In which I legitimately enjoy a great pop record and what’s left of my inner high school self finally implodes from rage.

The first time I heard “Call me Maybe”, it wasn’t the song itself, but a room of drunken friends who’d just heard it in a cab on the way over, singing the chorus ad infinitum. It was a pretty good night, actually. Maybe moreso because of that. Odd phrasing an all, the song remains in the pantheon of meme’d songs, alongside Gangnam Style, Crank Dat and the Harlem Shake.

Like her contemporaries, Jepsen was in on the joke. But unlike them, she refuses to stay frozen in time as a soundbyte or a single. She had much more to offer, and to prove it, she brought Ariel Rechtshaid (producer: Vampire Weekend’s Modern Vampires of the City), Greg Kurstin (producer: The Shins’ Ports of Morrow) and Blood Orange’s Devonte Hynes in as collaborators and producers for Emotion; one of the strongest follow-up albums in recent memory.

Whereas the Carly Rae Jepsen of “Call Me Maybe” cooed and pleaded for the attentions of a brand new crush (if he was into that sort of thing). there is no pleading on Emotion. Yes, it’s a pop album full of songs about love and relationships and loneliness, but Jepsen isn’t playing this time. On “Run Away with Me”, Jepsen’s proposition isn’t passive or hopeful – it’s aggressive and actionable. Once again Jepsen and her objet du désir are at a party together, but this time she knows exactly where this is going, and she spends the song painting a pretty good picture of it (“Over the weekend we could turn the world to gold/Oh oh, oh oh”). Production-wise, the 80’s-sounding horns and distorted background vocals meet crackerjack beats and synths. Jepsen’s sound consistently takes risks only a Taylor Swift or Gaga otherwise would, but she’s so confident; so focused that anything mundane would feel out of place.

So let’s stop for a minute, because the very existence of this review gives me great pause. Years ago, there were few things I could confidently write off in as wholesale a manner as pop music, and it was easy to justify. Here was an entire genre of music, entirely devoid of passion, creativity and artistry, meant to saturate as many places as possible – for the sole purpose of making money. It was counter to everything I loved about music, so you would think that, as an adult set in my ways, It’d only be worse today. But here we are – extrapolating the nuances of Carly Rae Jepsen’s latest album; begging the question: is it me, or is it the artist(s)? After some thought, I’ve concluded it’s 100% the artists.

In 1989, or 1999, or even 2005 Emotion, or Carly Rae Jepsen for that matter, would be unthinkable. Pop followed a very narrow formula, both musically and aesthetically, but since the foundation of the industry itself began to crumble, so did the formula itself. Radio play; music videos and magazines – the three pillars of pop success – stopped being relevant. Suddenly being relevant made you relevant, and in an age of stars who look and sound the same, there was nothing more relevant than being a weirdo. So Emotion is a byproduct of a genre that’s never been so artistically credible, and performed by an artist who can live inside pop’s aging, conservative constraints, but prefers to shatter them entirely.

Ah, huh.

This review was more a stream of consciousness, I realize. And unfortunately, it widely diverged from just explaining why Emotion is enjoyable. Which is too bad, because its standout tracks are many. “Gimme Love”, the album’s title track, “Boy Problems” (feat. guest writer Sia) all come to mind. But it’s also nuanced and storied enough to break down the walls (made solidly out of bullshit) my inner music snob built, fueled more by hate than love.

tl;dr – Emotion is a good album, and if you don’t like it you probably need to get over yourself.