Carly Rae Jepsen on Motherhood, 'Horniest' Album — SkimNews
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- Carly Rae Jepsen releases "Day and Night," her first project since marrying producer Cole MGN at Manhattan's Hotel Chelsea last year and becoming a mother in March — and she acknowledges it's her "horniest" album, a label singer-songwriter King Princess first gave her in the studio.
- Jepsen broke her self-imposed "don't kiss the producer" rule when she fell in love with MGN during the album's creation; the song "Call Me Maybe" had sold more than 18 million copies and hit No. 1 in 19 countries back in 2012.
- "Day and Night" is a double album structured as a walk through a house party — with stops for stoners, ravers, and a couple fighting in a locked room — conceived with longtime guitarist Tavish Crowe to sustain distinct sonic moods across two discs.
- Jepsen credits her former A&R rep John Ehmann with launching her companion-album tradition by pitching a low-stakes "B-side" to Emotion; fans embraced the format and it became increasingly official, yielding Emotion: Side B (2016), Dedicated Side B (2020), and The Loveliest Time (2023).
- Jepsen drew on soul singer Minnie Riperton, jazz vocalist Blossom Dearie, chillwave producer Bullion (her collaborator on 2024's "Rare"), and a visit to Abba's Voyage hologram concert for the album's sound.
- Jepsen plans to write a Broadway adaptation of 10 Things I Hate About You with Girls creator Lena Dunham, connected five years ago by theatrical producer Mike Bosner; Dunham had once used lyrics from Jepsen's "Guitar String/Wedding Ring" as an epigraph in her 2014 autobiography.
- Jepsen made her Broadway debut in Cinderella in 2014 — less than a year after winning three Canadian Juno awards — a "weird left turn" that reconnected her to her craft and helped her shed the one-hit-wonder label.
Why it matters: Jepsen, once dismissed after "Call Me Maybe" as a one-hit wonder, has now stacked six studio albums and a Broadway credit while her peers faded — and she's deliberately choosing intimacy over chart dominance at age 40. Her upcoming *10 Things I Hate About You* musical with Dunham extends that pattern, swapping pop spectacle for collaborative reinvention on her own terms.
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