Carly Rae Jepsen just gets it. The Canadian pop singer-songwriter’s eighth studio album, Day and Night, was released on Friday. The lengthy 24-track project is also a double album that offers an honest, introspective look at how differently she responds to music during the day and at night. Where Day is “more organic,” Night is “synth-based” and “gets a little bit more experimental,” according to Jepsen. Both sides of the album, she assured, are equally as dreamy. 

“This album has two sides and if I could perfume it in a bottle for you, Day would be like jasmine star or daffodils when you really get your nose in there. And Night would be the ocean breeze, pine and citrus,” Jepsen wrote on Instagram. 

Jepsen initially announced Day and Night in June, a project she’s described as being a dream come true. The British Columbia native had no intention of making a double album, which she likened, in an interview with Range magazine, to a “stream of consciousness poem.” It just sort of happened. 

“I just liked the idea of making the music I wanted to listen to, and I was drawn to these two really different lanes,” Jepsen said. “There’s just two different directions. They belong together because they encapsulate where I’m at right now musically, and one without the other doesn’t really capture the full picture.”

She’s since debuted four singles from Day and Night: “On Wires,” a piano-heavy track about yearning; “After All,” a loved-up, disco-infused offering about married life and motherhood; “Don’t Leave Me on the Dance Floor,” a groovy, ABBA-inspired track about fears of abandonment; and “Motivation,” Jepsen’s joyous, electro-pop “family anthem.” 

“I feel like in order to write about love or heartbreak or any emotion, you just have to have felt it,” Jepsen told Vogue of her approach to songwriting. “I have to know what I’m talking about emotionally, or I’m not going to be able to write for shit. From there it can get a bit playful. It may not have been raining or that may not have been exactly what was said, but it certainly felt that way.” 

For Jepsen, this moment was, in many respects, decades in the making. She may have burst onto the American music scene with support from fellow Canadian pop star Justin Bieber in 2011 (see: Bieber and Selena Gomez’s iMac video that changed millennial lives), but every move she’s made thereafter has been distinctly her own. Now, at 40, Jepsen is married, blissfully in love and raising her first child, all while writing and releasing new music and crafting the score for Lena Dunham’s upcoming 10 Things I Hate About You Broadway musical.

“Where I’ve landed now in my career is the sweet spot,” Jepsen told the Hollywood Reporter. “I can live a life, go to the grocery store, have a family, tour music that I love and have an audience. That’s a very hard-earned, balanced thing that we’ve had to work at.”

Backed by Bieber 

Before establishing herself as a low-key pop singer-songwriter who casually drops a handful of bangers every few years, Jepsen was known for her track, “Call Me Maybe,” which went viral in a burgeoning social media era. There was no TikTok, but there was YouTube, Twitter (before its X rebrand) and the radio. Bieber heard the track on a Canadian radio station while visiting family in Ontario in December 2011. The “Baby” pop star, who was just 17 at the time, tweeted after hearing the song, “Call me maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen is possibly the catchiest song I’ve ever heard lol.” 

In February 2012, Jepsen signed with Scooter Braun’s Schoolboy Records and was catapulted to international fame. She released her second studio album, Kiss, in September 2012, embarked on her own tour and served as a supporting act on Bieber’s Believe tour until March 2013. 

Jepsen has spoken at length about her difficulties in navigating a career post-“Call Me Maybe” and the mounting pressure to release an equally good, if not better, follow-up to escape one-hit-wonder allegations. It would’ve been easy for Jepsen to get swept up in the trappings of a sudden, whirlwind catapult to fame. In those moments, Jepsen said she thought of why she pursued music in the first place, telling the Hollywood Reporter, “If I’m being honest, I felt a little voice from inside screaming at me to hold on to why I started.” 

Jepsen added of her sudden success, “It was so overnight that I feel like I understand what it must be like for some people who live in that space consistently, and my heart goes out to them. I’m just not very good at it.”

Putting some Emotion into it 

Then came the release of Emotion, Jepsen’s third studio album, in 2015. Tapping into nostalgic ’80s synth-pop and earnest songwriting, the album has been widely regarded as a modern pop masterpiece. The Emotion era was marked by Jepsen’s jet-black mullet and a desire to feel tough, as she told Vulture, “I wanted to feel less worried about how I was perceived by anyone other than myself.” 

Jepsen’s lead single, “I Really Like You,” an infectious, synth-pop track about having a major crush, was accompanied by a viral, feel-good music video starring Tom Hanks. Her follow-up singles, “Run Away with Me,” “Your Type” and “Boy Problems” garnered similar praise. 

Jepsen had officially established herself as a mainstay in pop music. More importantly, she was having fun while doing it. 

“I needed to figure out what else I had to offer to pop music. And with Emotion, I feel like I really started to find my people and everything just became more fun,” Jepsen told Vogue. “It took [away] a little bit of the fear of needing my music to be the biggest thing in the world, versus something that I’m excited about.” 

Right where she’s supposed to be 

Day and Night is a sprawling album that dives into life’s twists and turns and the confusing, at times overwhelming, feeling that comes during periods of transition. In the nearly 15 years since her international breakthrough, Jepsen has defined and refined her pop sensibilities. She’s established herself as a cult- favorite pop singer-songwriter in her own right and has built a life of her own choosing — a family on her own terms.

“There was something liberating about turning 40 and feeling like I can do whatever I want now,” Jepsen told Vogue. “If not now, then when?” 

Jepsen has finally struck the perfect balance: a life that works for her.