NYLON: ‘La La Land’ Told Through Carly Rae Jepsen’s ‘Emotion’

I have a different, less zeitgeisty story to tell about La La Land, which is a movie I truly wanted to see but held off from seeing after a few friends, whose opinions I genuinely trust, were iffy about it. (La La Land? More like Blah Blah Land, amirite?) Then I saw it and guzzled that Kool-Aid like my life depended on it. “I LOVE LA LA LAND!!!!!!!” I shouted into the void. And do you know what the void did? It whispered back, “Run away with me.”

 

Of course, I thought. Carly Rae Jepsen’s iconic 2015 album, E•MO•TION, featuring the meme-able anthem “Run Away With Me,” is exactly why La La Land is great. It’s bubblegum, surface-level, escapist pop. As Peggy Lee would ask, “Is that all there is?” Yes, Peggy! That is all there is. Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling pluck the audience’s romantic heartstrings just like Jepsen does throughout E•MO•TION’s 12 tracks (18 if you, like any true Jepsen fan would know, have the Japanese bonus edition). They’re hopeful and hopeless, lost and longing, loving and consumed—everything Jepsen’s lyrical content touches on. They live the story Jepsen tells in E•MO•TION. Woah. – HAYDEN MANDERS