Latest news with #CanadianIdol
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Slow jams, smash hits and Popeye samples: Carly Rae Jepsen's 20 best songs – ranked!
Carly Rae Jepsen loves to squirrel away killer songs for her now-standard B-side collections. The opener to The Loveliest Time (the companion to 2022's The Loneliest Time) evinces several CRJ trademarks: a love of odd production in the drily funky guitar and playful percussion, breathy falsetto – and obsessive, intense lyrics about being willing to do anything for love. You can plot Jepsen songs on a spectrum of 'laser-eyed intensity' to 'dreamy reverie'. This Kiss, from her first pop album Kiss (after her dreary post-Canadian Idol debut, 2008's Tug of War), epitomises the former, with EDM-era synths that rattle and gleam like arcade machines and a sledgehammer vocal performance about wanting forbidden pleasures. CRJ is a fiend for pure sensation who literally called an album Emotion: often her lyrics skip over any specific object of affection and cut straight to the feeling, as a song later in this list spells out. So when she sings 'he never wants to strip down to his feelings' on this pained ballad from Emotion Side B, you know it's terminal. Anyone who's only ever heard the radioactively perky Call Me Maybe and (wrongly) considers CRJ a one-hit wonder might be stunned to learn that she's elite at genuinely sultry come-ons. No Drug Like Me lives up to its narcotic premise – a risky cliche to sell – with its slinky, muted boogie and Jepsen's gasped promises to 'blossom for you'. Avant garde collaborators love Jepsen, but unlike, say, Caroline Polachek or Charli xcx, she's never made leftfield cool her brand. Those moments feel more like surprise gems in her enjoyably wayward catalogue: All That, made with Ariel Rechtshaid and Dev Hynes, is a sparkling devotional that forms a perfect period trifecta with Sky Ferreira's Everything Is Embarrassing and Solange's Losing You. The verse to Joshua Tree is all sharp, hungry anticipation of – what else – some kind of sensory high. Jepsen makes it worth the wait when the tension breaks into a chorus of rapturous satisfaction, à la Jessie Ware's sultrier disco moments: 'I need it / I feel it,' Jeppo sings, her unusually fragmentary lyrics evoking the strobe-lit half-memories of an ecstatic night out. The cutely funky Boy Problems solidified CRJ's gay icon status – you'll seldom see a crowd yell louder than when she sings, 'Boy problems, who's got 'em?' – and gave the concept a self-aware spin, acknowledging how bored her friends are of hearing about her messy love life. The sing-songy chorus sends up her predicament and is totally addictive. Intended for Jepsen's scrapped second album Curiosity, Tiny Little Bows got a glow-up from its coffee shop-pop demo to the machine-tooled whirling strings and snapping bass of its incarnation on Kiss. The lyric about chasing Cupid and his dinky arrow makes little sense (how do you think it goes with those tiny little bows? Err, fiddly?) yet hits like the best of Scandi-pop nonsense. CRJ had failed to clear this song's sample of He Needs Me, from Disney's 1980 Popeye film. So, naturally, she went to Disneyland and got Mickey Mouse to sign a fake contract approving it, then sent it to the publishers: 'The big star boss says it's OK.' They relented, and thank god, otherwise this slice of flirty madness, with its chorus that ascends like a starlet climbing a light-up staircase on a TV special, would never have existed. ''Cause I want what I want / Do you think that I want too much?' could be the Jeppo MO. On Gimmie Love, she lunges for, then suddenly withdraws from her crush, scared by the enormity of the feeling. It echoes within the cavernous, bass-wobbling production, offset by her effervescent vocals – and a determined cheerleader chant pivot in the middle eight. No stranger to gothic intensity, Jepsen sings that she's 'forever haunted by our time' on this sleek, sumptuous recollection of a formative romance. It was originally written for a scrapped disco album, its cool bass and enveloping sparkle hinting at a student of the French touch sound. The Sound offers a rarity in the Jeppo catalogue: unequivocal exasperation, anger flashing as she rebukes an unpredictable lover. 