The summer of 2020 was unconventional, but as with every summer for the past four years, by the end, I had three monthly playlists filled with songs – a compilation of old favorites intertwined with new discoveries that left a mark on me this summer. One such discovery that dominated my listening from June through August was Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Run Away With Me”, an energetic pop song that had somehow never crossed my path until this summer.
The song had been introduced to me through a YouTube video entitled “‘Run Away With Me’ by Carly Rae Jepsen: The Best Pop Song of the Century”, by MictheSnare, a music analysis channel. Listening to Nick, the host, go through the song to analyze what makes it creative, complex, and catchy inspired me to listen more closely to the music that I consume and encouraged me to grant Jepsen’s song the elite status of being on my June Spotify playlist.
“Run Away With Me” is a song that I could listen to in any format over the summer, whether I was blasting it while driving with my windows down on one of the few errands that allowed me to leave the house, or in my air pods as I ferociously weeded in my yard. No matter the setting, Jepsen’s energetic song fits perfectly and makes ordinary life a little bit more fun.
Though it is a pop song, “Run Away With Me” avoids the common error of being repetitive and predictable, as Jepsen plays with texture, volume, harmony, and chord resolution. While I may not agree that “Run Away With Me” is the best pop song of the century, it certainly serves as a fantastic example of what pop should be: versatile, purposeful, and never stagnant.