Carly Rae Jepsen's sixth studio album, the double record "Day and Night," arrived this past Friday, capping a stretch of major life changes for the 40-year-old singer. Speaking to Variety over Zoom, Jepsen said the project began with a simple question: "what do I have to offer to the musical landscape right now?" and "what am I attracted to? What music am I listening to that I love?"
The album's two dozen tracks are split evenly between what Jepsen calls a "mixed bag of chips" of influences, ranging from Blossom Dearie and Minnie Ripperton to ABBA and house music. The "Day" portion leans into organic, folk-inflected sounds on songs like the acoustic "Wild Child" and the upbeat "After All," while "Night" turns moodier and more experimental on tracks such as "Amalfi Coast" and "Don't Leave Me on the Dance Floor."
The day/night concept came from her guitarist, Tavish Crowe, who noticed she was writing in two distinct styles roughly a quarter of the way into the process. "He said, 'What if it's like a house party, and as a thought experiment, we make this the upstairs and the downstairs?'" Jepsen recalled. The title itself came to her while driving around Los Angeles: "I loved its simplicity. It perfectly described this organic kind of dreamy thing, and then the nighttime, you immediately feel things get heightened and a little darker and more experimental."
Jepsen, who broke into the mainstream with 2012's "Call Me Maybe" and once recorded 250 songs for her sophomore album "Emotion" — celebrated with a 10th-anniversary show at Los Angeles' Troubadour in August 2025 — described "Day and Night" as something of a diary of her relationship with husband Cole Marsden Greif-Neill, known professionally as Cole M.G.N., whose credits include Beck, Wallows and Christine and the Queens. The two previously collaborated on "So Right" from her 2023 album "The Loveliest Time," and he contributes to several tracks on the new record.
Jepsen recalled meeting Greif-Neill the day they wrote "No Labels, I Love You": "I was driving home from that session and I thought, cute guy, but [only] in there. Not gonna touch that hot stuff. And you know, don't kiss the producer. Rule number one." She saved his contact as "Cole I Love You" after he texted her about the song's second verse. "Lo and behold, five years later, we're married with a baby, and I'm like, oh. Well, that worked out. He's still saved as 'Cole I Love You' because of that day."
The couple married in October 2025 and welcomed their first child in March amid the completion of the album. Jepsen said she was four months pregnant during the Troubadour anniversary show and wore a dress with "distracting lines" as an "optical illusion." She noted the pregnancy reshaped her approach to deadlines: "It was so obvious what the priority was, which was building a career around a life, not the other way around."
Jepsen is also writing music and lyrics for a Broadway adaptation of "10 Things I Hate About You," with previews set for August 2027. Lena Dunham is adapting the musical's book alongside Jessica Huang, and Jepsen is collaborating on songs with Ethan Gruska, whose past credits include Ryan Beatty, Fiona Apple and Phoebe Bridgers. Of the show's approach, she said, "We wanted to handle with care, but not trepidation... We began with playlists for each character. Bianca had like her '90s playlist." She declined to reveal how the production will handle the scene featuring Heath Ledger's character singing Frankie Valli's "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" in the original film, saying only, "That one you're gonna have to come and see."
Asked whether a companion B-sides record might follow, as she's done with past albums, Jepsen didn't rule it out: "I consider myself sort of like a chipmunk. I like to store my ideas in my cheeks, save them for later. Who knows." She added that she remains committed to constant songwriting, including late-night studio sessions with Crowe, even as she adjusts to life with a newborn: "That's going to be different with a baby, but we're going to figure out how to make that happen and fit it in between the cracks."
Photo: swimfinfan from Chicago, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
