums of 2015” lists. On TIME’s 2015 album list, it placed seventh. Subsequent releases have also enjoyed some critical acclaim - Dedicated also received a 7 from Fantano, and placed in top 10 on some year-end lists (aggregated here).

In a 5-year retrospective look back on Emotion, Fantano has this to say about the album and its impact on the music industry:

Carly did come through with what is nothing short - to many people - of a pop masterpiece, which has gained her a super strong cult following, and I think has gained her the attention of a lot of her contemporaries, artistically speaking, because from here, there are a lot of ideas and aesthetics that were quickly adopted into the records, singles, and aesthetics of other pop artists out there. One of the things that made Emotion stand out at the time of its release was just how geniusly the songwriting and production embodies these 80s aesthetics. It did so in a way where it wasn’t super nostalgic or trying to live in the past. It felt modern, it felt punchy, it felt new, but it was carrying these elements of an era of pop that was long gone. (…) With the release of this record I think Carly showed a lot of her contemporaries that you can do pop music (…) while marching to the beat of your own drum. (…) It’s the deeper more 80s influenced cuts that went on to impact the sound of multiple tracks from the likes of Taylor Swift, from the likes of Dua Lipa. (…) Over the past five years it’s been interesting (…) [to see Carly] turn into a critical darling of sorts as well, and turn into a music nerd’s favourite pop artist, in a way. With Emotion she dropped a really artistically defining release, for her and I think for just pop music for this past decade as well, which we’re still seeing the residuals of now. [Note; at this point in the video, the album covers of Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia and the Weeknd’s After Hours fly across the screen].

While none of her other new sounds (Dedicated and The Loneliest Time) made as big of a wave as Emotion, they still serve up some delicious pop goodness tunes. “Party For One” or “Too Much” off Dedicated, or “Surrender My Heart” or “Bad Thing Twice” off The Loneliest Time all offer more classic Carly tunes, while offering musically and thematically novel experiences.

There is a clear throughline and uniqueness to Carly’s sound: synths, nostalgic sounds without relying on nostalgia to create a good tune, and Carly’s playful most-often romantic “crush”-like lyrics and voice. At the same time, however, it is easily noticed how Carly matures throughout the years. There is a distinct sense of youthfulness to Emotion that Dedicated eschews, while still managing to keep its poppy vibrancy.

So now that you’re up to speed on CRJ, let’s talk B-sides. A recent interview with Line of Best Fit, reveals that:

While the first release was an idea from her label team, and one which she initially felt nervous agreeing to, they’ve now become a staple part of her creative process. “I just had such an incredible experience with what it is to do a b-sides project, because there’s less pressure and it’s for fans,” she explains.

As Jepsen herself says above, the B-sides are for the fans. It’s giving them more of the sounds they’ve already come to love, while also giving us more of a look into all of the themes Carly has been exploring - and chose not to include on the mainline album.

Let’s talk abstractly for a little bit. Let’s say that, for any one of an artist’s songs on a particular album, you have a certain chance of loving that song. For an artist whom you’ve loved a lot of their songs in the past, your prior for how much you’ll love any individual song might be as high as e.g. 80%. Releasing a B-sides album lets fans do more “pulls” from this “80%” chance of a song they love.

We can extend this random chance model even further, as it also applies across albums. For an artist whose past N albums you’ve enjoyed, you have a certain belief P(N) that you will enjoy their next album (If you were to actually make a predictive model here, you’d probably include more parameters, but let’s stick with this for now). So for any one album you’re pulling from this distribution P(N), and you see whether you like that album or not. Sometimes you don’t - maybe the new direction this artist chose is one you don’t enjoy - and sometimes you do - this time the artist hit the bullseye for your tastes.

So - under this model - releasing a B-sides album is akin to decreasing the overall variability, as fans will have more information about how much they might enjoy those songs. The B-sides will have very similar “odds” of including songs you like as the mainline album, while a new album has more variability.

While 2016’s Emotion Side B might have been just the release of outtakes coming together under the same sound - lacking the thematic or narrative arc you might expect from an album Jepsen’s B-sides has since come to live a life of their own. This comes to a head with the upcoming “The Loveliest Time”, which, as you will have noticed, does not even bear the “B-side” moniker.

Carly has also featured on some other artists’ songs, or made remixes, like this one on bbno$’s Lalala, where her lyrics contain a nod to Call Me Maybe.

I'm not really looking for a ring  
I'm pretty but I'll never send a pic  
Modest with my jewels, but check the bank  
Got money, but I still want him to pay

When I popped off, then they all called me, maybe later, I can't talk now
Carly so cold, she from the north, she from the Canada 
Forty-five dates, I'm on the road  
And you know I always sell out the show

Though this publishing strategy has worked for her so far, there is always the danger of growing stale or overstaying the welcome of a particular sound. Carly hasn’t done so this far - often the B sides measure well up to the main album in a duology, but this does not come for free. With the release of “The Loveliest Time” just around the corner, we can only hope Jepsen has given it the time and dedication necessary for it to deliver up to the quality of her previous projects.

If you’re looking for full reviews of Carly’s albums, I can wholeheartedly recommend Fantano, whom I don’t always share that many opinions with (Warm Blood is my favourite song from Emotion), but who I feel gives fair and informed reviews ,and who has enough actual music knowledge to back up his opinions. Also, read the comments as they are also often quite knowledgeable about music.