'Love is more than telling me you want it,' she sings over an abrupt beat, craving – once again – the feeling. The tender piano in the verses drives home what she's missing. Not to accuse co-producer Jack Antonoff of recycling, but this song's bass/percussion intro very much recalls his work on Lorde's Hard Feelings/Loveless. Anyway, it sets up a fantastically feral CRJ moment: 'I wanna do bad things to you!' she rhapsodises, with teeth-baring pep to rival early Madonna and robotic zip out of the Daft Punk playbook. Jepsen's lead singles have sometimes failed to recreate former glories: see Call Me Maybe redux I Really Like You, a red herring for the depth of Emotion. But for the first taste of The Loneliest Time, she ditched her bangers-first approach for this gorgeous, dusky Rostam collab, a pandemic rumination on memory. Charli has form for drawing out unexpected sides of well-known artists, and the first taste of mixtape Pop 2 showed off an unusually, captivatingly desolate CRJ. The pair spun a tale of powerless self-sabotage in relationships, their Auto-Tuned voices fluttering 'all alone, all alone, all alone' over AG Cook and Easyfun's tweaky ghost-in-the-machine ballad. Jepsen may be as good a successor to Kylie as we've ever had: a beloved, benign pop presence with an endless thirst for cheeky disco. Shy Boy is Minogue-worthy: a commanding, tart invitation to the dancefloor, although CRJ fabulously overplays her hand in a wordy bridge that reveals just how frazzled desire has left her. One billion times better than a song written for an animated kids' film about a ballerina should be, Cut to the Feeling is raw Jepsen ID: she's sticking her hand straight in the socket of desire, and conducting it through the rowdy, euphoric chorus, written at peak leaping-around tempo. It's basically Run Away with Me 2.0, but this is a song about overcoming reason, so just give in to it. The first time I heard Call Me Maybe I thought it 'wasn't that catchy'. Like biting into a chilli and declaring it 'not very spicy', only to be left weeping and demanding pints of milk, its delirious strings, pogoing beat and Carly's nuclear-force yet endearingly innocent crush got the better of me. And rightly so. Emotion arrived a year after Taylor Swift's 1989, the latter laden with lyrical Easter eggs that clearly identified her songs' subjects. Emotion hit certain listeners hard because it felt so free from subtext, hungering instead for BIG FEELINGS shot straight to the heart. The brazen sax and 'oh-oh-whoa / OH-OH WHOA!' of RAWM are a direct hit. The moment a crush becomes reality is rare and beautiful. Often, it simply never happens. If it does turn into a relationship, that moment of tingling anticipation can still only happen once. Here, Jepsen and Rostam precisely capture the feverishness of finally being so close to someone's face, you can feel their breath. Their subtle rapture softens the arpeggiated judder of Robyn's Call Your Girlfriend into a beat that rushes like adrenaline, the song's body heat contrasting the parched desperation in Jepsen's voice. It skips the cathartic peak of many of her hits to circle this precious feeling, willing it to last as long as possible.
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Slow jams, smash hits and Popeye samples: Carly Rae Jepsen's 20 best songs – ranked!
Carly Rae Jepsen loves to squirrel away killer songs for her now-standard B-side collections. The opener to The Loveliest Time (the companion to 2022's The Loneliest Time) evinces several CRJ trademarks: a love of odd production in the drily funky guitar and playful percussion, breathy falsetto – and obsessive, intense lyrics about being willing to do anything for love. You can plot Jepsen songs on a spectrum of 'laser-eyed intensity' to 'dreamy reverie'. This Kiss, from her first pop album Kiss (after her dreary post-Canadian Idol debut, 2008's Tug of War), epitomises the former, with EDM-era synths that rattle and gleam like arcade machines and a sledgehammer vocal performance about wanting forbidden pleasures. CRJ is a fiend for pure sensation who literally called an album Emotion: often her lyrics skip over any specific object of affection and cut straight to the feeling, as a song later in this list spells out. So when she sings 'he never wants to strip down to his feelings' on this pained ballad from Emotion Side B, you know it's terminal. Anyone who's only ever heard the radioactively perky Call Me Maybe and (wrongly) considers CRJ a one-hit wonder might be stunned to learn that she's elite at genuinely sultry come-ons. No Drug Like Me lives up to its narcotic premise – a risky cliche to sell – with its slinky, muted boogie and Jepsen's gasped promises to 'blossom for you'. Avant garde collaborators love Jepsen, but unlike, say, Caroline Polachek or Charli xcx, she's never made leftfield cool her brand. Those moments feel more like surprise gems in her enjoyably wayward catalogue: All That, made with Ariel Rechtshaid and Dev Hynes, is a sparkling devotional that forms a perfect period trifecta with Sky Ferreira's Everything Is Embarrassing and Solange's Losing You. The verse to Joshua Tree is all sharp, hungry anticipation of – what else – some kind of sensory high. Jepsen makes it worth the wait when the tension breaks into a chorus of rapturous satisfaction, à la Jessie Ware's sultrier disco moments: 'I need it / I feel it,' Jeppo sings, her unusually fragmentary lyrics evoking the strobe-lit half-memories of an ecstatic night out. The cutely funky Boy Problems solidified CRJ's gay icon status – you'll seldom see a crowd yell louder than when she sings, 'Boy problems, who's got 'em?' – and gave