Your Candle In The Dark

Carly Rae Jepsen “All That”

The first few times I heard “All That,” including Carly Rae Jepsen’s performance of it on Saturday Night Live, I didn’t realize that the song was co-written by Dev Hynes and Ariel Rechtshaid, so I mostly just interpreted it as a surprisingly accurate simulation of late ‘80s teen pop balladry. (Which is saying something – most contemporary pop that is meant to evoke “the ‘80s” doesn’t specifically sound like anything from that time, and mostly just sounds like right now, which is no bad thing.) But now that I know that it’s Hynes and Rechtshaid, it’s all I hear in the song. Rechtshaid’s influence is a bit more subtle, but if you’ve heard enough of his work you can sense his presence by the atmosphere, and the particular tonality of the instruments. But you can’t unhear the Hynes in this – that dude has an extremely limited melodic palette, and the chorus is basically a slightly altered version of the same hook he’s written for Solange and Sky Ferreira. The melody definitely works here and Jepsen sells the demure vulnerability of the song very well, but it really makes me wonder if Hynes is capable of switching it up even a little bit.

Buy it from Amazon.