Carly Rae Jepsen is a reluctant celebrity.
Seven years ago you couldn’t turn on a radio without hearing her voice. Her bubbly breakout hit “Call Me Maybe” (and its still-stuck-in-your-head chorus) catapulted the Canadian import to the top of the charts and a level of ubiquity most pop stars only dream of. But Jepsen found the overnight success overwhelming.
“I remember first coming to L.A. and going to a sushi restaurant, and there were paparazzi outside,” the pop star recalls. “I thought, ‘I’m never coming back to this place again!’”
So Jepsen decided to take a step back from the glare of the spotlight.
“There is something kind of paralyzing after that, like, ‘Where do I go from here?’” says the singer, now 33. “The idea of celebrity for celebrity’s sake doesn’t attract me. I want to be remembered for my songs — I could care less if you remember my name or my face.”
Since her ascent in 2012, Jepsen has indeed focused on the music. She made her Broadway debut in Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella in 2014. Then the next year, she proved she’s no one-hit wonder with the critically adored E•MO•TION, her ’80s-inspired third album that earned her a cult following. Now on her fourth LP, Dedicated Jepsen cements her status as one of pop’s brightest, yet most underrated, stars.
“I know what it’s like to feel like you can’t leave your house because of ‘Call Me Maybe,’” she says. “I’m not looking for another ‘Call Me Maybe.’”
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Even so, Dedicated — a collection of “understated disco” songs informed by ’70s, ’80s and ’90s pop — delivers the same euphoria as her breakthrough hit.
Jepsen wrote more than 200 tracks before settling on the 15 that appear on her fourth LP, which was inspired by a breakup and new love.
“Love is a great fascination of mine,” says Jepsen. “I’m a hopeful romantic if I am anything.”
The Mission, British Columbia native, weathered an amicable breakup from her photographer boyfriend David Kalani Larkins in 2017, and she did some serious soul-searching.
“It forced me to have less responsibility on one person to be that confidante, that one person you confide in — I started to spread that out among my friends and my bandmates and my family, and all of the connections in my life started to grow in this really healthy way,” she says of the perspective that shaped her hit "Party for One." “That was the big lesson [I learned] about being alone: It’s not about being alone, it’s about being more connected and putting the responsibility on yourself to not be lonely because love really is at your fingertips if you reach for it.”
So, it came as a surprise to Jepsen when she happened upon a new romance. Jepsen met British writer-producer James Flannigan at a songwriting in Nicaragua in 2017.
“I was hesitant about getting into a new relationship,” she says, “but I knew something were there.”
The pair were pals for months before her mother, Alexandra, met him and suggested they could be more: “I joke now that Mom set us up, which is embarrassing — but she really did!” says Jepsen, who has been dating her new beau — who cowrote two tracks, "No Drug Like Me" and "Real Love," on Dedicated — for a year and a half.
Now as Jepsen reemerges to go on tour for Dedicated, she’s thankful for the privacy she’s been able to enjoy as she’s largely been able to evade the paparazzi and tabloid headlines. (“Thank God!” she jokes.)
“I don’t know how I got lucky enough to get this job and not have too much attention,” she adds. “But it’s wonderful.”
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