My musical infatuation for Carly Rae Jepsen is one often met with bewilderment or derision by most people I confess it to. “I can’t tell if you’re joking” someone says to me when I run into them the day after Brighton Pride and I’m still enthusing about her performance. I can assure you. I’m not.

And I’m not the only one. Alongside Brighton Pride Festival, the other festivals Jepsen has blessed with her presence this year include Pitchfork, whose core audience is often stereotyped as the snobby muso, where she was received rapturously. On top of that, she recently collaborated with Danny L Harle of trendsetting, experimental pop collective PC Music.

Before Jepsen comes to the stage a minute’s silence is observed to remember the victims of Orlando. It’s a genuinely powerful moment, as the crowd instantly turns from bubbly and chatty to total silence. Much of the festival seesaws violently between the garishly corporate (a Peperami float in the parade? really?) and the genuinely joyous and moving. Seeing members of the public sector, such as the NHS, participating in the parade gives me a particular warm feeling inside. People who are usually presented to us as depressingly overworked and underpaid being able to celebrate their identity is what Pride is all about. Also present for all of Jepsen’s set, as well as most of the other artists appearing on the main stage, is a translator communicating the lyrics in sign language. Something that speaks volume about how serious inclusivity is to the festival.

Despite developing something of a cult following, becoming a critical darling and producing one huge hit with ‘I Really Like You’ (one of the album’s weaker moments by the way), Jepsen’s third album E.MO.TION, which came out last year, mystifyingly failed to make a larger splash in the mainstream. Seeing her live gives you an idea of what separates her from the pop acts that have reached the stratosphere. With her pixie haircut, white 80s suit trousers and what appears to be a red sparkly poncho, there’s an eccentricity to her look that doesn’t exist in more polished pop acts like Taylor Swift. Also unlike Swift, there isn’t the constant and nauseatingly needy appeal for approval from her crowd and fans. Jepsen simply gets on stage and performs her songs with as much gusto as she can muster, giving very little time over to any rehearsed crowd interactions in between. Occasionally, her voice doesn’t quiet reach, but that might be because I’m drowning her out with my own painfully out of tune singing.

Why Jepsen is worthy of such attention – when the other pop acts performing today blur into one – isn’t something entirely quantifiable. But it’s certain none of them possess in their cannon anything as subtle or magical as the opening saxophone of ‘Run Away With Me’ or ‘All That’, with twinkling synths and a twanging bass-line added to the 80s funk slow-jam. It also contains one of the most soaring middle eights ever likely to be produced by human hands. These are all love songs but in her best moments such as ‘Run Away With Me’, ‘Let’s Get Lost’ and ‘Making The Most Of The Night’, she paints vivid pictures of the thrill of uncertainty. Impulsively taking a chance on another person and not knowing where you’ll end up. Escaping to both another place and into each other. It’s also always happening in a magical, endless night time, like Jessie and Celine in Richard Linklater’s indie-romance ‘Before Sunrise’. The rush of spontaneity, living more intensely because you know those perfect moments wont last forever, but wanting to drag them out for as long as possible. “I’m keeping my fingers crossed that maybe you’ll take the long way home”, she confesses on ‘Let’s Get Lost’.

Inevitably, ‘Call Me Maybe’ receives an overwhelmingly louder response than the rest of the songs, despite everything else being vastly superior. You would have to be a serious curmudgeon to not find it a huge amount of fun but a shadow hangs over my mind, reminding me of the fact that for most people, Jepsen will remain a one – perhaps two at best – hit wonder. She finishes with ‘I Really Like You’, and as the final chorus erupts, confetti rains downs on us like a multi-coloured snowstorm. “I’m so in my head / When we’re out of touch” she sings. But for a moment, we’re all able to escape.
Louis Omesher

Website: carlyraemusic.com
Facebook: facebook.com/Carlyraejepsen
Twitter: twitter.com/carlyraejepsen