{"id":927856,"date":"2026-10-10T14:16:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-10T14:16:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/927856\/"},"modified":"2026-10-10T14:16:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-10T14:16:10","slug":"carly-rae-jepsen-built-a-career-on-yearning-motherhood-gave-it-a-new-meaning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/927856\/","title":{"rendered":"Carly Rae Jepsen built a career on yearning. Motherhood gave it a new meaning"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Carly Rae Jepsen’s ninth studio album, Day and Night, was released last month.Vince Aung\/Supplied<\/p>\n

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\u2019s already recorded; she will work on more than a dozen versions of a song with her producers before she\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn e-mails to producers, I was like, \u2018All right, we need to get this next mix in, because literally we have eight days \u2018til go time\u2019, and then I\u2019m disappearing,\u201d 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: \u201cLike, \u2018Let\u2019s put it out,\u2019\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

Day and Night, Jepsen\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

When Jepsen and I first spoke 11 years ago about the way her career changed after releasing 2011\u2019s 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<\/a>. We were both on the edge of 30 then; now we\u2019re 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\u2019s most critically acclaimed pop releases. <\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

When her son Ilya was just born, Jepsen wasn’t sure she could return to work without thinking about him constantly.DAVID ARDILL\/Supplied<\/p>\n

Jepsen took control then; she\u2019s taken control now, just in a different way. I pointed out this time that, well, days and nights look a lot different when you\u2019re raising a newborn. Jepsen burst out laughing, interrupting me to agree before I could finish the thought. \u201cQuite literally,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

\u201cI 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,\u201d she said. \u201cBut he\u2019s seven months now. I went to do some Broadway writing just this past week\u201d \u2013 for her and Lena Dunham\u2019s 10 Things I Hate About You musical \u2013 \u201cand I was so absorbed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jepsen was in a \u201cprolific\u201d writing phase after the release of 2022\u2019s The Loneliest Time and 2023\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n

She met her husband Cole Marsden Greif-Neill (Cole M.G.N.), a producer and Ilya\u2019s 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<\/a> \u2013 including long-time collaborator Patrik Berger, whose credits include Icona Pop and Charli XCX\u2019s I Love It and Robyn\u2019s Dancing on My Own. <\/p>\n

Berger told me in an e-mail that working on the album with Jepsen felt like being in kindergarten; everyone just enjoyed each other\u2019s company and jammed for hours. Jepsen may have wanted to take creative risks, but her studio professionalism remained. \u201cSince the first time I met her and we started working, she\u2019s been coming in with this great energy, openness and curiosity,\u201d the producer said.<\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Next spring, Jepsen will tour across North America with her son Ilya in tow.DAVID ARDILL\/Supplied<\/p>\n

The result was nonetheless adventurous: On the Night side, alongside slow jams and club bangers, you\u2019ll find an interpolation of French pianist Erik Satie\u2019s Gymnop\u00e9die 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?<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

The song came to life when she and her husband were on holiday in the Philippines. \u201cI was in the bath, and he was strumming something from the living room,\u201d she said. Lyrics began to form. \u201cIt started with something to do with a fish \u2013 \u2018I was never one that thought of two \/ like a fish could wish to fly, but has no right to do.\u2019\u201d Cole M.G.N. liked it. <\/p>\n

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. \u201cI think if I\u2019d said that idea to anybody else, they\u2019d be like, \u2018It\u2019s kind of weird. It\u2019s about fish.\u2019 And we would have stopped there.\u201d But she and M.G.N. didn\u2019t. <\/p>\n

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\u2019s sleep schedule. <\/p>\n

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\u2019ve taken their kids on the road, she said, including Sarah McLachlan. <\/p>\n

\u201cParenthood is absolutely different for every person,\u201d Jepsen said. \u201cI\u2019m 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\u2019s been in tandem with the making of this thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

The companion album of Day and Night featuring unreleased tracks, Day and Night (Continued), came out Friday. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Carly Rae Jepsen’s ninth studio album, Day and Night, was released last month.Vince…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":927857,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341,2922],"class_list":["post-927856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-noastack"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/927856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=927856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/927856\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/927857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=927856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=927856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=927856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}