Carly Rae Jepsen’s ninth studio album, Day and Night, was released last month.Vince Aung/Supplied
Carly Rae Jepsen considers herself a reckless perfectionist. She will rent a studio to write new music only to spend the whole time reviewing what she’s already recorded; she will work on more than a dozen versions of a song with her producers before she’s satisfied. And she oversaw the mixing of her new double album, Day and Night, until pretty much the moment her son Ilya was born last winter.
“In e-mails to producers, I was like, ‘All right, we need to get this next mix in, because literally we have eight days ‘til go time’, and then I’m disappearing,” Jepsen, 40, recalled in an interview. Then something changed. Final mixes trickled back into her inbox in the weeks that followed; all the things that were driving her crazy stopped mattering: “Like, ‘Let’s put it out,’” she said.
Day and Night, Jepsen’s ninth studio album released last month by Schoolboy and Interscope Records, is a bifurcated affair. It is composed of two full albums, one lending itself to singer-songwriter fare (Day) and the other, more electronic and destined for the club (Night). Its release also draws a dividing line in her own life: before Ilya and after Ilya.
When Jepsen and I first spoke 11 years ago about the way her career changed after releasing 2011’s Call Me Maybe, she made it clear that she refused to let the global phenomenon of a song define what her career would look like. We were both on the edge of 30 then; now we’re on either side of 40, and both new parents. The album she put out after we spoke, Emotion, would become heralded as one of the decade’s most critically acclaimed pop releases.
When her son Ilya was just born, Jepsen wasn’t sure she could return to work without thinking about him constantly.DAVID ARDILL/Supplied
Jepsen took control then; she’s taken control now, just in a different way. I pointed out this time that, well, days and nights look a lot different when you’re raising a newborn. Jepsen burst out laughing, interrupting me to agree before I could finish the thought. “Quite literally,” she said.
“I felt like I would never be able to ever, ever, ever go back to work ever again, and not be profoundly distracted at the idea that he was not on my hip at all times,” she said. “But he’s seven months now. I went to do some Broadway writing just this past week” – for her and Lena Dunham’s 10 Things I Hate About You musical – “and I was so absorbed.”
Jepsen was in a “prolific” writing phase after the release of 2022’s The Loneliest Time and 2023’s The Loveliest Time, she said, writing songs that embraced both traditional instrumental and dance music. She wanted to push her own boundaries within these genre lines, and sought out familiar producers and co-writers who she already trusted to join her on the journey.
She met her husband Cole Marsden Greif-Neill (Cole M.G.N.), a producer and Ilya’s father, in a writing session earlier this decade. He was part of the hearty mix of collaborators for the double album, as were numerous disciples of the Swedish school of pop writing – including long-time collaborator Patrik Berger, whose credits include Icona Pop and Charli XCX’s I Love It and Robyn’s Dancing on My Own.
Berger told me in an e-mail that working on the album with Jepsen felt like being in kindergarten; everyone just enjoyed each other’s company and jammed for hours. Jepsen may have wanted to take creative risks, but her studio professionalism remained. “Since the first time I met her and we started working, she’s been coming in with this great energy, openness and curiosity,” the producer said.
Next spring, Jepsen will tour across North America with her son Ilya in tow.DAVID ARDILL/Supplied
The result was nonetheless adventurous: On the Night side, alongside slow jams and club bangers, you’ll find an interpolation of French pianist Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1 on Near or Far. On the Day song Just a Little Walk on the Moon, you might notice some unexpected lyrics about. . . a fish?
Yes, a fish. But this fish may be the key to understanding the way that Jepsen, who since Call Me Maybe has perfected the art of pining pop songs, sees longing in her current era of domestic bliss.
The song came to life when she and her husband were on holiday in the Philippines. “I was in the bath, and he was strumming something from the living room,” she said. Lyrics began to form. “It started with something to do with a fish – ‘I was never one that thought of two / like a fish could wish to fly, but has no right to do.’” Cole M.G.N. liked it.
Later in the studio, they experimented with different production styles, playing with genre and tempo before settling on a bossa nova base. It gave the song an introspective flavour; classic Jepsen yearning, elevated. “I think if I’d said that idea to anybody else, they’d be like, ‘It’s kind of weird. It’s about fish.’ And we would have stopped there.” But she and M.G.N. didn’t.
Touring Day and Night will add new nuances to their family dynamic. She will play across North America next spring, Ilya in tow, and M.G.N. will take time off from his own studio work to join the family. A nanny will be there, too. Flights and bus routes will be adjusted to the baby’s sleep schedule.
Jepsen consulted many women in her life to figure out how to make this work: not her family and business team, many of whom are parents, but other musicians who’ve taken their kids on the road, she said, including Sarah McLachlan.
“Parenthood is absolutely different for every person,” Jepsen said. “I’m not alone in that. You have to carve out your own idea of what that looks like, for you and your family unit, and that has been a conversation that’s been in tandem with the making of this thing.”
The companion album of Day and Night featuring unreleased tracks, Day and Night (Continued), came out Friday.