Live Review: Carly Rae Jepsen

We've known sorrow, we've known struggle. And, now, thanks to a 34-year-old Canadian singer named Carly Rae Jepsen, we've known joy. Pure joy. The kind of joy that’s born from the collective, gathered in a single spirit. That’s found in a crowd charged with sheer rapture via that instant when the immortal, meme-able opening sax vamp of Run Away With Me resounds through The Forum, bouncing off marble statues, the air alive with electricity and memory and the spirits of long lost Vines. I’m not sure what a comparable example of communal euphoria could even be. The final siren ringing out at a Grand Final? I mean, sure, maybe. But no footy-club theme song has hooks so sharp - even if, when Jepsen carols, “I’ll be your hero and win it,” this anthem sounds verily sporting.

This is what our hero - clad in a catsuit that is somehow both the colour of unpolished pewter and the entire chromatic rainbow at once; this effect reflected back by a very excited, very, very queer crowd who’ve come sequined to the hilt - brings to the table, and the stage. Hooks. Melodies. Pre-choruses to die for. Choruses to burrow into your head. Bridges that feel like their own self-contained worlds; that only amplify the return of that earworm chorus thereafter. More choruses. Ones in which she uses the word ‘really’ 18 times, each more exclamatory than the last, or sings of being “back on my beat”, like she’s a cop returning to work an old neighbourhood (though maybe it’s about masturbation?). There’s craft to be motherfucking respected: this might be the decade’s most bulletproof catalogue of pure pop songs.

Carly Rae Jepsen @ The Forum. Photo by Monique Pizzica.

There’s Gimmie Love and Now That I Found You and Boy Problems and Call Me Maybe (yet another tune that launched endless memes). There’s hardly any banter, and only occasional gimmicks - like the hired-hand, all-biz backing-band putting on platinum blonde Carly-alike wigs in Too Much, or the saxophonist turning backspins while soloing in Let’s Get Lost (which might be the most bulletproof-est pop song of all these bulletproof pop songs). But mostly there’s just the songs, straight up. Uncut. A set of defiant bubblegum, nary a note out of place.

Maybe there’s a few too many cuts from CRJ’s latest LP, but, hey, it is billed as the Dedicated tour, so sure why not. These songs are bright, shiny, giddy, sometimes great. But the feeling, the feels, feel different when she goes back to the prior album, and the singalongs are full-voiced, the revelry genuinely jubilant. That record is called Emotion, and, shit, that’s what hits you.

Carly Rae Jepsen @ The Forum. Photo by Monique Pizzica.

Cut To The Feeling, a song so singular it stands as a standalone single, always plays like a meta-pop song - its title a knowing reference to the craft at play (Jepsen plays it last, at encore’s end - where to go from there?). But when those old Emotion jams are played, there’s no need to signal the effect, no need to be so instructive. Feelings are cut to, held onto, held aloft, sung to the heavens. Never moreso than in When I Needed You, where Jepsen just stops and lets everyone else in the building take the lead, en masse. The words typed out in black-and-white don’t seem like much - “But I know, I know that I won’t change for you/'Cause where were you for me/When I needed someone?” - but, hollered aloud, they carry the same unifying spirit as any footy-club theme song: both offered as a tribute and sung as a shared celebration; signifying a sense of belonging in something bigger than the self.