Thanks to Carly Rae Jepsen, the search for great pre-summer bops is now over
I don’t know about you, but the pop music scene has been bleak for quite a while now, with Rihanna fanning about with the release of R9 and Gaga’s metamorphosis into a proper actress and recent exhaustive Oscar campaign trail. As for the earlier batch of superstar pop girls, well, Beyoncé continues to live her best life and teasing us about it on social media, Britney has had her hands full with a second Las Vegas residency and then some serious family matters, and Xtina released Liberation last year, which was great, but homegirl couldn’t be bothered to promote it properly. Lizzo, a force of nature whom more people should get into, is a bright, fun spot, but with her as a BBW (big black woman), that’s expecting too much rationality and good taste from the world. There’s no one else, really, and so the first two months of 2019 are marked by a dearth of great pop music.
Oh, and before anyone brings up a certain mumble-singing white woman from Boca Raton, Florida who has gotten away with being racially ambiguous via tanning (among many other messy things)…
So thank Goddess indie queen Carly Rae Jepsen has swooped in to change things up a bit. Today, she finally dropped two new songs from her as yet untitled fourth album, nearly four months after “Party For One” was released. But unlike the self-love-themed first single, “Now That I Found You” and “No Drug Like Me” tread a path that CRJ is an expert on: The exhilaration of opening up and falling in love (again).
“Now That I Found You” is an ’80s-influenced party-starter of a bop, sunny and light and happy—so happy, Netflix’s Queer Eye used it in its season three teaser a little over a week ago:
WE'RE BAAACK HENNYS! Get ready to 💗 L<3VE YOURSELF! 💗 Queer Eye 3 launches March 15. HUGE thanks to @carlyraejepsen for this exclusive preview of her *NEW BOP*, "Now That I Found You.” 😘 pic.twitter.com/Dmj3ygXnhV
— Queer Eye (@QueerEye) February 13, 2019
“No Drug Like Me,” on the other hand, is a mid-tempo breather that is seductive in its delicacy—a grower of a song that lures you in.
Jepsen told Billboard, “‘Now That I Found You’ is about the high you get when a new love starts to change your life…It’s like the rush, rush, rush is better than any drug…which leads me to ‘No Drug Like Me,’ which is a promise I made to love in general. That when the good stuff lands my way I’ll always try to be vulnerable and brave and show all of myself.”
There could have been no better way to wave February good-bye and welcome March in, right?
