Carly Rae Jepsen has released Day and Night, a 24-track double album that finally gives two sides of her pop writing separate places to live. One half leans toward live instruments, psychedelic pop and daylight warmth; the other heads for synths, basslines and the dance floor.
Released September 18th through School Boy and Interscope Records, the album arrives with “Versailles,” a new single inspired by Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette. Jepsen also released a Kanya Iwana-directed video that turns a Los Angeles party into her imagined version of a night at the palace.
The split is more substantial than sequencing 12 brighter songs before 12 darker ones. Jepsen told Apple Music that her tastes had diverged between organic, live instrumentation and something more nocturnal and synth-based. A double album gave her room to keep both.
After years of releasing companion records from the same prolific writing periods, Day and Night makes that instinct part of the main event. Instead of saving another batch for a later Side B-style release, Jepsen puts the full 24-song argument in one place.
Day and Night Actually Sound Different
Jepsen has built much of her post-“Call Me Maybe” career around highly polished pop, but the first half of Day and Night deliberately loosens that surface.
Day draws from ’60s folk, ’70s psychedelia and a more organic instrumental palette, giving songs such as “After All,” “On Wires” and “Blue Skies” more open space than the tightly programmed synth-pop most closely associated with records like E•MO•TION.
Jepsen described that half as “open-eyed, organic and earthbound.” Night becomes more escapist and intense, replacing much of that daylight warmth with a stronger electronic pulse.
Once “Never Let a Good Thing Die” opens the second disc, bass and synth-driven rhythm move closer to the center. Apple Music hears French house, Italo disco and ABBA moving through Night, sometimes within the same song.
“Don’t Leave Me on the Dance Floor” makes the change particularly obvious. Relationship tension becomes something physical enough to move through, with the song leaning into the dance-pop instincts that the first half largely keeps in reserve.
Instead of making those sounds compete for space on one conventional pop album, Jepsen uses the midpoint as a reset. The second disc does not simply continue the first; it changes the room.
“Versailles” Turns Marie Antoinette Into Modern Pop
“Versailles” sits on Day, but its fantasy is already waiting for daylight to disappear.
Jepsen wrote the song with Noonie Bao, Elias Kapari and Markus Krunegård, with Kapari producing. Universal Music Canada describes it as a frenzied pop confection inspired by Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette and the film’s portrait of excess and pleasure-seeking.
The connection is explicit in Jepsen’s writing. Versailles and Marie Antoinette become shorthand for dressing up, disappearing into a party and stretching the night until ordinary life feels temporarily out of reach.
Kanya Iwana’s video keeps that fantasy one step removed from literal historical cosplay. Rather than shooting at Versailles, the production was filmed in Los Angeles, where Jepsen moves through a modern party while imagining herself inside the French palace.
Rolling Stone Canada notes that the visual follows Jepsen searching for the right party as the Versailles fantasy gradually takes over.
That makes “Versailles” a particularly useful song for understanding the album’s design. It technically belongs to Day, yet its central desire is nightlife: get dressed, go somewhere excessive and keep moving until morning.
Jepsen Finally Made the Double Album She Needed
A 24-song Carly Rae Jepsen album makes more sense when placed beside the way she has released music for the past decade.
E•MO•TION was followed by E•MO•TION Side B. Dedicated eventually produced Dedicated Side B. Then The Loneliest Time was followed by The Loveliest Time, another companion project drawn from the same broad creative period.
Jepsen’s recurring problem has rarely been a shortage of finished songs. More often, it has been deciding how much music one album can reasonably contain.
Day and Night changes the release strategy. The official Interscope tracklist gives each side exactly 12 songs, allowing the organic and electronic material to coexist without pretending they were meant to create one uniform sound.
Speaking with Marie Claire, Jepsen described the album as a particularly authentic reflection of where she is now, with marriage and motherhood entering the emotional landscape of her songwriting.
That shift is significant for a writer whose catalog has often thrived on anticipation: wanting someone, almost getting them, losing them or chasing the feeling again. Day and Night arrives from a different position. Jepsen has found more stability without suddenly losing her appetite for enormous choruses, romantic overstatement or the dance floor.
Giving both sides 12 songs also means there is no inevitable Side B waiting to explain what did not fit. This time, the overflow is the album.
“After All” Changed Meaning While Jepsen Was Living It
“After All,” the opening song on Day, captures Jepsen’s changing perspective unusually well.
She wrote the track before she was engaged and before becoming a mother. By the time its video was filmed, the future imagined inside the song had become her actual life.
“We were married. I was nine months pregnant,” Jepsen told Apple Music, describing what it felt like to revisit the song with her husband present after writing it as an idea rather than a memory.
The timing gives “After All” an unusual relationship with its own lyrics. What began as projection became documentation before the album itself was finished.
Marriage to producer Cole M.G.N. and the birth of their first child earlier this year help explain why domestic happiness appears on the record without turning Jepsen toward quiet singer-songwriter music. Stability changes the subject matter, not her basic attraction to pop scale.
Night makes that especially clear. “Amalfi Coast,” “Patience Power Passion” and “Don’t Leave Me on the Dance Floor” keep pleasure, movement and fantasy firmly inside the picture even as Jepsen writes from a different stage of her life.
Five Songs Map the Album’s Two Sides
With 24 tracks, reproducing the entire sequence without context would make Day and Night look more complicated than it actually is. Five songs provide a clearer map of how Jepsen moves from one side to the other.
- “After All” opens Day from Jepsen’s new personal vantage point, grounding the album in romance that became real while she was still making it.
- “Versailles” keeps the first half bright while already craving the excess and escape associated with nighttime.
- “On Wires” sits firmly inside the more organic world of Day and served as the first major introduction to the album.
- “Don’t Leave Me on the Dance Floor” brings the second disc’s synth-pop and club instincts fully into view.
- “Super Sage” closes Night after the album’s longest stretch of electronic movement, giving the 24-song sequence a more reflective landing.
The full tracklist is available through Interscope’s album listing, where the physical edition is likewise divided into separate Day and Night discs.
That separation is what keeps the album from feeling like one uninterrupted 24-song playlist. Jepsen has effectively built an intermission into the record, allowing listeners to hear the second half as a change in setting rather than another dozen tracks added to the end.
It also gives individual songs permission to move further apart stylistically. “Versailles” does not have to sound like “Don’t Leave Me on the Dance Floor,” because the album’s structure already explains why they occupy different worlds.
All Things Go Gets the First Live Test
The next question is how a double album this deliberately divided works on one stage.
Jepsen is scheduled to perform a special sunset set at New York City’s All Things Go Festival on September 27th, marking her first live performance of the year, Rolling Stone Canada confirms.
No complete Day and Night live set has been announced, leaving the festival appearance to offer the first indication of which songs Jepsen wants to pull forward and how freely she intends to move between the album’s two halves.
A sunset slot is almost suspiciously well matched to the concept. Jepsen will take the stage in the visual space between the two worlds she has spent 24 songs separating: daylight giving way to night.
Day and Night and the “Versailles” video are both out now. The first chance to see how Jepsen brings the new material together arrives September 27th.