![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/f00ee3de3f8e5889c4d9d523f870af0a6b-carly-rae-lede.rhorizontal.w1100.jpg\")
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\n Day and Night is out September 18.\n <\/p>\n
\n Photo: Charlotte Rutherford for New York Magazine\n <\/p>\n
On a recent sweltering Wednesday at the Huntington gardens in San Marino, California, there are pairs of elderly women speed-walking in hiking shoes and wide-brimmed hats, young families with strollers full of sunscreen, and even a small group of Buddhist monks in long gray robes. Then there is Carly Rae Jepsen<\/a>, looking very much like a pop star in her linen Miu Miu baby-doll dress and pink ankle socks with matching kitten heels. Somewhat mommishly, I\u2019m immediately forecasting a sunburn and sore feet. But when I suggest avoiding the gardens\u2019 paths in favor of paved roads because of her shoes, she demurs. \u201cI only wear a shoe to ruin a shoe,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n We\u2019re a little under two months from the release of her ninth studio album, Day and Night. (Reminded of this timeline, she gasps. \u201cHoly shit!\u201d) A double album, it\u2019s the most ambitious project of the Canadian singer\u2019s 18-year career. Over its sprawling, variegated 24 tracks, Jepsen draws on \u201960s folk, \u201970s psychedelia, and \u201980s synth-pop. The Day tracks evoke the sparkliest, brightest summer pool party, while the Night tracks are, appropriately, dancier \u2014 if also, as is often Jepsen\u2019s wont, a little sad. \u201cWe\u2019ve been fighting fire with fire \/ But when our song comes on, I search the crowd and look for you,\u201d she sings in the album\u2019s third single (and first bop), \u201cDon\u2019t Leave Me on the Dance Floor,\u201d for which playwright Jeremy O. Harris directed the music video<\/a>.<\/p>\n Many musicians have faltered when trying to follow their first, most famous song. Jepsen\u2019s 2012 track \u201cCall Me Maybe\u201d was an irresistible overnight megahit lip-synced by just about every celebrity and sports team but endlessly mocked for its middle-school-crush cheesiness. One can only imagine if TikTok had existed at the time. In the nearly 15 years since, Jepsen has sustained a somewhat modest but loyal (and considerably queer) fan base. Emotion, her third studio album, has proved particularly enduring. Last year, she performed it start to finish for an audience of 500 at the Troubadour in West Hollywood, where she had originally celebrated its release. Many, many fans tried to attend, myself included. (I clocked in at 5,000th on line for a ticket; at one point, more than 87,000 people were waiting.) Demand was so high that Jepsen\u2019s team entertained the idea of an anniversary tour, but she wanted to keep it moving. \u201cI don\u2019t normally love to exist in too much nostalgia,\u201d she says. \u201cI feel like I\u2019m on to something, and I need to exist in this energy.\u201d<\/p>\n Now 40, Jepsen says getting older (and more experienced in the industry) has made it easier to focus on what she wants and bypass what she doesn\u2019t. \u201cI went to a label meeting one time early in my career, where a guy introduced me to a younger artist and was like, \u2018This is Carly Rae Jepsen. She says \u201cyes\u201d to everything,\u2019\u201d she says. \u201cAnd I remember being like, Oh, I don\u2019t love that reputation. I also remember thinking, I didn\u2019t know that \u2018no\u2019 was an option.\u201d Burnout made her recognize the need for balance and boundaries. So too did a few major changes to her personal life. \u201cIt\u2019s a nice thing to have this new center, and the center is my husband and my child,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n In October, Jepsen married music producer Cole Marsden Greif-Neill, known as Cole M.G.N., at the Chelsea hotel in New York in front of 100 guests and a baby-blue backdrop \u2014 her favorite color. The parasol Jepsen brings on our walk is the same shade, as is her engagement ring, as are her eyes and some of her French-tip nails. \u201cBlue has always symbolized love to me,\u201d she says. \u201cOur child\u2019s middle name is Blue.\u201d Jepsen\u2019s son, Ilya, was born in March, and it was important to his musician parents, she says, that his name sound lyrical. I point out its pop-cultural relevance, too, thanks to Heated Rivalry. \u201cWhich I was watching while pregnant, so it\u2019s probably not a total coincidence,\u201d she says, grinning. \u201cI cried so much.