the concept a self-aware spin, acknowledging how bored her friends are of hearing about her messy love life. The sing-songy chorus sends up her predicament and is totally addictive. Intended for Jepsen's scrapped second album Curiosity, Tiny Little Bows got a glow-up from its coffee shop-pop demo to the machine-tooled whirling strings and snapping bass of its incarnation on Kiss. The lyric about chasing Cupid and his dinky arrow makes little sense (how do you think it goes with those tiny little bows? Err, fiddly?) yet hits like the best of Scandi-pop nonsense. CRJ had failed to clear this song's sample of He Needs Me, from Disney's 1980 Popeye film. So, naturally, she went to Disneyland and got Mickey Mouse to sign a fake contract approving it, then sent it to the publishers: 'The big star boss says it's OK.' They relented, and thank god, otherwise this slice of flirty madness, with its chorus that ascends like a starlet climbing a light-up staircase on a TV special, would never have existed. ''Cause I want what I want / Do you think that I want too much?' could be the Jeppo MO. On Gimmie Love, she lunges for, then suddenly withdraws from her crush, scared by the enormity of the feeling. It echoes within the cavernous, bass-wobbling production, offset by her effervescent vocals – and a determined cheerleader chant pivot in the middle eight. No stranger to gothic intensity, Jepsen sings that she's 'forever haunted by our time' on this sleek, sumptuous recollection of a formative romance. It was originally written for a scrapped disco album, its cool bass and enveloping sparkle hinting at a student of the French touch sound. The Sound offers a rarity in the Jeppo catalogue: unequivocal exasperation, anger flashing as she rebukes an unpredictable lover. 'Love is more than telling me you want it,' she sings over an abrupt beat, craving – once again – the feeling. The tender piano in the verses drives home what she's missing. Not to accuse co-producer Jack Antonoff of recycling, but this song's bass/percussion intro very much recalls his work on Lorde's Hard Feelings/Loveless. Anyway, it sets up a fantastically feral CRJ moment: 'I wanna do bad things to you!' she rhapsodises, with teeth-baring pep to rival early Madonna and robotic zip out of the Daft Punk playbook. Jepsen's lead singles have sometimes failed to recreate former glories: see Call Me Maybe redux I Really Like You, a red herring for the depth of Emotion. But for the first taste of The Loneliest Time, she ditched her bangers-first approach for this gorgeous, dusky Rostam collab, a pandemic rumination on memory. Charli has form for drawing out unexpected sides of well-known artists, and the first taste of mixtape Pop 2 showed off an unusually, captivatingly desolate CRJ. The pair spun a tale of powerless self-sabotage in relationships, their Auto-Tuned voices fluttering 'all alone, all alone, all alone' over AG Cook and Easyfun's tweaky ghost-in-the-machine ballad. Jepsen may be as good a successor to Kylie as we've ever had: a beloved, benign pop presence with an endless thirst for cheeky disco. Shy Boy is Minogue-worthy: a commanding, tart invitation to the dancefloor, although CRJ fabulously overplays her hand in a wordy bridge that reveals just how frazzled desire has left her. One billion times better than a song written for an animated kids' film about a ballerina should be, Cut to the Feeling is raw Jepsen ID: she's sticking her hand straight in the socket of desire, and conducting it through the rowdy, euphoric chorus, written at peak leaping-around tempo. It's basically Run Away with Me 2.0, but this is a song about overcoming reason, so just give in to it. The first time I heard Call Me Maybe I thought it 'wasn't that catchy'. Like biting into a chilli and declaring it 'not very spicy', only to be left weeping and demanding pints of milk, its delirious strings, pogoing beat and Carly's nuclear-force yet endearingly innocent crush got the better of me. And rightly so. Emotion arrived a year after Taylor Swift's 1989, the latter laden with lyrical Easter eggs that clearly identified her songs' subjects. Emotion hit certain listeners hard because it felt so free from subtext, hungering instead for BIG FEELINGS shot straight to the heart. The brazen sax and 'oh-oh-whoa / OH-OH WHOA!' of RAWM are a direct hit. The moment a crush becomes reality is rare and beautiful. Often, it simply never happens. If it does turn into a relationship, that moment of tingling anticipation can still only happen once. Here, Jepsen and Rostam precisely capture the feverishness of finally being so close to someone's face, you can feel their breath. Their subtle rapture softens the arpeggiated judder of Robyn's Call Your Girlfriend into a beat that rushes like adrenaline, the song's body heat contrasting the parched desperation in Jepsen's voice. It skips the cathartic peak of many of her hits to circle this precious feeling, willing it to last as long as possible.
