We’re still singing along to the third studio album by the Canadian singer and songwriter, which featured… beloved queer bops like “I Really Like You,” “Run Away with Me” and “Your Type”…
By Megan Hunt
In a perfect world, Carly Rae Jepsen’s E•mo•tion would have been a smash hit. But while it didn’t in fact gain widespread commercial success, it achieved something more impactful and interesting.
From the very beginning, E•mo•tion was fated to be a cult classic. Released in Japan in June 2015, nearly two months before the album’s North American rollout, the record immediately became something of an “if you know, you know” pop culture moment. In the decade that followed, E•mo•tion has secured its place not only as one of Canada’s most influential pop albums, but also as a fan favourite within the queer community.
How exactly did a presumably straight woman create an album that resonates so deeply with her 2SLGBTQI+ fanbase? The answer doesn’t come from speculative conspiracy theories about her sexual orientation à la Gaylorism: it’s simply that no pop artist understands desire quite like Carly Rae Jepsen.
Needless to say, the gay community will always prop up pop perfection, and that’s exactly what’s delivered in E•mo•tion. Imagine driving with all the windows down on a breezy summer night, or seeing a disco ball somehow strung up with Christmas lights, and you’ve captured the overall sonic landscape of the album. Every track offers something fascinating, from house-inspired bangers like “I Didn’t Just Come Here To Dance” to understated ballads like “All That” to the standout opener “Run Away With Me,” which includes a gorgeous saxophone riff that has yet to be bested by any other song released this decade.
The album’s lack of mainstream popularity also allows it to be an underdog, something that the queer community is always eager to champion. By failing to produce another single on the same level of ubiquity as her 2011 breakthrough “Call Me Maybe,” Jepsen instead earned her stature as a beloved, underrated kind of pop star adored by both the musical cool kids and Top 40 poptimists.
Although the album’s infectious and flawless sound is typically central to the praise E•mo•tion has received in the years since its release, its lyricism deserves flowers, too. By returning time and time again to familiar, nostalgic motifs – think car headlights outside a bedroom window, sweaty dance-floor trysts, unspoken yearning for a friend – E•mo•tionweaves a narrative that captures desire from every angle: the vulnerability and melancholy, the confusion and embarrassment and, ultimately, the unbridled joy.
On a surface level, E•mo•tion feels confident, lusty, self-assured – all the things I associated with the queer community before realizing that I myself was part of it. In young adulthood, I watched friends come out and come into themselves, and felt a pang of envy. It felt as though they had found a kind of liberation that I would never be brave enough to allow myself. Accepting and exploring my identity is something that took me years, and having a record like E•mo•tion by my side genuinely helped. Jepsen’s storytelling helped me understand my own desire as something that could be fun and adventurous, but also inherently vulnerable and introspective.
To be queer is, on some level, to accept being misunderstood or flattened in some way. Just as straight narratives about our lives will never capture the full picture of queer existence, E•mo•tion is special in that it allows itself to be underestimated. Carly Rae Jepsen’s songwriting is often covertly smart: this is, after all, the same woman who managed to slide before you came into my life/I missed you so bad, one of the sharpest lines of the 21st century, into the bridge of a bubblegum pop tune. Take, for example, the track “Boy Problems,” which serves as one of pop’s best sleight-of-hand tricks: by setting up a narrative about friends gabbing about “boy problems,” Jepsen manages to tell a slyly heartbreaking story about a friendship painfully running its course.
In “Your Type,” perhaps my favourite on the album, Jepsen admits her longing and then immediately backtracks: But I still love you/I’m sorry/I’m sorry, I love you/I didn’t mean to say what I said. On the sensual “Warm Blood,” she croons about an affair where secrets are woven into the fabric of the relationship: I’ve got a cavern of secrets/none of them are for you/even if you wanted to keep them/where would you find the room?
These stories don’t have to be based on actual queer experiences to resonate with the queer community. Who among us hasn’t encountered guilt when we find ourselves falling for a friend or imagining a late-night escape with our love interest, driving out somewhere far away from prying eyes? On E•mo•tion, Carly Rae Jepsen allows her relationship to desire to get messy and complicated, and it’s exactly that magic that has captured the hearts of the 2SLGBTQI+ community for a decade.
MEGAN HUNT is a Montreal-based writer and editor. Her work has been featured in This Magazine, Culture Days and the Women’s Work Festival.
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