Carly Rae Jepsen Essentials

Carly Rae Jepsen has carved out a space in pop that's full of giddy hooks and deep-seated sentiment—there's a reason she called her third album E•MO•TION. Her craft is meticulous: She can wrench a spectrum of feelings out of something as simple as a vowel sound, and she turns small details—from floating-on-air sax solos to unison chants of “Hey!”—into maximalist triumphs. Jepsen's megahit “Call Me Maybe”, with its whirling strings and wide-eyed flirtation, is sublime, but it offers only a hint of her bliss-inducing capabilities.