Jessie Ware is joined today by popstar Carly Rae Jepsen who spoke about her experience on Canadian Idol, new single Julien, Call Me Maybe and being a gay icon.
Listen to the full episode here: https://www.tablemannerspodcast.com
On her relationship and where they met:
“He is [a Brit]. We were best friends for like a year, and I always thought he was just trouble, but then he kind of convinced me after a while that we were a good idea, so we’ve been together for about two years now.”
“As predictable as it is, he’s a musician & producer as well, so we met the usual way at work, and we’d both been invited to a songwriters’ camp in Nicaragua”
“I think my mum invited him over for dinner at one point when she was in LA with me. I was like, ok cool he’s not gonna come, it’s like a family dinner, but he arrived and then it felt very date-like. I think our first date was with my mother”
On her experience on Canadian Idol:
“I guess technically that was my breakout in Canada. I came third. I really wasn’t expecting to make it far at all on that show, I felt like it was such a coin-toss”
On her new song Julien:
[on who Julien is]: “There’s a couple answers to that question. I did date a boy when I was younger named Julien, a French-Canadian guy. We had a wonderful weekend in Quebec City once. But this is not like a song where I’m sending a message secretly to Julien, I thought it was such a musical name, and I’d been trying to put it in a song for a while.”
[on whether she still likes Julien]: “I do, he moved to LA actually, and I think we went to play pool once a couple years back and he’s doing great, he’s a musician as well. I always fall for musicians. My next song is going to be like, ‘don’t kiss the producer’”
On Call Me Maybe:
“I think the night before we recorded it, I came up with a different verse because I didn’t like the one we had before, so it was all pieced together over time, but none of us were like, we have something special or this is gonna change our careers. We kind of were like, this feels good, let’s see what happens”.
“Around the time, where I had no ears for radio or no perception of what is good and what is gonna work, I fought like tooth and nail to have a different song from that category be the single. My family stopped me, I ask a lot when I’m unsure about something to my safe circle, and I was certain it was gonna be a song ‘Curiosity’, and then my aunt, when I played it for the group at a family dinner, she doesn’t dance but she got up and jiggled a little bit, and that was the a-ha moment of ‘ok, let’s start with this one first’.
On being a gay icon:
“Honestly, that’s kinda been the gift of my career. I did not expect to have that come into my life. We’d been playing a few Pride shows and things, and I’m definitely passionate about any support I can give towards fighting the good fight, and love is love, and I’ve had friends since childhood who’ve gone through some pretty severe experiences that have enriched me enough to make it a calling of mine.”
On almost having Bill Murray in the I Really Like You video:
“I had an idea that I was gonna ask Bill Murray to be the star, and everyone was like, ‘he doesn’t have a phone number, he has a hotline’, so I got a hold of the hotline and everyone was getting hyped, saying call him, give him your pitch. I called, and I was expecting to leave a message on his hotline, but somehow stars aligned and he was waiting for a taxi to call him and he picked up, but I hadn’t prepared for the moment. I had written out what I was going to say in this message, but to actually talk to him in person, I had nothing planned”.
