Carly Rae Jepsen – “Run Away With Me”

For the longest time, I never understood the fascination surrounding Carly Rae Jepsen.  She writes cute, catchy 80’s influenced pop songs…and it’s not like she’s the first or even the best to do so.  Like any self-assured heterosexual man should, I jammed out to “Call Me Maybe” every time it came on the radio – of course – but her music was little more than a guilty pleasure.  The intuitive statement that comes next should be a short anecdote about how Emotion changed my perceptions, and how really she grew as an artist and expanded her boundaries…but I still just don’t see it, at least not the way others do.  She’s merely a saccharine, surface-level pop artist who can craft a mean hook, but my conclusion here is basically this: so what?

“Run Away With Me” is probably the catchiest pop song in the last 10 years, and if it’s not the catchiest then it’s certainly one of the most compelling.  This track is the queen of summer bangers, a song whose upbeat dynamics and seductive lyrics make it irresistible aesthetically and intellectually.  From the moment the synths glide in to the gradual soft-loud progression that spans the first minute of thumping beats, it’s a song that immerses your senses in this neon youth; a glowing representation of what it means to be young and in love – to be the life of the party – to own the night.  Jepsen’s lyrics of love/lust avoid cliches and maintain “Run Away With Me” as a truly autonomous anthem: “I’ll be your sinner in secret, when the lights go out” / “‘Cause you make me feel like I could be driving you all night, and I’ll find your lips in the streetlights.”

Not every song needs to be experimental or exhibit massive growth to be top-tier, and in this case “Run Away With Me” is just a great pop song.  It’s the kind of track that we’ll look back on years (decades?) from now and it will still be just as relevant, because love-struck euphoria and wanting to run away with him/her aren’t sensations that will ever go away.  Carly Rae is a timeless artist in that sense, and although writing universally appreciable themes can be a double-edged sword in the sense that some will dismiss the music as pedestrian/common, the payoff when a song clicks on every level is even greater.  “Run Away With Me” takes topics that have been covered before and makes them more exciting; more luminous.  It’s a cute, catchy, 80’s influenced slice of pop, sure – but why should that mean that it isn’t also one of the best songs of the decade?

Read more from this decade at my homepage for Sowing’s Songs of the Decade.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5JjmQsvmmmOBFnUjP7FLu4