How Carly Rae Jepsen Turned Bad Dates Into Songwriting Material

Sure, everyone is talking about Midnights, but Carly Rae Jepsen’s The Loneliest Time is also out, gifting the world with an hour of clutch-your-heart-on-the-dance-floor music that makes you feel as good as it does seen.

Jepsen recently spoke with Vogue about her new album, which marks her latest since 2019’s Dedicated. From a first listen, it’s safe to say that The Loneliest Hour is going to inspire the same raw cult-like devotion as Dedicated and 2015’s Emotion.

“I didn’t feel surrounded by a ton of strong foundations in my life,” she told Vogue of the album, for which she wrote 100 or so songs for while enduring personal losses during the pandemic. “I wasn’t really in a place of, ‘What’s gonna follow up Dedicated, but, What do I do with these feelings I don’t wanna have?’”

Some of the low points in Jepsen’s life in the last few years included a brief stint on dating apps, which helped inspire some of the album. Jepsen met a guy on a dating app (my bets is on Raya) who invited her to his Malibu beach house only to tell her he has a girlfriend. Stars: They really are just like us!

Jepsen said she was recounting the story to her sister over a bottle of wine, exclaiming: “And what’s in it for me? Some guy with a beach house who’s probably gonna hurt my feelings?” Five minutes later, she had the melody for “Beach House,” which is about being a single woman in her 30s on dating apps.

“I've got a beach house in Malibu,” she sings in the bouncy pop anthem. “And I'm probably gonna hurt your feelings.” Um, relatable!

The song traces some of the worst — thankfully fictional — dates imaginable: guys who were married, cried over their ex on the first date, or needed to borrow ten thousand dollars.

“There’s that part before every date where a girl texts her friends her location and says, ‘I’m alone with this guy tonight, so if I go missing, his name is so-and-so,’” Jepsen told Vogue, half-joking. “There are a few factors to consider in terms of security!”

“You get a little more eccentric as you get older. I think about who I am now versus who I was in my twenties, and I feel like I actually have something to say now because I’ve lived some life,” she told Vogue. “Now I can finally start writing the good stuff!”