every single Carly Rae Jepsen song will have at minimum one moment that is so sonically powerful and overwhelmingly effervescent it will hit me like an actual punch to the chest
Carly Rae Jepsen just truly blows all of the other pop girlies so out of the water with her ability to truly achieve campy pop instead of just making bad music and having it be called camp. Like ‘So Nice’ is one of the most saccharine songs I’ve ever heard in my life, but she sells me on it so flawlessly. Like THIS is camp, THIS is pop. It’s commitment to the emotion that you can only do if you are fearless. I feel like so many other pop stars today are too brand-aware and self-conscious to actually swing that hard at cheesy, but it is the full power that Carly puts behind it that makes it so endearing.
Songs like ‘Let’s Be Friends’ and ‘Beach House’ are perfect campy songs because she never undercuts it to save face, and because she’s inviting us to laugh with her and not at the song. Actually I think that’s the thing everyone gets wrong about camp: it’s the equivalent of laughing with, and people confuse it with laughing at. With Carly, she’s always in on the joke and laughing while she tells it.