Carly Rae Jepsen: Dedicated

The past week brought albums from some of today’s musical juggernauts.

Carly Rae Jepsen delivered more of her dynamic, therapeutic pop, The National perfected their elegant, somber rock and Tyler, The Creator, alongside a star-studded list of collaborators (Frank Ocean, King Krule, Kanye West, Pharrell Williams, Playboi Carti and more), created a bold, glitchy new breakup LP IGOR. Throw in new singles from Stef Chura (featuring Will Toledo), Jarvis Cocker and Husky Loops and Paste Studio performances from Penny and Sparrow and Nick Waterhouse, and you have all the ingredients for a great week in music. Dive into all this, plus music features on Charly Bliss, Pile, the inaugural KAABOO Texas festival and more, below.

BEST ALBUMS

Carly Rae Jepsen: Dedicated

Since we’re living in a post-Emotion world, it’s hard to remember a time when Carly Rae Jepsen wasn’t regarded as an accomplished pop icon. But before the sexual torment of “Emotion,” the sweet rush of “Gimmie Love” and all those “Run Away With Me” saxophone memes, Carly Rae Jepsen was, to most, “Call Me Maybe” and nothing more. Following that “wish in the well” come true in 2012, 2015 became her moment, and Emotion the pop album to save them all. Now in her 30s, going on four years since Emotion’s summer 2015 debut, Jepsen is perhaps even more the music media darling and pop culture mainstay. And while we’ve never really looked to her for lyrical profundity, she’s always been savvy when it comes to pure feelings, making her fourth LP Dedicatedanother beacon of emotional intelligence, and Jepsen a straight-A student of pop history.Dedicated is about relationships, but it’s also an examination of self. She sashays from one romantic identity (single, heartbroken, in love) to another, but as the record beams on, it becomes clearer they’re all one in the same—a trinity. If the bar for Carly Rae Jepsen—and maybe even 2010s pop as a whole—is the intellectual pop perfection of Emotion, then Dedicated falls only a little short, landing somewhere between effortless earworm territory and therapeutic ecstasy. —Ellen Johnson

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