Author: Kellie M Beck

“Mile-Long Mixtapes”: Ep. #1

The Missing Piece of Pop Carly Rae Jepsen Brings to Light

by Kellie M. Beck

 

My old boss is actually the one who introduced me to Carly Rae Jepsen. I was working at Aeropostale at the time– yes, that store, and yes, there were so, so, SO many graphic t-shirts. When I first got the job at 16, Jeremy terrified me. He was this tall, super-built guy; the kind that carries around gallons of water with them no matter what. He was notoriously adored or despised at the store by the associates. He was snarky, and quick-witted, and if I’m being honest, a little mean. I wanted him to like me, but I was freakishly intimidated by him. So when he asked me at work one night if I liked Carly Rae Jepsen, I lied through my teeth and said yes. I stumbled through a conversation about her album Emotion until Jeremy was pulled away by a soccer mom. That night, I listened to Emotion three times through so by my shift the next day, I’d be able to string a sentence or two together about her music. 

 

Three years later, when I finally left the job, Jeremy and I were friends. Coworkers, sure, but friends. At least once a week, we closed together to Carly Rae Jepsen’s Emotion, or Emotion B Side, her newly released EP. The music was fun, peppy, and flirty. I was nowhere near the fan that Jeremy was, but I had to admit, CRJ sure could write an earworm. 

 

I would hear a handful of singles throughout my time at college– my best friend would play her occasionally. She released her junior album, Dedicated, and I got to know the singles. But I haven’t devoted much time to her music since I left Aeropostale, until I saw on Jeremy’s Instagram that he was finally leaving his position as store manager there. On my drive this week, I listened through both of her albums and discovered that Carly Rae Jepsen doesn’t get anywhere near the credit she deserves. 

 

There’s a really great short story that gets studied pretty frequently in creative writing classes here, called “The Frog King” by Garth Greenwell. The content of the story isn’t really what’s important here, but rather, the ending. It’s a happy ending, and not a cheap or shallow one. The takeaway taught oftentimes is that happy endings are often the hardest to write. Tragic endings are easier to pack with meaning and morals, and are therefore mistaken as “better”. 

 

Looking at pop music today, songs written about love and passion are rife with heartbreak– and even when they are not, they often lack depth and nuance. Artists write all the time about falling in love. It’s a universal human experience that most audiences have had, or at least have come close to. But rarely do these artists go beyond the surface level to explore what these feelings really mean for us as people, or how our experience of love changes as we grow older. Carly Rae Jepsen is the exception. 

 

Her junior album, Dedicated, is perhaps the best example. Carly’s sound has matured, and no longer drowns in sticky, pop production like her debut album, “Kiss”. Out of fifteen tracks, almost all of them explore the beginning of relationships, the depth of them, and eventually, their happy endings. 

 

The undercurrent of Dedicated fights to affirm that happy endings can still be about people of strength. Looking at her track, Happy Not Knowing, Jepsen explores the hurt of past relationships seeping into her hope for new ones. But it goes beyond that, painting an arc throughout the song that our past experiences are things we learn from in new relationships, and sometimes, it really is best to not know where a relationship is going and to live in the moment of it instead. 

 

In a culture that seems to be hurtling towards the next great thing at all times, Carly Rae Jepsen urges audiences to believe in great love– the kind that can span years and define our lives, and that even when the world spins too fast around us, it is worth looking for, fighting for, and hurting for. 

I usually pull off onto State St. from my house on Catherine, drive south through campus, past Briarwood Mall and the Ann Arbor Airport, and keep driving till I hit downtown Milan. From there, I’ll loop around on Saline-Milan Rd., take Whittaker back north until it turns into Washtenaw, Arborland, and campus all over again. It’s the perfect route because it’s essentially a gigantic square, and for the most part, it’s wide-laned, grassy country roads, the kind where the sunset bleeds crimson through the trees no matter the season. The square manages to encapsulate the majority of my life within its limits– I grew up in a rural area between Ypsilanti and Milan, technically Ypsilanti Township. It’s right around the Washtenaw/Augusta county lines. There’s not a lot to do around here; my high school years were spent frequenting the Tim Horton’s and the Aubree’s Pizzeria. Late at night, after extracurriculars ended for the day, the only thing to do to avoid going home was to drive around and park in driveways and lay on the roofs of our cars and look up at the night sky. The stars are a lot brighter out there than they are here on campus. 

 

I take this drive probably once a week. It takes around an hour and a half to make the round trip; conveniently the approximate amount of time it takes to listen to two complete albums. The driving is just enough for my brain to focus on, but not enough to fill it up– driving frees up space in there, I think. That wasn’t why I started though. Considering present circumstances, I, for one, just wanted to get out of the house. But aimless driving isn’t really aimless, for the most part. This route, besides being easy to drive, passes by my parents’ house, my old elementary, middle, and high school, my ex-girlfriend’s house, and my old favorite coffee shop. The square, in its entirety, is a topographical etching of any significance I’ve found in my life so far. So every week, for the past few months, I’ve traced it, around and around and around. 

 

There’s nothing I love more than an album– a playlist is great, sure. But one complete story, a series of motifs and callbacks looping through the tracklist, one person’s experience– somehow, by being more singular, it feels more universal. Over the next few months, I’ll be writing about the albums I’m listening to on my weekly drives– the memories it reminds me of, and the stories behind the albums themselves. And maybe, if I’m lucky, someone reading this will feel a little closer to me and the universal human experience.