She’ll forever be synonymous with Call Me Maybe. But Carly Rae Jepsen’s real trademark contrasts innocence – always gasping in awe at romance’s potential – with a wolfish emotional intensity that suggests her lovers are mere conduits for sensation: “Take me! To the! Feeling!” as she once sang.
On her cult 2015 album Emotion, Jepsen wielded lusty saxophone solos to convey that decadence, bombast that Dedicated swaps for confidently understated, dusky disco pop. She belts less, but leaves a stronger impression: swooning into the gently funky Julien; seductively in control on the looser No Drug Like Me; cheeky as Cyndi Lauper on Want You in My Room.
She leans equally well into her set pieces – as airy and delightful as whipped cream on Everything He Needs, built around a showtuney piano riff in debt to Bennie and the Jets – and reveals more of herself. On glowing reverie For Sure, she endlessly repeats the phrase “I’ve been thinking we were over” following an unexpected tryst with an ex, imbuing it with surprise and regret. There’s a flash of irritation as she spits “you make me so tired” on The Sound before an endearingly tough chorus that sums up her songwriterly MO: “I don’t need the words / I want the sound.”
Even single (and naked Call Me Maybe redux) Party for One works as a cheeky coda: less the masturbation anthem it was billed as, more a nod to her determination and the intimacy she conjures with fans – a group that the gorgeous Dedicated should expand.
