http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2012/06/19/_call_me_maybe_is_1_on_the_billboard_charts_does_the_carly_rae_jepsen_song_mark_a_new_phase_in_pop_music_.html?wpisrc=obnetworkTop of the Pops:
Carly Rae Jepsen,
“Call Me Maybe”
By Jody Rosen
Posted Tuesday, June 19, 2012, at 3:20 PM ET
Carly Rae Jepsen performs in May If you want to get technical,
Carly Rae Jepsen’s
“Call Me Maybe” became the No. 1 song in the country last week, nudging
Gotye’s
“Somebody That I Used to Know” out of the top
Billboard spot after an eight-week-long run. But Jepsen’s pop bonbon has been No. 1 by acclamation for a few months now—the People’s Choice, nominated by
Justin Bieber and friends, seconded by the Harvard baseball team, thirded by
President Obama, and clutched to the bosom of seemingly every man, woman, drag queen, and golden retriever in North America and beyond.
“Call Me Maybe” is the kind of 21st century viral phenomenon that makes Billboard’s charts seem quaintly 20th century. The number-crunchers and radio programmers have staggered in late to a party that’s been roaring for weeks.
Culture critics have been pondering the runes of “Call Me Maybe” for a while now, too.
One of my favorite takes is Ann Powers’ on the homoeroticism in the “Call Me Maybe” video and its viral offshoots—Jepsen’s doofy hit as an unlikely liberation anthem in this landmark year for marriage equality.
But it is timelessness, not timeliness, that defines
“Call Me Maybe.” The musical architecture is classical: the stately procession from verse to “pre-chorus,” the exhilarating bottle-rocket explosion of the chorus. The lyric is pure bubblegum, a guileless-but-lusty meet-cute valentine, delivered by the 26-year-old Jepsen in a spot-on impersonation of a teenager.
“Your stare was holdin’ / Ripped jeans, skin was showin’ / Hot night, wind was blowin’ / Where you think you’re goin’, baby?” As artfully artless evocations of summer vacation infatuation go, that’s hard to beat. None of the
Brill Building greats could have written it any sharper or plainer.
The key line is in the chorus:
“Here’s my number / So call me, maybe?” The genius of the song is how it makes a sing-along out of a question, and a tentative one at that—a Nervous Nellie’s pick-up-line. The vulnerability is underscored by the synthesizer-strings in the refrain: a cutesy sound, so much smaller and less emphatic than the usual pop chorus in the age of “the soar.” It’s been fully five months since
Rihanna took one of her thundering club-bangers to the top of the
Hot 100, nearly a year since a rapper had a No. 1. (And
Pitbull barely counts as a rapper.) After six weeks of
fun.’s
“We Are Young,” and eight of “Somebody That I Used to Know,” is it time to conclude that pop is turning a corner, transitioning into a new phase? Maybe?
