{"id":851487,"date":"2026-09-17T23:44:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T23:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/851487\/"},"modified":"2026-09-17T23:44:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T23:44:09","slug":"day-and-night-is-carly-rae-jepsens-most-literary-and-far-reaching-work-to-date","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/851487\/","title":{"rendered":"Day and Night is Carly Rae Jepsen’s most literary and far-reaching work to date"},"content":{"rendered":"

What started as a taunt \u2013 famously leaving nearly 200 tracks on the cutting room floor<\/a>, including a scrapped album called Disco Sweat<\/a> \u2013 has turned into a tradition. Starting with a muscular collection of B-sides for her landmark Emotion (2015), then a companion LP for Dedicated (2019), she eventually dropped all pretensions and released The Loveliest Time (2023) a year after The Loneliest Time, as an album all on its own. <\/p>\n

With her enormous new double record, Day and Night, she take the next logical step, throwing out 24 crystal-clean tracks right off the bat, whipping from the psychedelic, artsy Day to the freewheeling, clubby Night. Certainly her most mature release to date, it\u2019s got some of her best, most burning songs, too.<\/p>\n

Now 40, married, and recently a mum, you might wonder if her passion for music has dimmed to a low, constant flame. But if anything, the opposite is true, as evidenced not only by the tracklist length, but also \u201cAfter All\u201d, Day and Night’s opening single, which makes her views clear: creativity and stability aren’t mutually exclusive but intertwined, one feeding the other. <\/p>\n

\u201cLock the doors, stop the world, start the inspiration\u201d, she sings, her voice lifting to transcendence. It\u2019s a mini disco perfect for an infant\u2019s early night: you can tell she\u2019s satisfied with, simply, \u201cBaby, one bedroom apartment, daddy and me.\u201d On the other hand, this is a Jepsen that, for the first time, is comfy spitting \u201cI fucking hate you\u201d on an album (on the searing \u201cSomething Tragic\u201d). So, no, domestic bliss has not distracted pop\u2019s patron saint of big feelings.<\/p>\n

Though other singer\/songwriters like Olivia Rodrigo and Gracie Abrams often describe love as an unbearable pain, or a knife in one\u2019s side, Jepsen knows that it\u2019s much easier, and more truthful, to liken it to a vacation: wind blowing in your hair under blue skies, an Italian getaway, getting felt up in a sundress. Day and Night is remarkably relaxed, a kick-your-feet-up album whose author is living the good life and wants nothing more than to tell you about it. To hell with responsibilities: \u201cIf you want to, we can sleep in for the third time this weekend,\u201d she says on \u201cHabits of Creatures\u201d, filled with the momentous humdrum of sharing a beautiful life.<\/p>\n

Day and Night is less punchy than heavyweight champs like Emotion or Dedicated, but its passion doesn\u2019t run dry. \u201cBurning Heart\u201d, the record\u2019s first thumper, flips the typical Jepsen narrative. She has a million songs about her poor, aching heart, but this one focuses on her partner\u2019s. \u201cI see flames in your eyes,\u201d she says, awash in his glow, finally going toe-to-toe. Often it reduces her to the purest language possible: \u201cI wanna end with you,\u201d she sings. And what can be more final than that? <\/p>\n

The quirky, era-blending, and BPM-shifting \u201cVersailles\u201d sees her running through the gardens naked to feel something, with a dorky, mid-2010s chant-along chorus like a grown-up version of Jepsen\u2019s own \u201cGood Time\u201d. Slowing down to attest her desire to feel good, bad, and desperate, in that order, feels like a motto for her career thus far, and it\u2019s no different in this album. For Jepsen, any emotion \u2013 even despair \u2013 is worth feeling.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s always been a pure pop connoisseur, but the experimentation she chased on The Loneliest \/ Loveliest Time continues here on Day and Night, with some of her most exotic songs to date. The icy, driving beat of \u201cAmalfi Coast\u201d wouldn\u2019t be out of place on Kylie Minogue\u2019s Fever. Its titular Italian cliffside may be too lax, though. This is one to speed down the Pacific Coast Highway to. <\/p>\n

Later, there\u2019s a touch of the artsy electronica of Madonna\u2019s Ray of Light on the Ibizan chillout house track \u201cNear or Far\u201d, certainly in her huskier delivery and cosmic infatuation. Even \u201cMotivation\u201d, a typical house anthem, comes across askew with its lines of gratitude and familial pride. \u201cThat\u2019s my street, that\u2019s my friend I rely on\u201d, she brags, sort of like The Wiggles meets Beyonc\u00e9\u2019s \u201cBreak My Soul\u201d. \u201cSuper Sage\u201d, meanwhile, is a shimmering, ocean-deep punch of devotion that goes further than Jepsen has dared to before, infused with dreamy whispers, glitchy synths, and underwater plonks, coalescing into a mesmerising finale. \u201cWe faced the night and we\u2019re still alive\u201d, she winks.<\/p>\n

Any Carly Rae Jepsen record is stuffed with enough infatuation to make your heart burst, but Day and Night takes it to new levels. Though she says it\u2019s \u201can honour to be blessed with simplicity\u201d on \u201cYou Don\u2019t Know How It Feels\u201d (\u201c…to be in your arms,\u201d goes the full sentence), she’s constantly wanting more from her partner \u2013 more days, more nights, more time, not due to his withholding but the impossibility of it ever being enough. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve walked too far without you now, I fear,\u201d she says on \u201cWild Child\u201d, a folky, finger-plucked love song so pure and raw it might just make you tear up. And for an opposite vibe, the wonky \u201cPatience Power Passion\u201d offers a new formula for life: an alliterative motto with the juice to overtake Reduce Reuse Recycle.<\/p>\n

Day and Night\u2019s fascinating dualities \u2013 wide-eyed, reality-shattering mysticisms and bare-bones mundanities \u2013 collide in what is probably her most literary work (the book she\u2019s clutching on the cover is Leonard Cohen\u2019s Book of Longing). \u201cI was thinking we could shower and then take a walk,\u201d she\u2019ll say, then \u201cget busy thinking that the world is our creation.\u201d She\u2019ll crave \u201cyou you you you you\u201d on both \u201cGood Fine Alright\u201d and \u201cOn Wires\u201d, talking about an ex the first time, and her now-husband the next. <\/p>\n

The double album format allows her to get playful, cross sentiments, and toy with her own feelings as much as her reputation for having them. Day and Night is another notch in the belt of one of pop\u2019s best flag-bearers. Grown up but never stiff, it\u2019s Carly Rae Jepsen\u2019s most creative and far-reaching work to date.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What started as a taunt \u2013 famously leaving nearly 200 tracks on the cutting room floor, including a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":851488,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[88,216],"class_list":["post-851487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=851487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/851488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=851487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=851487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=851487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}