In her exuberant pop anthems, Carly Rae Jepsen seeks out the thrilling new emotions that surface in love, and amplifies them into musical adrenaline rushes. By distilling pure feeling into soaring hooks and full-hearted declarations, the Canadian singer/songwriter, who broke out with her 2012 global hit “Call Me Maybe,” has been recognized as a modern master of pop songwriting by critics and fans alike. Now she emerges from a period of isolation withnew album The Loneliest Time, which sees her pushing her craft in more introspective and playful directions. “I’ve created a world of escapism in music,” Jepsen says. “But what I wanted to offer with this album is permission to actually connect to whatever it is you need to feel.”

The Loneliest Timesees  Jepsen reflecting a range of moods  through disco, folky ballads, and heart-pumping funk-pop. She captures deep nostalgia on “Western Wind,” a pop track produced by longtime collaborator Rostam, which she says is about “mourning the losses of old thingsand people you used to have, but remembering that those memories are still in your body and part of your experience.” On the wistful “Far Away,” produced by Bullion (who also helmed the glowing electro-pop of “Bends”), she veers into an off-kilter ’80s sound for a song that captures “the humility of realizing that you’re the one who fucked up in a relationship.” Without compromising her  infectious  dance  sensibilities,  she  emerges  a  more  astute  and  compassionate  songwriter, marking  a  progression  from  the  lovesick anthems on 2019’s Dedicatedand the buoyant ’80s-inspired synth-pop on E·MO·TION, the 2014 LP that launched her into cult pop star status.

Like most of the world, Jepsen had to grapple with loss and isolation during the pandemic. Though she  was  experiencing  real  grief  for  the  first  time  and  touring  was  on  hold,  she  found  herself intrigued by solitude rather than being paralyzed by it. “Loneliness can be a place of real growth and change,” she says, adding that it led her to prioritize her own needs and act more boldly—whether that was wanting to confess feelings to an ex-lover or trying dating apps for the first time. That newfound commitment to vulnerability, which she believes will bring her closer to true love, is apparent when she sings, “I wannabe open / I wanna be honest with you” over glittering synths on the opener, “Surrender My Heart.”

Jepsen  is  also  more  lighthearted—and  ready  to  embrace  camp—than  ever  before,  as  on  the sparkling  disco  title  track,  which  sees  her  playing  out  a  fantastical  duet  with  her  musical  hero Rufus Wainwright. “Just like Shakespeare wrote a tragedy/ ’Bout our story, never finished it,” she sings over dramatic string flourishes. There’s also the hilarious “Beach House,” on which she satirizes the ridiculous things men throw out on dating apps, escalating to “I’ve got a lake house in Canada/ And I’m probably gonna harvest your organs.”“

I am not one thing, and neither is this album,” Jepsen says. “It’s rebelling against the idea that, even as a popmusician, you have to narrow it down or condense it for people.” After all, she’s never had just one vision of pop throughout the years, having collaborated with major acts like Charli XCX and Justin Bieber as well as beloved indie auteurs Dev Hynes and Danny L Harle. She’s also never been just one type of performer, either: Before her breakout 2012 sophomore album, Kiss, she launched with the 2008 folk-pop Tug of War, and made her Broadway debut in 2014 as the lead in Cinderella.

As  with  her  previous  projects,  Jepsen  came  up  with  more  than  a  hundred  songs  that  were eventually whittled down to the 13 tracks on The Loneliest Time. “It’s like catching fish, where you know when you caught one,” she says of her songwriting process. “Then there’s others where you  think  you  caught  something,  but  it  was  actually  someone’s  old  shoe.”  Her  creativity  is propelled by working with others until she realizes that certain sounds are “doing something for me,” leading to new wormholes of exploration. While she recruited UK indie producer Bullion for the first time, she called back Tavish Crowe - a collaborator since “Call Me Maybe” alongside E·MO·TION era co-writers and producers Kyle Shearer and Rostam, and Dedicated songwriters John Hill, Nate Cyphert, Jordan Palmer, and Alex Hope. 

Songwriting is also Jepsen’s way of exploring her fascination with relationships. She grew up in Mission, British Columbia, with divorced parents who had both remarried by the time she was 5. Observing how different those partnerships were, she carried a curiosity about romantic dynamics into her adult life, where she jots down any reflection that has lyrical potential. Her family’s tendency to turn any special occasion into a living-room dance party also still has a deep impact on her songs. “The feeling of being comfortable enough to get out and dance is similar to being brave enough to make the first move with a guy,” she says. “It’s an adrenaline rush, and you let yourself go. I want to capture that feeling my family taught me.”

Jepsen’s childhood connection to nature might have influenced the singer to subconsciously pen lyrics about the moon, which is a consistent theme throughout the record—from “I like the moon and  magic”  on  “Joshua  Tree”  to  “Every  time  the  red  moon  rises”  on  “Go  Find  Yourself  or Whatever.” Jepsen muses, “The moon can be for loneliness. It can also be romantic. It follows you wherever you go and matches your mood.” She hopes that the presence of the moon, as well as her lyrical candor, will remind listeners that they are never trulyalone. “There’s a communal feeling in knowing that so many people are feeling the same way that you do,” she says. “There’s a connection in knowing that other people also feel lonely.”