Carly Rae Jepsen on Album ‘Day and Night,’ Motherhood, and Life After ‘Call Me Maybe’

When Carly Rae Jepsen performed at her Los Angeles show celebrating the 10th anniversary of Emotion last year, she was four months pregnant. While she strutted around in heeled boots, jumped on risers, and performed every single track from her acclaimed album in August 2025, her family in the audience experienced unparalleled levels of stress. “My mom was like, ‘Every time you would stand on those God damn risers with your high-heeled shoes, I was like, ‘The baby!’’”

Now, Jepsen has had the baby, a boy named Ilya, but she’s still expecting: Her new double album Day and Night is out this Friday. The project has two sides, the folkier daytime side that is perfect for a day in the park, and the dancier nighttime side that weaves in darker emotions. They mesh together cohesively, but Jepsen was initially worried when creating the project. “The fact that I was dividing in these two lanes was very much against my statement of wanting something that fit into a certain shape,” she explains.

Her loyal fans have already gotten a taste of both sides of the album. “On Wires” and “After All” were the amuse-bouche of the day half, and “Don’t Leave Me on the Dancefloor” and “Motivation” previewed the night course. She has also been working with creative director Humberto Leon, who has previously worked with Katseye, to define her aesthetic for this era. The new album follows The Loveliest Time, the 2023 companion album to The Loneliest Time, which was released in 2022. In the short three years since her last project, however, her world has exploded.

In October 2025, Jepsen married music producer Cole M.G.N., and she gave birth to Ilya in March 2026. She planned her wedding while writing Day and Night, shot the music video for “On Wires” while pregnant, and has also been working on the music for the 10 Things I Hate About You Broadway musical with her writing partner, Ethan Gruska. Girls creator Lena Dunham and Jessica Huang are writing the book, and Christopher Wheeldon (MJ The Musical, An American in Paris) is directing and choreographing. It will arrive on Broadway in 2027. Jepsen, to put it simply, does not stop.

Below, read all about Jepsen’s upcoming album, her work on 10 Things I Hate About You, and how her relationship to her breakout single, “Call Me Maybe,” has changed over time.

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Why did you decide to make Day and Night a double album?

I didn’t know what I was making at the beginning, but I was really in a good place. I was feeling like I didn’t have too much I needed to prove. I was in a relationship that was feeling exciting and full of potential. I had done some personal growth. I had arrived at a place in my career where I felt more confident and a little bit more empowered. The team and people around me were all wanting to continue that journey. They were like, “How do we help you make the art you want to make?” It had not always been that way.

I didn’t start thinking, I’ll make a double album now because of this. I’m known for “Call Me Maybe,” but long before that, I wrote a lot of folky stuff. I was excited about some things that felt a bit more stripped down, enjoying a little bit of psychedelic ’70s kind of folk. But I didn’t want to give up that joy of getting people to dance. The most confusing thing about that was I really wanted to make something cohesive.

One of my dearest friends in the world, almost like a brother actually, is my guitarist. He came to town here in New York, and we were just going to do some writing. I started to play him stuff and he was just like, “Oh, it’s so different.” I played him the other stuff and he was like, “Oh, I like this too, but it’s so different.” He’s like, “But what if we almost called it the house party, and this is the upstairs, and here’s the downstairs, and there’s different people partying in different areas.”

Then I got the idea when driving in Los Angeles: Day and Night. There was some conversation of like, 24 songs, too many songs. Around the time that I got pregnant, I was like, “Well, they’ll have some stuff to digest when I take a beat with the baby.”

Justin Bieber released two 20-plus-song albums with Swag and Swag II. Why can’t Carly Rae Jepsen?

I think that the important thing to me was to make sure that there was still diversity within the cohesiveness. I wanted nighttime to also have some low moments, because the way I experience night isn’t always raving. It’s mostly a place of deep reflection. If I’m dancing at home alone, that’s like a beautiful night. I wanted an album that I could picture doing that too.

What was it like finishing up this album while pregnant?

I was doing a lot of the mixing. I have some pictures of me pregnant in the studio. I have a pretty intense editing process, polishing, and detailing. That’s where I get a little bit more playful. I go in and I’m like, “What if my niece says ‘peekaboo’ at the end of ‘Motivation’?” My pregnancy was more of the delightful details.

I was not expecting to be pregnant when we shot the music videos, and now I’m kind of delighted. I’m happy to say that, because I was like, “Am I going to regret this? I look like a house.” It actually brings new, weird meaning to those songs, especially “On Wires.” The song is now less about just the seductive power of what you want and going after it. It’s about a deeper conversation on the complexity of what I wanted at the time, which was motherhood, a life outside the career, and a life inside the career. I don’t want to give either thing up. I want to find that balance.

You’re also writing music for the 10 Things I Hate About You musical.

I did not expect all these trains to leave the station at the same time. My joke is that I’m at some point going to write a memoir, and it’ll be called The Year We Did Everything at Once. The funny thing about the musical is it’s been years in the making. The announcements have come and made it more real to the public, but it’s been this ongoing passion project that felt like mostly ours.

Our baby, [Ilya], is the center of all of it. Everything is kind of built around him. He’s already taught me how to slow things down in the chaos of it all, because you can’t do it all at once. So next year will be a bit of wanting to celebrate this album, but then break. My husband signed up for the whole thing with me. This will not be forever. This will probably be a really fun run when the baby’s in this space. Once he’s in school and other things, those things change.

Do you prefer Los Angeles or New York?

I’ve gotten comfortable with the system of L.A. for work at least. If you want to write a song every day and create a session with new people every day, it’s possible. It just feels like that’s the hub where everyone kind of goes to work. Because of that, I think you can also just be permanently working, which is not great for anyone. It’s a little scrappier [in New York]. It doesn’t mean that it’s not possible, but there’s more of a select few people that I know, at least. I think at this time in my life, New York might be good for me to get a bit of a break.

