A Cocooning Kind Of Attitude

Carly Rae Jepsen “Blue Skies” Carly Rae Jepsen has lucked into a very low pressure form of pop stardom: People stopped expecting another “Call Me Maybe”-level smash from her over a decade ago, the Emotion album has locked her into the pop nerd canon, and her cult seems pretty happy to let her age gracefully as an artist rather than cling to youth. This endless goodwill from her audience has allowed her to be highly prolific, become increasingly sophisticated in her aesthetics, and essentially opt out of the competitive pop marketplace. The “Day” half of her most recent double album Day and Night is basically slick and ultra-tasteful indie, much closer to the style of the pastoral side of Goldfrapp, the casual elegance of Phoenix, or Kylie Minogue’s Impossible Princess era than anything currently hitting with Gen Z pop fans. “Blue Skies” in particular is gorgeous – imagine the orchestral grooviness of Serge Gainsbourg’s Histoire de Melody Nelson, but with a far more wholesome type of…