Meredith Jenks
Carly Rae Jepsen opens her newly released fifth album, The Loneliest Time, by recounting some advice from her therapist: “I paid to toughen up in therapy / She said to me, ‘soften up.’”
For fans of Jepsen’s high-gloss, heart-eyed synth-pop, it sounds like curious advice: This is the woman who’s been dubbed “pop’s high priestess of Big Emotions” and who made an entire album called Emotion that cemented her status as a treasured (yet somehow, still underrated) artist. How can someone so seemingly in touch with her feelings possibly need to soften up?
Therein lies the tension of that opening track, “Surrender My Heart”: the balance between wielding your sword—as she, quite literally, does onstage—and, well, surrendering your heart. Spoiler alert: Jepsen opts for the latter route, shouting that she wants to be “brave enough” to open up before launching into the kind of stratospheric chorus her fans have come to expect from her. It’s classic Carly Rae, and it’s also an efficacious table-setter for the rest of the album, which finds her digging deeper and getting more introspective than she ever has before.