These were supposed to be B-sides, throwaways, tracks for the cutting room floor. In the almost exactly two years since Carly Rae Jepsen released her pop masterpiece, EMOTION, she’s had us hooked up to a drip-feed of EMOTION-era songs that didn’t quite make the cut, first with the eight-track Side B, and then with her latest single, “Cut to the Feeling.” All that these songs have done is further distill EMOTION‘s euphoric sensibility. That album’s goal was to capture a perfect rush—something undiluted and unadulterated, with no care for the comedown. It was supposed to be overwhelming. It was supposed to feel like amphetamines and sugar (and occasionally peyote). It overrode longing and anxiety, and flipped them both into something joyful. Two years on, the thesis statement is right there in “Cut to the Feeling.” Actually, it’s the title of the song.
Jepsen released a lyric video for the song this afternoon. You can watch it at the top of the page. It shows a sunny day, somewhere in the American Southwest. The camera follows a woman dancing through the streets, stapling sheets of A4 with the song’s title to trees as she goes. It doesn’t build on the song’s original ideal, it just revels in it. I look forward to reading someone’s nuclear-hot take on how this says something about millennials or young women or our collective superficiality or something. Fuck that. Grim dissatisfaction with the world around you isn’t a product of maturity, it’s just a sign that nobody wants to talk to you at the bar. Watch this, feel good, watch it again, get a little buzz when the lyrics thump onto the screen in time with the drums, and let it take you over for a minute, because otherwise what’s the point?
Videos by VICE
Because of this song, Alex Robert Ross is going to drink seven cups of coffee and run around Brooklyn instead of eating lunch. Follow him on Twitter.
