There’s a specific kind of frustration that comes with loving an artist who the rest of the world hasn’t fully figured out yet. For the better part of a decade, Carly Rae Jepsen fans have lived in that space. They’ve been quietly evangelizing E•MO•TION to anyone who would listen, watching critics heap praise on her B side albums that somehow never quite broke through to the mainstream audience they deserved, and answering the same question at concerts: “Isn’t she the ‘Call Me Maybe’ girl?”
Day and Night, her ninth studio album released September 18th via Interscope Records, feels like the moment that might start changing things. She’s headlining a special sunset set at All Things Go in New York this weekend in a co-headline spot that signals something different. She’s been on major podcasts, doing interviews with outlets that haven’t historically paid her much attention.
The album itself makes the case for why the attention is overdue.
Day and Night is structured exactly as its name suggests. It’s twelve songs for the day, twelve for the night. Two distinct sonic worlds released together as one complete statement. Where Jepsen’s previous B-sides projects felt like natural extensions of their A-sides, this one is something more deliberate. Day and Night aren’t the same album in two moods. They’re intentionally juxtaposed halves of a single vision, as close to a concept album as you can get without requiring a plot to follow.
The Day side is where Jepsen is pushing at the outer edges of what pop music can do. Dreamy, synth-forward, psychedelic, it sounds like an artist fully in her prime with nothing left to prove and therefore, free to try anything. “Versailles,” the focus track, is a frenzied piece of pop inspired by Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette. It’s completely committed to its own indulgence, in the best of ways. “After All” is another standout, and “Blue Skies” lands as one of the album’s most purely beautiful moments. “That’s Just Me” is the track that will send longtime fans reaching for E•MO•TION. Not because it sounds like a retread but because it sounds like proof that the album that brought in her cult-like following wasn’t just a one-time hit.
The Night side shifts into higher gear. This is where the club songs live. It’s where the disco-forward bangers that you’ve come to expect from her breathe. “Motivation” and “Don’t Leave Me on the Dance Floor” do exactly what those titles promise.
“On Wires,” the first single, is an example of how the context of the album changes everything. On its own release it felt like a pleasant but slightly underwhelming introduction to this era. Inside the full album it clicks into place, its breezy synth-pop tone making perfect sense as an entry point into the Day side’s world. It’s the mark of an album that was carefully constructed rather than casually assembled.
Where does this land in the CRJ catalog? I’d rank it just below E•MO•TION and Dedicated, but that is as much a reflection of the years spent with those records as it is of any objective ranking. Day and Night is her most ambitious work, and Rolling Stone calling it her most experimental and exhilarating is hard to argue with. Vulture’s “most ambitious project of her 18-year career” lands equally accurately. The double album format could have been unwieldy. Instead it feels like the natural scale for what she was trying to make.
Carly Rae Jepsen has been making great pop albums for over a decade. Day and Night is the one that might finally make everyone else pay attention. For those of us who have been here, our moment of “See, I told you so” is coming.
Featured Photo Credit: Mikayla LoBasso
Nathan Smith is a Providence-based music photographer and journalist focusing on capturing the special moments and unfiltered magic of live performances. Whether he’s shooting established artists at sold-out TD Garden shows or documenting the rise of emerging local bands, his goal is the same: to pull viewers directly into the heart of the moment.
His writing spotlights rising artists and local scenes, with a focus on telling the stories that often get overlooked. A lifelong music fan and musician himself, Nathan approaches interviews and portraits as conversations rather than transactions, building trust with artists so their genuine personalities can shine through. Whether he’s backstage, in the photo pit, or at home in front of the keyboard, he brings the same curiosity and care to every assignment.
Outside of his press work with Juice Box Press, Nathan works regularly as a photographer with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, as well as numerous bands in the Boston and Providence area. Nathan also plays violin with a local orchestra, follows Celtics basketball almost religiously, and is an avid fantasy reader.