Why do I like Carly Rae Jepson? My journey to define good music once and for all

Sometime in high school, I remember sitting at my parent’s computer and listening to my favorite band, Switchfoot’s new album, Vice Verses (a brilliant album and song title, by the way). I had already heard the singles, “Dark Horses” (see my somewhat comical cover here), “Restless”, and “Afterlife”, three songs which easily fit into my idea of what a great song would be. It was just ahead of the release date, and they had the whole album streaming on a website, and I was absolutely desperate to hear what the other tracks held to offer. I (of course) listened through the entire album top to bottom, including the tracks I already knew, to get the flavor of how everything fit together. But new track after new track, I found myself disappointed. Either the verse didn’t quite fit in, or the chorus didn’t hook me well enough. And was Jon Foreman rapping on “Selling the News”? I got even more judgmental in later tracks: “Thrive” started with some soft guitar and felt promising, but it went nowhere in the end. And their epic 7-minute closer “Where I Belong” went on with the same drum beat the whole time, landing monotonous and boring for me. As I think back at this experience, I wonder if I was right to be so skeptical - was I just setting myself up for disappointment?

After all, what makes for a good song? Back then, I had a set answer to this question, a “recipe”, if you will. I wanted songs to follow a designated structure: start with a catchy riff on guitar or piano, lead into a subdued verse, optionally (but ideally) fall into a pre-chorus which then dramatically lands on a compelling chorus. The chorus must hit with a “boom” (I don’t remember what I called it, but something like this): with cymbals, distorted guitar, big vocals, and full chords. Verse 2 should keep the momentum going, ideally add some more harmonies and maybe different guitar lines. The second chorus should be even bigger than the first, leading into a bridge of epic proportions, which may or may not culminate in a guitar solo. After this, you dial it back and either play the chorus softly or play a few dramatic lines from the second verse before entering into the epic concluding chorus.

Oh, and the less electronic instruments the better.

And immediately disregard anything labeled as pop.

Sounds tiring.

I imagine we all inherit some sense of what good music is, based on what we listened to and enjoyed growing up. My ideas were born from growing up in the church, listening to Christian rock bands and singing contemporary Christian music every Sunday. I occasionally played keys in our church band, I led the youth group band for a couple year s in high school, and I wrote quite a few of my own worship songs (over 50, I believe, which may deserve its own post at some point). Religious issues aside, this clearly framed my idea of a good song, just as much as someone growing up exclusively listening to 60s rock ‘n roll or to 90s R&B. We all bring our own experiences and ideas to the music we listen to.

I don’t remember why I was first interested in Carly Rae Jepson, likely started as a joke, secretly regarding her as nothing more than a shallow pop star with nothing to say (Although the line in “Call Me Maybe”, “Before I met you tonight / I missed you so bad”, always struck me as somewhat clever). I certainly became more curious when a friend from marching band in college mentioned that her new album, “Emotion”, was quite good, and I listened to (and was captivated by) “Run Away with Me”. I tried listening to the rest of that album and decided that “Run Away with Me” was the exception and I was still justified in disregarding “pop”.

But around this time, I started allowing myself to enjoy more music. I don’t know whether to credit CRJ with this, but listening to her strikes me as a somewhat seminal step. I fell in love with an album my brother gave me on CD, “Dopamine” by BORNS, an album too littered with electronic sounds and what sounded suspiciously like “pop” for high school Emmet to appreciate. And I started listening to the Killers, whose mere popularity had been enough to scare me away before then. And rather than just learning to tolerate their use of synth, I learned to treasure it, first loving it in songs like “When You Were Young” or “Bones”, and then realizing the power of synth for songs like “Spaceman” or “Smile Like You Mean It”.

Since then, I’ve realized the true substance in work from popular artists from Lana Del Rey and Halsey to Jon Bellion and AJR. And I’ve also started to recognize an obvious fact: songs don’t need to fit into some mold to be “good”, in fact, they don’t even need to have “substance” (whatever that means), they just need to make the listener feel something real. I believe high school Emmet would have been better off listening to that Switchfoot album with no expectations, just letting the music speak for itself.

And now I can listen to Carly Rae Jepson without feeling the need to determine whether it is “good music” based on its structure, melody, etc. The reason I like CRJ isn’t because of some theory I have about good songs (although that could certainly be part of it), it’s simply because her songs make me feel real emotions, from joy to wistfulness to melancholy. At some point in quarantine, I found this official recording of one of her concerts in Tokyo, and her energetic and talented performance uplifted me like not much else did at that point.

There’s no recipe, only emotion.