“Lots of laughs, lots of carbs, lots of hair colors.” That is Carly Rae Jepsen’s official accounting of how a double album gets made — offered up, apparently, as a service to anyone out there weighing one of their own.
In a post pulling back “the curtain” on the sessions behind Day and Night, the Canadian pop singer tallied travel, inspiration “to get you cooking” and the moment “you look up and you’re in a new sonic world again” — then handed the credit to the room. “Hats off to each and every collaborator who brought Day and Night to life!” she wrote on X. “I love all you weirdos so much.”
The weirdos in question are mostly repeat offenders. Tavish Crowe co-wrote “Call Me Maybe” with her back in 2012. Kyle Shearer and Nate Cyphert both came up through the Loneliest Time sessions. Producer Cole M.G.N. — also her husband — worked the boards.
24 songs, 100-plus minutes, one new baby
What they built is her eighth studio album and a long-held ambition finally cashed in: 24 tracks across two discs, running past 100 minutes, released Sept. 18 through Schoolboy/Interscope. CBC Music reported the split at announcement — Day leans on live instrumentation and ’70s-leaning psychedelic pop, Night on sleek, synth-driven dance. It follows 2023’s The Loveliest Time, itself a companion to 2022’s The Loneliest Time.
Four singles led the way in: “On Wires,” “After All,” “Don’t Leave Me on the Dance Floor” and “Motivation,” with the ABBA-steeped dancefloor track drawing the loudest reception. Jepsen had her first child in March and shot the “After All” video while pregnant.
Reviews ran warm rather than rapturous. Pitchfork admired the record’s “broader, bolder palette” while allowing that most of it lacks “the razor-sharp hooks that usually make Jepsen’s work so indelible.” At home it arrived quietly: No. 59 on the Billboard Canadian Albums chart dated Oct. 3, some 41 places below where The Loneliest Time landed.
None of that appears to be the point of the post. Jepsen has spent 15 years as pop’s most dependable cult favorite — the artist who wrote 200-odd songs for a 12-track record and handed out the leftovers anyway. Day and Night is that habit, scaled up and shipped in two halves.
The album is out. The carbs, presumably, are ongoing.