\u201d<\/p>\n In February, she shot the video for \u201cAfter All\u201d at eight months pregnant. Between fast-cut footage of ocean waves and fireworks and shots of a lightly raucous house party, she sings about finding domestic bliss (\u201cBaby, one-bedroom apartment, Daddy and me\u201d) while swaying and rubbing her stomach, half-covered in lace. \u201cThe unsung hero of that day was the bed in the next room,\u201d she says. Between takes, she snacked on fruit and her makeup artist oiled her belly.<\/p>\n Fans don\u2019t always like it when yearning, oft-heartbroken pop stars get married and have babies \u2014 who wants to sing along to songs about being content? Jepsen understands the sentiment. Although the album isn\u2019t short on happily-ever-after themes, Jepsen says she doesn\u2019t want to hit anyone over the head with it. \u201cI was very conscious that I didn\u2019t want this album to be like\u201d \u2014 she breaks into song \u2014 \u201cI have a baby and a maaaan!\u201d She began writing it before falling in love with her husband and having a baby. \u201cI am a mother. It\u2019s a beautiful aspect of who I get to be as a woman,\u201d she says. \u201cBut it also was a time to explore, as a musician, what I wanted to play with.\u201d Among the album\u2019s influences, she cites Minnie Riperton, Blossom Dearie, and Earth, Wind & Fire. \u201cI don\u2019t think Earth, Wind & Fire is on the album,\u201d she adds. \u201cI just listened to a lot of it while making it.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, Jepsen can see how her child has already begun shaping her songwriting. \u201cI was nervous about having writer\u2019s block after Ilya\u2019s birth,\u201d she says. \u201cBut I\u2019m sitting there looking at my son the other day, and for the first time I\u2019m understanding how \u2018Beautiful Boy\u2019 was written. I understand looking at your child and needing to write that song.\u201d<\/p>\n Photo: Charlotte Rutherford for New York Magazine\n <\/p>\n Jepsen announced her new album on Instagram in mid-June and released the first single, \u201cOn Wires,\u201d soon after. Its plunky staccato piano builds to an anthemic ballad and then reverts back, making it an unexpected first choice for Jepsen, but that\u2019s what she liked about it. \u201cIt felt rebellious,\u201d she says. For similar reasons, she chose the falsetto-heavy \u201cAfter All\u201d (a second Day track) for her next single instead of showcasing the album\u2019s other side. \u201cI kind of wanted to sit in one world before I whiplash you to the other,\u201d she explains.<\/p>\n Looking for ways to translate the album visually, Jepsen decided to hire a creative director. She met with a few people before finding her match in Humberto Leon, the fashion designer, a co-founder of Opening Ceremony and the creative director for Katseye. \u201cThe first thing he showed me was a tomato that had lace on it,\u201d she says. \u201cI have this song called \u2018Amalfi Coast,\u2019 and it just matched it so beautifully. We started to talk about memories and mementos and objects.\u201d Leon asked Jepsen to send him voice notes about the inspiration behind each track, and together with another director, Jo\u00e3o Moraes, they built an eclectic vintage-pop mood board of sorts with images of pocketknives, lighters, and a peach with a bite taken out of it. \u201c<\/strong>I\u2019m a Criterion Collection nerd, so I kept saying, \u2018This is the Criterion version of you,\u2019\u201d Leon says. \u201cCarly loves a direct task, so she took that to heart. She did the first voice-note, and she was like,\u00a0\u2018Is it too much? Too little? Am I sounding crazy?\u2019 And I was like, \u2018No, keep going.\u2019\u2009\u201d<\/p>\n As with \u201cAmalfi Coast,\u201d many of the album\u2019s songs were inspired by a European vacation Jepsen took with her husband in 2024. The couple got engaged on the same trip. Jepsen knew the proposal was coming \u2014 sort of. \u201cI didn\u2019t know what to do when he knelt down,\u201d she exclaims. \u201cI sat on his knee! I thought he was offering me a seat. Isn\u2019t that humiliating?\u201d<\/p>\n After an hour of looping through the gardens, it\u2019s time for high tea and, more important, air-conditioning. Before her wedding, Jepsen tells me, the bridal party had tea at the Plaza. \u201cIt was very cute and a lot of fun to dress up,\u201d she says. \u201cI had a fuzzy hat, but I didn\u2019t have the balls to wear it.