The Loveliest Time

In February 2020, while embarking on The Dedicated Tour, Jepsen began collecting ideas for her sixth studio album. Her creativity was stimulated by the COVID-19 pandemic, prompting her to transform an old office space in her Los Angeles residence into a home studio.[3] The recording sessions for what would become The Loneliest Time produced over 65 B-sides, which Jepsen told her A&R representative that she "could make something of."[4]

In July 2023, nine months after the release of The Loneliest Time, Jepsen confirmed that a "B-side" companion album would be released.[5][6] The singer previously released "B-side" albums Emotion: Side B and Dedicated Side B, which featured songs recorded during sessions for their respective "A-side" albums.[7] In an interview with Variety, Jepsen explained the decision to make another "B-side" album without including it in the album title:[8]

"Since doing this B-sides offering, from Emotion to Dedicated to now, I really leaned into it being one of the most exciting processes for me. The B-sides territory is this expansive world where I can play in all directions. [...] I knew by this time, [when] I made The Loneliest Time that The Loveliest Time was coming. The Loneliest Time Side B just sounds like a downer. It was already quite a weighted thing to call something like The Loneliest Time, but The Loneliest Time Side B, I just couldn't do it."

I didn't want it to just be as simple as a dark and a light. We're not as simple as that as humans. [...] It's more about stepping into the experience of being alive and coming out from that state of hibernation and then loneliness. [...] There are so many flowers in a lot of my images because I like the idea of planting yourself in this clean dirt, and from this, a beautiful growth can happen. I want it to like feel like growth and sound like celebration. Those were the main concepts for me. [...] A lot of the songs were written from a place where I still hadn't met anybody I was that excited about; it was this longing for that. It's been a weird thing of life imitating art because I feel like I've written all these experiences that now in real life I'm getting to have and it’s odd to have it be written first and then kind of happen afterwards.

— Carly Rae Jepsen on The Loveliest Time[9]

The project featured production credits from Rostam Batmanglij and James Ford.[10][11] Batmanglij shared that the material he had contributed was upbeat, tweeting, "The two we did for The Loveliest Time have BPMs—get ready to dance." Jepsen said that the album was "sort of the completion to The Loneliest Time", adding that the songs were inspired by "fantasies" about being able to "travel again and fall madly in love and live life like it's an adventure."[12] The album's lead single "Shy Boy" was released on June 23, 2023.[13]

Professional ratings

Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	79/100[14]
Review scores
Source	Rating
American Songwriter	[15]
Paste	7.8/10[16]
Pitchfork	7.4/10[17]
Slant Magazine	[18]

The Loveliest Time received a score of 79 out of 100 on review aggregator Metacritic based on 8 critics' reviews, indicating "generally favorable" reception.[14]

Kate Solomon of the i called the album "really cohesive, exciting and very, very fun".[19] Steve Erickson of Slant Magazine said the "more joyful, vibrant songs" act as a "sonic and thematic counterpoint" to The Loneliest Time,[18] but claimed that the album is "less consistent" than Jepsen's 2020 release Dedicated Side B. Pitchfork's Harry Tafoya wrote that "where The Loneliest Time was steeped in personal loss and pandemic malaise, The Loveliest is strutting and extroverted, drunk off new love and bracingly direct about desire", calling it "a solid counterpart to its sister album".[17] Upon the album's release, the song "Psychedelic Switch" was featured as Pitchfork's "Best New Track".[20]

Notes

• "Shy Boy" contains an interpolation of "Midas Touch" by Midnight Star, written by Boaz Watson and June Williams.

Musicians

Technical