Emotion

the take

Holy sh*t! What an album! I can’t believe that Carly is solely known for “Call Me Maybe” because this album is surely a Masterpiece. Most definitely, a top 3 pop album of the century so far. It’s amazing. Prior to this album, Carly went on break. She was tired of being famous and was tired of making “safe” pop music. For her, she wanted to make stuff that she was passionate about. So she retired. Then she saw a Cyndi Lauper concert and realized her passion for 80’s-90’s Synth Pop. And she hit back the studio. Emotion is often categorized as 80’s synth-pop revivalism. But it’s so much more. At times and in ways, yes, it feels like something out of the 80’s. At the same time though, the album sounds so new and futuristic. There’s this unique dialogue that this causes, where the album feels nostagic, but also incredibly innovative and novel. This dynamic is key to the sound. Bringing her hit-making songwriting abilities that helped her write “Call Me Maybe”, and combining it with a sound, that at times, is too strange to fit on the radio, Carly brings out the best out of both “low brow” and “high brow” pop music on this album. The melodies are just as contagious as the biggest songs ever. And the instrumentals and production, at times like in “Making the Most of the Night”, are absolutely insane. This album features one of the best pop songs of the 21st Century in “Run Away With Me”, and an amazing supporting cast around it with “Making Most of the Night”, “Boy Problems”, “I Really Like You”, “Emotion”, and basically the rest of the album. The only thing keeping this from being a full 10/10 is that “Warm Blood” could be a little better. It’s not a bad song, it’s not a skip, but it is definitely the worst song on the album. I recommend this album to everyone that I know, it is amazing and deserves so much more attention.