I thought: what more could I want out of a Sunday night? But apparently, most Cornell students had plenty of preferable ideas. At 7:45 p.m., only 15 minutes before the scheduled start of Jepsen’s show, Barton Hall housed an awkwardly small number of young families, adolescent girls in Carly Rae Jepsen–tour T-shirts, and college students dressed for clubbing. The already-floundering setting only suffered further from the thick fog that drifted from the stage area and wandered around the room as lethargically as the fans. I ran into Sveta Reddy ’18 and Zoe Wilkie-Tomasik ’18 around this time, both of whom felt just as uncomfortable as I. “I feel so bad for [Carly]!” Sveta exclaimed. “I hope more people come!”
I’m not sure if significantly more people did show up or if the crowd’s emaciation simply became less noticeable when the lights turned off, but by the time St. Lucia took the stage as the opening act, the atmosphere felt much more like that of an upbeat concert. An indie-pop band in geometric button downs and colorful lights, St. Lucia got right down to business with buoyant tunes sounding like a mix between Walk the Moon’s dance-rock and 1985’s “The Breakfast Club” soundtrack. I mostly enjoyed the percussion jams in the middle of some of their songs, which, when accompanied by a dramatic sort of laser light show, really helped hype the room’s collective energy. I was more impressed with the band’s stage presence than the quality of their music, though: lead singer Jean-Philip Grobler used an enormous fan at his feet to keep his uncut hair dramatically blowing, and at one point, laid flat on the ground and bicycled his feet to the rhythm. For the most part, the band was having a blast, so everyone else was too.
Finally, Carly Rae Jepsen walked out onto the stage to the chilling Cruella de Vil theme song, dressed like the exploitative Disney villain in heels, long gloves, and a fur coat. Her band members followed, dressed as dalmatians. At first I was a bit repelled by the charade—my mom, a diehard animal lover, has always told me that Cruella is the worst Disney villain of them all—but soon her bubbly personality set all straight. Jepsen explained that they had missed Halloween on the plane the previous night, and they were just “living Halloween.” Behind her, her bandmates nodded as enthusiastically and obediently as puppies.
Without a doubt, Jepsen’s new pop album Emotion is depressingly synthetic, relying on the same dance beat and artless lyrics to enthuse large crowds. Without being familiar with many of the songs, it was easy to fade into the dancing waves of people around me and forget to appreciate the vivacity of live music. Especially with popular crowd favorites like “Good Time” and “Call Me Maybe,” Jepsen’s familiar appeal as a look-good feel-good-singalong-star hit full force. If nothing else, she held her stake as an entertainer fairly well.
I maintain that Carly Rae Jepsen concert-goers don’t go to hear artful live performances of quality songs, but to feel the same brightly-lit, rhythmic thrill that be found in any closely-packed venue with loud dance music playing from an iPod. I don’t necessarily think there’s anything wrong with this. I think it is an attitude that has evolved with young people’s new tendencies to develop physical rather than intellectual relationships with music; I believe there is room for both. At this particular concert, my personal opinion of a song as a piece of art did not affect its ability to physically move me: to manifest its beat in my chest and feet, to make me want to sway and dance. Every piece of consumer art serves its own purpose.
After the climactic rain of gold and silver streamers during “I Really Like You,” lights abruptly flicked on and Jepsen and her crew waved charismatically, strutting out of sight. I was left blinking, my ears ringing. Barton Hall emptied much more quickly than it had filled three hours before.