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Album Review: Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Kiss”

Posted by Karen Marchuska on 09/25 at 07:59 AM

The first time I heard “Call Me Maybe” in that stupid video Selena Gomez and Justin Bieber posted, I was hooked.  When I heard the Carly Rae Jepsen/Owl City collaboration, “Good Time,” I just knew it was going to be stuck in my head.  And now, Ms. Jepsen has decided to release an album full of these suckers that we have no choice but to sing along to, constantly.

I don’t even really know why I listened to her new release, Kiss, because I had to know what was coming.  Sixteen tracks of pure bubblegum pop dance tracks (deluxe edition; standard edition is twelve tracks), perfectly engineered to play through your head all day.  And I mean all day.  It only took two listens for me to find myself bobbing along to the melody playing in my head, even when I couldn’t for the life of me recall the words.

Of course, everyone was jumping up and down over the collaboration with label mate Justin Bieber, “Beautiful.”  However, this is probably the weakest song on the album. It’s slower than the other songs on the album and utilizes a different kind of vocal layering, which smack dab in the middle of the album, completely ruins the flow.  Not to mention the lame lyrics: “What makes you so beautiful, is you don’t know how beautiful you are to me,” which were all used up with One Direction’s “What Makes You Beautiful.”

Seeing as the rest of the album is full of dance jams, don’t expect any lyrical brilliance (then again, after “Call Me Maybe,” would it have even made sense to expect that?) but there is a great abundance of repeating catchy lines: “This kiss is something I can’t resist/ This kiss is something I can’t risk,” “Your heart is a muscle, your heart is a muscle/ Your heart is a muscle/ Your heart is a muscle,” and “Drive so fast, and they’re never gonna find you/ Drive so fast, saying no goodbyes/ Drive so fast, and we’ll leave it all behind you.”

Despite the shortcomings, you have to give the girl some credit.  If she wanted to take over the pop world and infest everybody’s brain with ridiculously catchy dance jams, then she sure is succeeding.  Though her album probably won’t be winning a Grammy anytime soon, she sure is good at making hyped up partygoers sing.

Carly Rae Jepsen-3, The Rest of Us- 0.

Tracks you should definitely jam out to: “Sweetie,” “Tonight I’m Getting Over You,” “Turn Me Up,” “Hurt So Good”