Buzz Feed
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Buzz Feed
16 People Who Went To School With Celebs Or Rich Kids
We recently asked people of the BuzzFeed Community who attended school with wealthy or famous classmates to tell us their stories and what it was like. Here are their fascinating — and shocking — stories: "Went to high school with Brendon Urie of Panic! At the Disco. I was a senior, and he was a sophomore. I entered the band room during one of my off periods, and the guitar class was going on. Brendon was at the front, and the teacher was in his office. I had a good relationship with that teacher, so I sat in his office, motioned to the class, and asked, 'What's up with that?' And he answered, 'Oh, that kid can play guitar waaaay better than I can, so I let him teach it.'" "A politician who is now a famous and popular TV news show host was a grade ahead of me in late elementary school and early junior high. In 6th grade choir, he got a solo song to sing, 'An Apple For the Teacher.' He walked around singing with an apple in his hand; it was charming, and at the end, he gave it to his teacher, known as one of the mean ones. I emailed him through his show asking if he remembered it, but I never got a reply." "I went to Columbia University for graduate school, and most of my classmates were rich. Most of them were lovely people, and money wouldn't come up in class so much, but it was usually in nonchalant conversations and outings that I noticed a difference. For instance, when we'd go book shopping, my rich classmates would drop hundreds of dollars at the bookstore (we were all in a writing MFA program) and leave with a huge stack (mind you, these weren't required reading books; just books for fun). Whereas, I was constantly budgeting and living on my own with no help, so I would buy one or two (cheap!) books." "I went to a wealthy school district where many students were rich and acted entitled. One of my favorite instances of entitlement was when a group of boys in the back of my class were talking about their cars. One boy complained about how his mother refused to repair his Porsche because it was the third time he'd crashed it, and now, he had to cover the money for repairs and take his dad's car to school until he made up the money. He said his dad's car was terrible, and he didn't want to drive it every day. His dad's car was a BMW." "I went to high school with a contestant of Canadian Idol who won seventh place one season. I started at that high school the year he returned from Idol, and he was an absolute horror. He would literally approach teachers and ask, 'Do you KNOW who I AM?' when he got poor grades. He would stand in the lunch line commenting that he should have priority and that everyone in front of him should die, and he and his friends would constantly bully younger students." "In grade school, I had a classmate who would go to Italy every summer and then to Ireland for a month during the school year. He had a giant house that had almost seven bedrooms. And on top of that, we had uniforms at school, but he would always wear designer clothes on the days we didn't. He always had the newest game consoles and the flashiest things, but he'd swear up and down that he simply couldn't be rich. And this was similar to almost 80% of my school's student body." "In my first year of college, my dorm room was kitty-corner to Jordan Poole, who's now in the NBA, and fellow basketball star, Isaiah Livers. They mostly kept to themselves, but they had a habit of screaming at their video games at all hours of the night. They were right next to a stairwell, too, so it would echo onto different floors. Our RA repeatedly complained about them, but since they were varsity athletes, there wasn't much he could do. So it goes." "I went to a private elementary school where most of the kids came from parents who were either