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Ten years after “Call Me Maybe” first hit the Billboard Hot 100, Carly Rae Jepsen is back. And she’s coming to Boston.
Jepsen had all the makings of a one-hit-wonder in 2012 — after “Call Me Maybe” was first released in September 2011 as a single from her EP “Curiosity,” it debuted on the Billboard charts in March 2012. It stayed there for 50 weeks and was number 1 for nine consecutive weeks. The hit got Jepsen nominated for 2 Grammys: song of the year and best pop solo performance.
But even though Jepsen will probably always be best known for her smash single, there’s more to her than that. She has released four full-length albums in the last decade, along with over a dozen singles.
The 36-year-old Canadian singer-songwriter doesn’t seem to mind what will probably be a permanent association with “Call Me Maybe,” she told NPR in a 2019 interview.
“I don’t feel this big shadow, in the way I think I did at one point, when I was just trying to write beyond it. It feels more like a part of the story, and a really high point in some ways, in the adventure my life took on,” she said.
However, she doesn’t deny how much she’s changed since then, going through an evolution of learning how to “color outside the lines.”
“I feel like my music is so much more purposeful and authentic,” she said. “It doesn’t mean ‘Call Me Maybe’ wasn’t a big part of a time of my life, and a huge slice of my theatrical, kitschy side. But it wasn’t all I had to share.”
Her post-2012 albums (“Emotion” from 2015, “Dedicated” from 2019, and “Dedicated Side B” from 2020) certainly fall in line with her “Call Me Maybe” self, though also represent the evolution she’s gone through.
In “Dedicated,” especially, she’s still writing about love, but this time in a way that feels much more assured. In the past, her love songs (read: essentially all her songs) covered love with the pining feelings that often come with unrequited love. But in “Dedicated,” her love feels requited, her voice and lyrics confidently self-assured.
And she’s bringing that love to Boston this fall when she plays Roadrunner on September 26. Her fourth show in the So Nice Tour, Jepsen heads off around the U.S. and Canada after playing Roadrunner for her fourth concert tour. She’s joined by Of Empress.
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