Carly Rae Jepsen seems to have had enough of “Call Me Maybe.” The song that went viral and was the Number One Earworm of 2012 has become somewhat of an albatross around the neck of the Canadian pop singer in the years since it hit us like a sugar-coated wrecking ball. Some have stopped calling it “viral” and instead call it a “virus.”
“We did Good Morning America and they wanted a verse and chorus of ‘Call Me Maybe,’” Carly Rae Jepsen told The Guardian recently, “and basically I ended up flubbing it. I never thought I’d get the words wrong to that song.”
Maybe that’s her subconscious imposing itself on her waking life. Maybe that is Carly Rae Jepsen burning out on that cotton candy like the rest of us.
The song spawned so many parodies that, even after it had run its own course, the call-and-response factor kept it going much too long.
“It didn’t really feel like I was in the centre of it,” Carly Rae Jepsen says of the whole phenomenon. “It felt like something that took off and I was running to catch up with it. It was separate from me, but in a really lovely way. I like that it became its own little thing. It didn’t feel like it was just my song, it belonged to other people and that’s the best thing about music.”
Worse than anything, that one track flamed up so big that it drowned out everything else on the album that carried it. The album was called Kiss, but that song was the kiss of death to the rest of the album. Carly Rae Jepsen wished for a follow-up. She didn’t want to go down as a one-mega-hit wonder. But she says everything else was pretty much just runner-up.
Despite Justin Bieber helping her get signed, Carly Rae Jepsen's 'Call Me Maybe' has outsold any single released by Justin Bieber.
— Shady Music Facts (@musicnews_shade) May 19, 2015
But she found a way to be positive about it.
“I look back and I’m proud of the album but clearly nothing did as well as that song and it was a challenge to get attention on the rest of the B-side tracks,” she says, laughing. “But it was a happy challenge and a problem you can go at two ways; you can either be really pissed off or you can be grateful that you had some attention at all. I did the latter. I saw it as an amazing gift that has allowed me to take my time with this new record and make sure that I have a really strong body of work and not just one song.”
Call me Maybe came on the Radio at Tim Hortons. I tried tried to lead a group sing-a-long but was asked to leave.
Bunch of Savages.
— James Turner (@James_LRR) May 13, 2015
Then Carly Rae Jepsen leans very close to putting into words what so many of us have felt since 2012.
“I can’t imagine anyone’s comfortable being pigeonholed into one stereotype of who they are and who they’re supposed to be for ever,” she says. “That sounds like some sort of hell, actually. I’m constantly fighting and it’s an uphill battle because, in the world of pop, people are trying to put you in a hole and label you and I’m constantly trying to be as authentic as I can.”
“Call Me Maybe” … “some sort of hell.”
They need to let me make the playlist for the music we play at work. If Call me Maybe doesn't die I will.
— Brittany Dodson (@BritttanyBetchh) May 20, 2015