politicians, multi-millionaires, or both. Something that always surprised me was the extravagant birthday parties. Limos or party buses were typically rented out for the parties, and the parties usually had a surplus of food. I went to one party where they rented out an entire football stadium just for their son's 5th birthday. " "I grew up in the same friend group as the guys in Coheed and Cambria. Claudio and Travis were the sweetest, most down-to-earth, and genuine people I've known. I used to go to all their local shows when they were called Shabütie. Although I was just an acquaintance, I'm so happy for them and their success, and I love their music." "I go to a private school, and there was a girl whose family owned many different restaurants, and she was super rich. She had a whole lake in her backyard and a private jet, but you would never know she was rich until you went to her house because she would shop at thrift stores, bring barely any lunch, and just didn't act like it." "I had a child in my class whose dad was an NFL player. He picked them up whenever he wanted, including regularly over two hours late. But the day after, he'd bring food for the entire staff. I'd rather he'd just pick his kid up." "This girl pulled up to school on the first day of junior year in a Bentley convertible. First time I ever saw one in person. It was the closest I've ever gotten to a six-figure car." "I was diagnosed with autism and OCD at a young age. My parents enrolled me in private schools for people with disabilities throughout all of my schooling years. They could hardly afford it and often had to get financial help, but they also knew how badly the public school system would treat me. One school I went to was particularly wealthy, and all of the students had some form of neurological disability. A surprisingly high number of them were adopted. I remember visiting a student I became friends with and having to tell his mansion's private security, who seemed to have no understanding of communication difficulties, who I was so that I could be let in. Another had a private movie theater in his house with an elevator leading to it." "Went to a basic suburban Catholic high school but had rich classmates. I once watched a kid reach into his pocket to check his then-top-of-the-line iPhone 5, and a $20 bill floated to the ground along with it when he pulled the phone out. Kid glanced down, shrugged, checked his phone, and walked away. Fastest $20 I ever made. I was on scholarship there, if anyone cares." "When I was at school, there was this girl who had just moved to the country, and we became really close friends. For my birthday, she bought actual Dior! Her parents bought her Chanel perfumes and clothes whenever she wanted. It was actually wild whilst I was happy with my weekly allowance to go to the canteen lol." And finally... "I actually went to school with both — a private high school was the perfect breeding ground for rich and famous jerks. I knew this really smart kid who was well off, but he wasn't a showoff. He wore thrifted clothes and didn't have a mattress frame (his choice), but he LOVED tanks. He and his father went to an auction where their budget for a tank was $20,000. Another kid is a well-known YouTuber who quit his job because he got more money a week from views than his paycheck. Both are sweet boys, but sometimes, they said the most shocking things." Verrry interesting. If you went to high school or college with the wealthy or famous, what was your experience like? Tell us in the comments, or if you prefer to remain anonymous, you can use the form below.
CTV News
05-06-2025
- Entertainment
- CTV News
Actor Melissa O'Neil talks 'The Rookie' season eight and reflects on her 'Canadian Idol' win
Video At the Bell Media upfronts, actor Melissa O'Neil chats with CTV's Jee-Yun Lee about The Rookie's eighth season, and her 2005 Canadian Idol win.