\u201d Today, Jepsen\u2019s hair \u2014 currently copper colored \u2014 hangs in waves down her back. She has had many hairstyle eras, which she says often help her adopt her desired persona for an album. \u201cI really wanted to feel tough,\u201d she says of Emotion\u2019s black mullet. \u201cAnd I wanted to feel less worried about how I was perceived by anyone other than myself.\u201d<\/p>\n Prior albums have seen Jepsen vetting potential tracks with a wide circle of friends and associates; she famously wrote more than 200 songs for Emotion and Dedicated before whittling the list down. This time, she wrote around 100 and consulted with a smaller circle she calls her \u201canchors\u201d \u2014 among them her longtime guitarist and friend Tavish Crowe, with whom she co-wrote \u201cCall Me Maybe.\u201d<\/p>\n When she\u2019s narrowing in on a song, \u201cyou can see it in her face,\u201d Crowe explains. \u201cShe\u2019ll hear something, a line or a sound, and then it\u2019s like, Oh! She\u2019s writing a song in that head right now. There\u2019s a genius at work here. It never stops.\u201d If someone doesn\u2019t like a favorite song of hers, that\u2019s not necessarily going to stop her from putting it on the album. Criticism, she says, \u201cemboldens\u201d her: \u201cIf I know I like it anyway, that\u2019s powerful.\u201d<\/p>\n Jepsen is currently writing her first Broadway songs for the musical 10 Things I Hate About You<\/a>. Lena Dunham and Jessica Huang are writing the book. Having starred as Cinderella on Broadway in 2014, Jepsen has been itching to return, if under slightly different conditions. \u201cI really loved the musical I was in, and I loved the people, but I didn\u2019t love the lack of the spontaneity that I get to explore in my own shows,\u201d she says. \u201cI felt like if I wanted to tackle Broadway again, it would be exciting to think about participating on the writing side.\u201d When she was approached by 10 Things producer Mike Bosner, it was the right opportunity.<\/p>\n \u201cThe first time I heard one of the actors sing one of the songs that Ethan [Gruska, her co-writer on the music] and I had worked on, I had this out-of-body tingling,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019ve never had that experience because I\u2019ve always written just for myself. I understood the writer\u2019s high of writing for a different voice and the idea that this voice can do things my voice could never.\u201d The musical will premiere next year, and Jepsen hopes it\u2019s the first of many to come. \u201cI was told you go and do your first Broadway project, and you leave and either you\u2019re like, Oh, I\u2019m in it for life, or you\u2019re like, Never again,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd I\u2019m like, I\u2019m so in.\u201d<\/p>\n After tea, Jepsen will return home to see her family before resuming work in the afternoon. There are music videos to edit, press trips to take, and rehearsals for the All Things Go festival in New York, which she headlines on September 27. She knows the cycle well, though it\u2019s a bit different this time: \u201cMy sweet assistant\u2019s bag now includes breast pumps and coolers for the milk. My social team\u2019s like, \u2018Do we have a picture of you recently?\u2019 And I\u2019m like, \u2018There is no picture where I\u2019m not breastfeeding. I don\u2019t know what to tell you.\u2019\u201d She\u2019s coy about the details but says that even more music is coming after Day and Night and that she\u2019ll tour in 2027. \u201cNext year, we\u2019re going to press go,\u201d she says. Then, grinning, she adds, \u201cI hear 1-year-olds are really easy.\u201d<\/p>\n Production Credits<\/p>\n Thank you for subscribing and supporting our journalism. Want more stories like this one? Subscribe now<\/a>![](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/8ec75aac5d358b26616dab8a6ccdee4b8f-carly-rae-secondary.rhorizontal.w900.jpg\")
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\n Charlotte Rutherford<\/strong>\n <\/li>\n
\n Zaheer Sukhnandan<\/strong>\n <\/li>\n
\n Sully Layo<\/strong>\n <\/li>\n
\n Sophie Hardeman<\/strong>\n <\/li>\n
\n Kimberly Corday (dress)<\/strong>,\u00a0Balenciaga (shoes)<\/strong>,\u00a0Erik Charlotte (corset jacket, trousers)<\/strong>,\u00a0and\u00a0vintage shoes<\/strong>\n <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
\n If you prefer to read in print, you can also find this article in the September 7, 2026, issue of
\n New York\u00a0Magazine.<\/p>\n
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\n If you prefer to read in print, you can also find this article in the September 7, 2026, issue of
\n New York Magazine.<\/p>\n