That time Carly Rae Jepsen gave us a video with a queer twist—and the gay-for-pay star who still regrets it
Emotion in 2015. Though favorably reviewed, it failed to produce a radio single as successful as her previous record, thus giving us no choice but to stan. (We gays love an underdog, you see.)However, Miss Jepsen was already laying the groundwork with her breakout single, “Call Me Maybe,” which was released 12 years ago this week—on September 20, 2011.Look, you know the song; it was everywhere.
But its ascension stateside was slow and steady. And by the time it began to climb the Billboard chats in the U.S., Jepsen was ready to strike while the iron was hot with a memorable music video.Of course, this wasn’t just any music video: It was one with a clever, gay “twist” ending that made the visuals just as iconic as the track itself, proving that Jepsen was already in dialogue with her LGBTQ+ fans well before many of us were even calling her “mother.”Playing into the song’s lyrics about falling head-over-heels for someone you just met, the video casts Jepsen as a suburban girl who can’t keep her eyes off the hunky boy-next-door (played by Holden Nowell).Total ally that she is, Jepsen’s video finds excuses for the neighbor to take his shirt off while mowing the lawn—in a sweltering slo-mo shot many of us will never forget—and looking all sexy in his tank top while fixing his car.In the final seconds, a lovesick Jepsen goes to write her number down for the guy, and that’s when it happens: He locks eyes with one of her male bandmates instead, and shares his number with him.Pop princess Carly Rae Jepsen clearly knows her audience because her latest music video is chock-full of shirtless dancing men.Honestly, it’s a pretty brilliant subversion of music video tropes, and totally worthy of applause: You could see a lesser person/pop star (or at least their team) wanting to avoid something so blatantly gay—so as not to “alienate” a “mainstream” audience.
But Jepsen did it anyway, just as she was starting to make a name for herself.Almost immediately, we knew this women had our.
