Carly Rae Jepsen is looking at the people who shape us, for better and for worse, on “Motivation,” the latest single from her forthcoming double album Day and Night.
Released via Interscope Records, “Motivation” appears on the “night” half of Jepsen’s 24-track project, due September 18. The house-inspired pop track pairs a glittering dance-floor backdrop with something considerably more complicated underneath: inherited patterns, family expectations and the work involved in figuring out which parts of your history you want to carry forward.
The song began while Jepsen was back in her hometown during the fall, where even the sound of leaves beneath her feet became part of its genesis.
“‘Motivation’ started when I was back in my hometown in the fall, and the crunch of the leaves under my feet started creating this rhythm,” Jepsen says. “I was thinking about my family and how passionate we all are, how we have such high expectations of each other.”
Rather than treating those relationships as something easily categorized as good or bad, Jepsen describes the song as an attempt to make peace with their contradictions.
“‘Motivation’ became my way of making peace with all of that. It’s our little family anthem that recognizes all the complicated parts, but I hope it can be an anthem for chosen families as well.”
That extension from biological family to chosen family gives “Motivation” a particularly expansive emotional center. Jepsen has long excelled at disguising emotional complexity inside pristine pop songs, and here the tension between the track’s celebratory production and its more introspective subject matter becomes part of the point.
The accompanying “Motivation” video was filmed in Paris and directed by Caio Viera, who previously directed Jepsen’s “On Wires” visual. Built around a diverse collection of people and relationships, the video expands the song’s definition of family while emphasizing connection across both birth and chosen families. Fashion designer, actress and model Gigi Goode, who rose to prominence on Season 12 of RuPaul’s Drag Race, also appears in the visual.
“Motivation” offers another look at the more nocturnal side of Day and Night. Jepsen has conceived the 24-track double album around two distinct but connected musical environments. The “day” portion leans toward sunlit, left-field pop, represented by previously released singles “On Wires” and “After All.” The “night” side turns toward maximalist dance music, including “Motivation” and “Don’t Leave Me on the Dance Floor.”
Across the full project, Jepsen moves through symphonic pop, psychedelia, disco and electronic music, giving the double-album format a conceptual purpose beyond simply providing more songs.
Day and Night arrives more than a decade after Jepsen’s 2015 album E•MO•TION helped transform her from the singer behind the enormous “Call Me Maybe” into one of contemporary pop’s most enduring cult figures. Subsequent albums Dedicated, The Loneliest Time and The Loveliest Time, along with her unusually beloved B-sides collections, have allowed her to build a catalog around pop craftsmanship rather than repeatedly chasing the scale of her earliest commercial breakthrough.
With “Motivation,” that evolution continues through a subject that feels appropriately adult for an artist now 15 years into her career: recognizing that growing into yourself can also mean reconsidering the people, expectations and patterns that helped make you who you are.
Carly Rae Jepsen’s Day and Night arrives September 18 via Interscope Records.
Featured image credit: pic Carly Rae Jepsen Instagram
