We focus, this week, on a single from Carly Rae Jepsen, from her latest album, The Loveliest Time. As you all know, I’m not a fan of albums, or covering them, so I decided against that – a decision helped by the fact I didn’t have the bloody time! So, let’s get into the single!
We all know Jepsen, of course, from her hit track Call Me Maybe, amongst other less notable tracks. I rather enjoyed I Really Like You, though I think perhaps part of that might have been a consequence of the music video featuring Tom Hanks and the absurd comedy of the entire thing. I’m a sucker for funny, even if I can’t really explain why. This song, however, I shan’t be checking out a video for. I’m not convinced my internet connection can handle it right now.
I’m not typically a fan of songs that I would call “club tracks”, a style of music I associate with a thumping synthetic beat and an overly repetitive backing track, but something about this one is working for me. I’m enjoying the best, I’m enjoying the drop, I’m enjoying tapping my feet and bouncing my body to it. This may mean that I’m coming down with something, that’s always possible, but I think it’s more likely that the track itself just isn’t that bad. I’m surprisingly easy to please, despite how it might seem, and even if I don’t understand why I like something, I am at least prepared to admit every aspect of that fact.
I don’t like the entirety of the song though – there’s a section around three minutes in where it feels like there’s meant to be this sort of build up to something magnificent, but the track doesn’t manage to achieve that peak that I think it’s looking for. In fact, despite a brief return to the quality of the earlier half of the song, the rest of the track after that false-build up is actually quite weak. I’d even go so far as to say that the first half a minute is quite weak too – the song doesn’t take advantage of Jepsen’s trademark high-quality vocals (because anyone who thinks she’s not a decent singer is either lying or doesn’t understand music), until the 30 second mark, for about two and a half minutes, and then the song spends the final third trying to use a few musical tricks – if one dares to bend the meaning of the word “music” – to try and really instill that whole club vibe without much effort. I do not like the club vibe, generally, I think the reason I enjoy that two-and-a-half minutes of so of the song, a little over half the overall runtime, is because I can convince myself it isn’t a club song, it’s just a beat heavy synth-pop song. It’s when it leans into the club sound that it becomes messy to the point of disappointing.
Lyrically, there’s nothing overly impressive, nothing overly disappointing. It’s just one of those songs where she’s talking about how spending time with someone is like a wonderful switch inside her head, like, and I paraphrase, being nude. There’s this thing about how when she kisses (the subject) it’s like meditating, that she doesn’t want it to end because it’s like a lucid dream. Ultimately, what we’re saying here, is that the experience of being with whoever she’s singing about, is magical, providing an almost narcotic high. I suppose, in a lot of ways, that’s what we sort of aspire to, right? I’m sure there’s a better way of going about expressing it, but for all intents and purposes, it’s decent enough that I can’t criticise the message too much.
All in all, I think the quality of the two-and-a-half minutes of decent outweigh the two-minutes of crap. The song would benefit from a shorter cut, perhaps even just taking out about a minute and a half, maybe even the whole of the two minutes, of crap at the end. The end itself, though, should remain – the abrupt ending works well, and with a bit of the trance-like preamble before the sudden finish, the sudden finish is incredibly welcome. It’s a good song, but it misses the opportunity to become great, and it all boils down to the poor decision to try and make this into a club hit. It’ll be a club hit, but a club hit should be born of great music, not of musical engineering to fit the specific mood.
7/10
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