Album Review: Carly Rae Jepsen's 'E•MO•TION'

In 2012, Carly Rae Jepsen's single "Call Me Maybe" was the year's best-selling single worldwide, hitting No. 1 in 18 countries. You couldn't go anywhere without hearing, "Hey, I just met you/And this is crazy/But here's my number/So call me maybe," playing over the speakers.

Jensen placed third on the fifth season of Canadian Idol but it wasn't until the release of "Call Me Maybe" that the world started to learn her name. Justin Bieber tweeted a link to the song shortly before his manager, Scooter Braun, signed Jepsen to Interscope Records and his own label, Schoolboy Records. In September, the singer released her sophomore album, Kiss, but it didn't get the attention that "Call Me Maybe" did a few months prior.

"We had the biggest single in the world last time and didn't have the biggest album," Braun told The New York Times last month. "This time, we wanted to stop worrying about singles and focus on having a critically-acclaimed album."

Today, Jepsen released her third album, E•MO•TION. The pure pop album is a solid effort, but not worthy of the "critically-acclaimed" title.

The opening track, "Run Away With Me," begins with a saxophone solo that remains prominent throughout the rest of the song. The song's chorus is aggressively catchy. It almost feels like Jepsen is fighting to be more than just a one-hit wonder.

The instrumental on the album's title track sounds like something Madonna would have placed her vocals over in the 1980s. The lyrics are mediocre and juvenile at times (i.e. "Not a flower on the wall/I am growing ten feet, ten feet tall"), but that's what makes it so catchy and vibrant.

Next up is the album's first single, "I Really Like You." The chorus feels never-ending as Jepsen sings, " I really, really, really, really, really like you," more times than we want to count. It's very in-your-face, like "Call Me Maybe," but also quite good. It deserved to peak higher than number 39 on the Billboard Hot 100, but isn't worthy of the top spot either.

"All That" sounds like something that would play during a prom slow-dance scene in a teen chick-flick. "Your Type" could easily be a song that Ashlee Simpson rejected for her 2004 album, Autobiography.

The album hits a low point with "Gimme Love" and "Boy Problems." The former is so bad that it's almost unlistenable while the latter sounds like a Kidz Bop original.

Jepsen's vocals sound more popish than ever over the electronic production of "LA Hallucinations," which unexpectedly transitions into a dark, eery song titled "Warm Blood." Placing these two sonically different tracks back-to-back doesn't make much sense until the closing track, "When I Need You," begins. This track sounds like the lovechild of its predecessors; it's almost as if the two tracks "really, really, really, really, really" liked one another and collided to create a song that is equally as dark as it is poppy.

All in all, E•MO•TION has a handful of memorable songs, with a few others that can be sent straight to the computer's trashcan. The album is as poppy as they come, but after listening to six or seven tracks, it becomes too much to handle all at once. Bubblegum pop fans will love Jepsen's album, but Top 40 radio likely will not.

Image via iTunes