It’s been a long wait for Carly Rae Jepsen‘s solo follow-up to “Call Me Maybe” (her duet with Owl City on “Good Time” notwithstanding), and the video for her new single “This Kiss” has finally premiered. So does it deliver on the anticipation? Yeah — sort of!
The J-poppy, arcade synths that comprise the instrumentation of “This Kiss” would have suggested (to us, anyway) that a hyper-vibrant visual style would have made sense, but instead, “This Kiss” is mostly shot through a dark, charcoal glaze, with lots of shots of dark, crowded dancefloors and Jepsen’s smoky makeup. It still feels ’80s — the clothes give that away — but aesthetically, the video doesn’t totally translate for us. Although we’re probably just bitter than we missed yet another killer party with a game of Suck & Blow.
“This Kiss” is crowded with too-long shots of Jepsen performing in the center of a club space, and the other ideas at play here — Jepsen with her friends in retro outfits, a modelesque dreamboat with ’90s blond hair, weird photo-booth set-ups and a psychedelically-hued underwater kiss — don’t feel fully explored.
Then again, given how “This Kiss” has flatlined on the charts — it’s a deliciously infectious track, but not an obvious hit — Jepsen may do better to scrap the whole campaign and push out a song like her Max Martin-penned “Tonight I’m Getting Over You” as a single. At this point, she needs a surefire global smash, and not just maybe.
Are you loving “This Kiss”? Head over to Directlyrics.com to read the song’s full lyrics, then sound off in the comments, and on Facebook and Twitter, to tell us what you think of the video!
I love this song. I think it has “flatined” thus far because “Call Me Maybe” has yet to completely go away and “Good Time” is still going strong (though I think this song is way better). I’d said give it time. I feel like it will eventually catch on much like Selena Gomez’s ” Love You Like A Love Song” and Demi Lovato’s “Give Your Heart a Break” grew into steady hits.
Hopefully this song will get people to buy her album…it’s actually a pretty solid pop album.
Honestly would rather not have another mediocre pop star out in the world. Yes “Call Me Maybe” was catchy and the video was cute, but how many videos of a girl walking around singing a cutesy song…rehashing old ideas do we need. I miss when pop stars actually danced. It was refreshing to see Rihanna try in Where have you been. Katy Perry and countless others are boring with their mediocre pop tunes walking around being “cute”. Carly Rae is just another boring pop star.