Even last night, it was raining and my husband and I were like, “Let’s bundle up the baby. We’ll go for a walk with the umbrella and go grab gelato, because it’s New York.” And both of us just live differently when we’re here. We are more spontaneous. We’re more romantic. It brings it out in us.

You’re getting your New York moment then next year, when the musical is opening.

My secret, not-so-secret, because I’m about to put it in the print plan, is for Cole to fall in love and then we just move.

You were a musical theater kid and then were in Rogers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella on Broadway in 2014. How has it been returning to that world?

It’s the dream of all dreams. I feel so lucky and so excited. I want to handle with care how much of a cult classic this [10 Things I Hate About You] is. I feel the responsibility to do it justice. Just like any project I take on, it’s all-consuming in some way.

This is a show that is a ’90s pop musical. That is exciting to me because I might have a ’90s song here or there, but I get to commit to that time period. It’s a beautiful, braided story that sort of feels like the only time that you break into song is because the words aren’t doing enough. I’m trying to just honor the characters.

When I first started performing as a child, I remember telling anyone who would listen to me, “I’m going to be a singer.” In college at the Canadian College of Performing Arts, the idea was that you would go to New York after this and hopefully get a job on Broadway. I went there, and that was sort of the year my writing took off, actually. I was accepted into the second year, and I surprised everyone in my family by being like, “I think I need to write music.” They were terrified. They’re like, “She’s going to change her mind in five minutes.” I literally haven’t.

My point in telling that story is I surprised my 7-year-old self, because I thought singing was the best thing ever. Then, I discovered songwriting, and I think it beats it for me. I have wanted to do something like this since I can remember.

It’s also a perfect team. Lena Dunham, Jessica Huang, Ethan Gruska, Christopher Wheeldon. How has it been working with them?

What makes our team so great is we can come to New York, do the workshop, and then go home and do all the writing in his studio there, then come back and present, then make notes, go back, and rinse and repeat. It’s been a very long process, but such an incredible time for [Ethan Gruska and me] both to learn. The two of us have come out of this being like, “Let’s do this for the rest of our lives. This is amazing.” There are not a lot of egos in the room.

Were you a Girls fan?

It’s still the greatest show, maybe of all time. Lena and I know each other from way back. I had always dreamed that one day Lena and I would find something to do together. She’s genius-level funny. Her book…I kind of had my moment of intense fame around the time that it sounds like she had Girls. I’m just like, “You’ve just put to words things that I have never been able to even make sense of in my head, let alone say so beautifully and eloquently.” I had to thank her. Take all my money. It’s like therapy right there.

What were some of the reflections that she had that you share?

I may have lived with a little bit of almost guilt at any success I would have. Almost like, “Oh, sorry. Don’t worry, it has nothing to do with me. I’m just lucky.” There is truth to the fact that it’s like lightning struck, and I was so, so lucky. But the shame or guilt behind it in social situations is definitely something that I didn’t know exactly how to say as well as she had.

Your music has such resonance with the LGBTQ+ community. What does the queer community mean to you?

It’s just the most openhearted, passionate, music-loving, and beautiful community. I feel like it’s actually the gift of my life. You come to a show, and you see other people feeling more accepted to be themselves, making friends, and getting wilder. I have the best vantage of the whole thing. I’m seeing people coming alive and coming into themselves in a really beautiful way. I think that there’s a really cool thing, to feel like you’ve maybe found your people.

I remember your 2023 show that got rained out here in New York, and then you put on a last-minute show at a bar.

That was one of our favorite nights of our lives. I live for spontaneity. We were a song or two in, and it was like, “Get off the stage.” That’s not what we do. I haven’t done my job. I sat back, and everyone’s packing up the gear in the back. I was like, “I have a really wild idea.” My band had been traveling, and they were tired. My crew was tired. Shout-out to them, because I pulled them all into one room before I got to management, and I was like, “I have an idea, but I won’t do it if everyone’s too burnt, but if we could pull off a late-night club show somewhere…I know it’s going to go late because it’s going to do a thing. How do you feel?” Everyone was like, “I’m in.” So I ran out and was like, “Find a club.” My drummer still says that was the most fun he’s ever had at a show. We’re going to have to one day make that a tradition. I’m looking for my next spot like that.

“Call Me Maybe” is approaching its 15th anniversary. Some artists can have a complicated relationship with their biggest hit. How do you feel about that track now?

It’s good right now, but I know what you mean. I don’t think there’s a human being who wouldn’t have burnt out on that song for the amount that I sang it. It was everywhere. I could feel myself fighting what was naturally happening, which was almost this desire to prove something. That’s not the only flavor of what I love to do. Is this going to be the thing that’s required of me to maintain a career? Something a little more playful, cute, and kind of quirky, when I want to explore something with more depth? I didn’t really know what the answer was for that. I almost froze, or my version of freezing, because I’m a workaholic, and I went into Cinderella on Broadway. I didn’t know how to follow that specific thing up.

I also don’t think I was super comfortable with the level of fame that I was at. I don’t know if it would have been super sustainable for me and my personality, which is odd because I was such a little attention seeker as a child. It felt slightly alienating, even from my family. It felt like a weird experience you can only have on your own.

I look at it now as a really nostalgic, fun moment. I also would say, with the crowd that’s coming to my shows, that’s no longer the biggest moment. That in itself is a wild victory to me. I didn’t think that would be possible. I want you to leave satisfied. I want you to have a good time. I’m going to play that song, and I probably am not going to do a weird interpretation. It’s going to take us down memory lane together. It’s also the song I forget the words to.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.