Carly Rae Jepsen's 'Day And Night': A Blissful Double Album of Nuanced Pop

‘Day And Night’ is, quite literally, an album of two halves. Carly Rae Jepsen has always been a prolific songwriter, but this time around, a full 15 years after her global breakthrough with ‘Call Me Maybe’, she’s finally surrendered to the “indulgence” of making a double album. Its 24 tracks (plus two more on the Japanese edition) are split evenly between a ‘Day’ side and a ‘Night’ side. What this idea lacks in originality – British Pop Idol singer Gareth Gates did the same thing on his 2003 LP ‘Go Your Own Way’ – it makes up for in conceptual clarity. Essentially, the first disc is for vibes, while the second has the bops.

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Since her 2012 album ‘Emotion’, which yielded an ingratiating mainstream smash, ‘I Really Like You’, and the more wistful, sophisticated ‘Run Away With Me’ that went viral on Vine (RIP), Jepsen has carved out her own lane. She’s the queen of catchy but nuanced pop, whose best songs (2017’s ‘Cut To The Feeling’, 2019’s ‘Want You In My Room’) feel like huge hits even if their actual chart success was modest. The ‘Day’ side of this album, which Jepsen recently described to NME as “more organic in nature, with more live instruments and a little hint of my roots in folk”, features her most alt-leaning pop music yet.

She tries psychedelic drivetime rock on ‘Burning Heart’, throws in some campfire balladry on ‘Wild Child’ and dips into whimsical bossa nova on ‘Just A Little Walk On The Moon’. At its best, the ‘Day’ disc sounds like the blissful memory of a summer holiday where you fell in love, which in effect it is: Jepsen wrote many of these songs after touring Europe with her now-husband, musician-producer Cole M.G.N., who worked on many of these songs. But at other points, particularly on the dreamy midtempo ‘Good Fine Alright’, it descends into cute mood music.

Perhaps inevitably given Jepsen’s past form, the uptempo ‘Night’ side is more dynamic and often quite fabulous. She channels ABBA on the melodically brilliant ‘Don’t Leave Me On The Dancefloor’, celebrates her biological and chosen families on the house-flavoured ‘Motivation’, and evokes British pop sophisticates Everything But The Girl on the elegantly melancholy ‘Near Or Far’. Equally sleek is the sun-dappled disco of ‘Amalfi Coast’, which sounds a little like Kylie Minogue on an edible.

So, to put it in crude terms that Jepsen would never stoop to, this double album is both a grower and a shower. Crucially, her songwriting throughout is intriguing enough to keep you invested. On ‘After All’, she’s slinking around a seaside retreat with “white walls [and] terracotta tiles” , thinking about the future. “I want to be the owner, I want to buy you flowers”, she sings. “Why don’t you take your shirt off for me now? I want to take your photograph like that”. For Jepsen, lust and laying down roots don’t have to be mutually exclusive ideas. ‘Day And Night’ is a spry, stylish reminder that she sees things a little differently from other pop stars.

Details

- Record label: Schoolboy / Interscope

- Release date: September 18, 2026

The post Carly Rae Jepsen – ‘Day And Night’ review: a blissful album of two halves from the queen of nuanced pop appeared first on NME .

_Originally reported by [NME](https://www.nme.com/reviews/album/carly-rae-jepsen-day-and-night-review-3968867?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=carly-rae-jepsen-day-and-night-review)._