USA Today
29-05-2025
- Entertainment
- USA Today
Explaining The Rehearsal's season 2, a show that defies explanation
Explaining The Rehearsal's season 2, a show that defies explanation Nathan Fielder opened season two of The Rehearsal with a premise. After studying aviation accidents (relatable to anyone who Wikipedia wormholes their way through a bunch of crashes a few times per year because my brain is broken in that one specific way), he came to the conclusion several are the result of ineffective cockpit communication. The pilot makes an error. The co-pilot doesn't correct. Disaster ensues. While this is a minor slice of plane crashes, which are a truly minor slice of air travel, Fielder made this the sticking point of the latest season of his HBO docu-comedy. After spending season one documenting social situations and, ultimately, the connections and communication of parenting, season two appeared to take a more serious bent. Except, well, it's Nathan Fielder -- a comedian whose portfolio is rooted in escalating ridiculous situations in search of answers instead of quiet reflection. And, yep, that's what we get. Fielder's first step was to observe pilots from a wide range of employers (though all with the common denominator of signing up for an HBO show). He determined they don't make personal connections, leaving barriers between them fueled by the uneven status of a co-pilot and pilot. He does this with the aid of a full-size replica of roughly four gates worth of Houston's Bush International Airport. Is this vital? Nope! Is it a great visual? Absolutely. Fielder's plan to get these pilots better attuned to delivering harsh news in tough situations dialed in to his former experience working behind the scenes at Canadian Idol, a show that's exactly what you're picturing. He devised Wings of Voice, a pilot-judged (and fake) singing competition to sharpen his pilots' ability to deliver bad news. He interjected in one devastatingly shy pilot's personal life to help him pick up on cues that a potential love interest is giving him the green light. He worked on ways to role play scenarios to make cockpit communication better and examined his own inability to connect sympathetically with contestants to whom he delivered bad news (this does not include the one disgruntled contestant who'd later complain about the farce, allegedly because HBO declined to promote their album). Despite that, he found himself unable to bring his developments in front of Congress, even with the backing of former National Transportation Safety Board executive John Goglia. This led to a (neuro)divergent path. Sometime after Season 1, online communities of autistic people began praising season one of The Rehearsal for accurately depicting masking -- running through and going along with social situations even when they aren't fully understood in an effort to suppress autistic traits. Fielder used this connection to meet with Center for Autism and Related Disorders (CARD) founder Dr. Doreen Granpeesheh, eventually joining the Center's board and opening up the use of his airport set for practice purposes for autistic people. It also shed light on Fielder's potential autism diagnosis -- though whether that's legitimate or merely something ginned up to make compelling television is one of Fielder's mysteries. Fielder's work with CARD opened the door for a meeting with U.S. Representative Steve Cohen (D-Tennessee) -- senior member of the Subcommittee on Transportation and Infrastructure to discuss his research into cockpit communication. But whether by accident or design, Fielder stumbled through the meeting with little success. It was time for Plan B, which may have been Plan A all along. The final episode of the season revealed Fielder had spent two arduous years training for and receiving his pilot's license. He was certified to fly 737s -- though not commercially with paying passengers. The actors who've been studying his method since the first season and throughout the second instead played the role of travelers for a two-plus hour flight from California, into Nevada, and then back to the West Coast. One of the pilots who'd expressed an interest in producing television served as his co-pilot, leaving him with a barrier for criticism -- Fielder could squash his hopes of moving his content to a more visible medium. Ultimately, the two shared a stilted conversation in the cockpit that eventually allowed the co-pilot to raise some minor concerns. And, because we didn't hear about a disaster on a private airstrip where hundreds perished as a gag, Fielder landed the plane without issue. (Oh, and at one point Fielder tried to replicate the lives of three cloned dogs in order to see if he could systematically instill the traits of a good pilot into a new generation of fliers. Scant evidence of that led him to speedrun through Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger's life. He shaved his entire body and breastfed from an enormous puppet of the heroic pilot's mom, simulated a midwestern upbringing and got aroused in the cockpit of a (simulated) flight. Ultimately, Fielder (cribbing from Sullenberger's autobiography) came to the conclusion an iPod and an Evanescence song -- whose chorus is coincidentally the exact length of radio silence following the bird strike that preceded his miracle landing on New York City's Hudson River -- awakened Sully's ability to communicate and served as his therapy, allowing him to save the lives of his passengers that fateful chilly day. It's a lovely, weird sentiment, albeit one almost certainly unmoored from reality.) Ultimately, that tenuous connection to the world itself can apply to most things from season two. What is not fake is Fielder's flying credentials; some of the last moments of the season show him working for a company that relocates 737s to new homes, shedding light on why more than 100 actors would put their lives in the hands of a man who, before 2024, was perhaps best known for creating Dumb Starbucks and creating a line of outdoorswear that doubled as Holocaust education efforts (another sore point in season two, as Fielder rehearses a meeting with Paramount Plus executives, who have scrubbed that episode from their streaming service). Fielder wrapped the season staring down a voicemail from a doctor who wanted to discuss the results of an fMRI test that could shed light on a potential autism diagnosis. He deletes it while watching the winner of his fake singing competition belt out Evanescence's Bring Me to Life. He concludes 'only the smartest and best people are allowed to fly planes of this size. It feels good to know that if you're here, you must be fine.'
