When I spoke with Carly Rae Jepsen earlier this year about her love of traveling for FLOOD’s third Passion Issue, she declared Japan to be “a country with my fantasies all wrapped into one beautiful place!” Given its delicately crafted gardens, anime culture, and public transit that actually works, the sentiment is hard to argue with. It was fitting, then, that the musician’s tour, which hit Tokyo earlier this week, played like a fizzy piece of wish fulfillment in a city known for its creative extremes.
Dressed in a colorful fringed dress, Jepsen and her backing band danced through her set at the ornate NHK Hall. FLOOD previously praised Jepsen’s third album Dedicated as being “fun, frivolous, and insightful,” which conveniently doubles as a review of this evening. The sold-out crowd was there for anthems and escapism, both of which were delivered effortlessly.
But Jepsen also peppered the performance with personal reveals. She once dated a boy name Julien, but the glitchy love-sick track of the same name isn’t about him (“He just has a musical name,” she explained sheepishly). And the showstopper confession: she once got so flustered during a break-up that she stole her ex’s bike just to avoid “the talk.”
Even though these confessionals were delivered conspiratorially, confidence was the dominant factor in the singer’s onstage persona. When she played monster hit “Call Me Maybe” early in the evening, the fan favorite felt more like a promise of what was to come than the set apex it might have been in 2012. And when streamers were released during closer “Cut to the Feeling,” it might have felt like kawaii overkill for a lesser artist—but not CRJ. Jepsen has proven there’s no such thing as too much.
See more Carly pics in the gallery below.
