Song of the Week: Carly Rae Jepsen Speaks for All of Us With “Talking To Yourself”
Song of the Week breaks down and talks about the song we just can’t get out of our head each week. Find these songs and more on our Spotify Top Songs playlist. For our favorite new songs from emerging artists, check out our Spotify New Sounds playlist. This week, Carly Rae Jepsen tells it like it is with “Talking To Yourself.”
Carly Rae Jepsen speaks for those of us who are delightfully unhinged.
Following one of the most incredible lines in recent memory in last month’s “Beach House” — “I’m probably gonna harvest your organs,” she said with the same energy of a person sharing their dinner order — our Canadian pop princess is back with “Talking To Yourself.” Her fifth studio album, The Loneliest Time, is set for release on October 21st, and this wildly infectious new single gives us another taste of what’s to come.
“Are you thinking of me when you’re with somebody else? Do you talk to me when you’re talking to yourself?” she asks on the chorus. It’s not clear if the subject of her questioning is an ex, someone in a friends-with-benefits situationship, or someone she’s simply pining over — but, regardless, the song is so unabashedly obsessive.
Jepsen is asking if the thought of her is keeping someone else up at night, while it’s clear that she’s absolutely doing the same. She’s stuck in a vicious cycle, singing for the people who re-read texts, check viewers on Instagram stories, and zoom on the background of a BeReal.
Love makes people do all kinds of things, and Jepsen scored this specific emotion over a characteristically addictive bass line and an earworm chorus. She just gets it — her pop sensibilities are always fine-tuned, and this playful pre-release track continues to build the hype for The Loneliest Time.
— Mary Siroky
Contributing Editor