The Canadian singer-songwriter announced her pregnancy Monday in an Instagram post, sharing a few black-and-white photos of the couple and Jepsen’s baby bump that hint there may be some kicking going on.
“Oh hi baby,” Jepsen, 39, wrote in the caption along with a heart emoji. Her 40-year-old husband, whose full name is Cole Marsden Greif-Neill, is feeling so much love and excitement that he has been rendered speechless, if the multiple heart-eyes emojis are any indication.
According to the couple’s wedding spread in Vogue, Jepsen and the Grammy Award-winning producer tied the knot in October, and the couple had been trying to get pregnant while planning their New York wedding. The musicians first met as colleagues in 2021 and started dating in 2022 before getting getting engaged in September of last year.
In 2023, Jepsen told People that their first collaboration, the song “So Right” from her album “The Loveliest Time,” was in essence the couple’s “meet-cute.”
“This is our first little baby out in the world,” Jepsen told the outlet at the time. “I think you’ll see a lot more of our collaboration together for future projects.”
Known for her earworm 2012 hit “Call Me Maybe,” Jepsen most recently celebrated the 10th anniversary of the release of “Emotion” with a sold-out show at the Troubadour, where she performed the entirety of the 2015 album.
“‘Emotion’ was like an introduction to my authentic version of what pop music was,” Jepsen said of the LP in 2020. “I was itching to share something different, because I knew that ‘Call Me Maybe’ wasn’t the only color of what I had to offer.”
Almost 10 years to the day after a show at the Troubadour that marked the release of her album “Emotion,” Carly Rae Jepsen brought the 2015 LP back to the same West Hollywood club on Tuesday night for a sold-out one-off gig in which she played “Emotion” from beginning to end. The follow-up to Jepsen’s un-follow-uppable 2012 smash “Call Me Maybe,” “Emotion” wasn’t exactly the hit the singer and her team were hoping for. Yet over time, the album — which Jepsen made with a host of hip producers and songwriters including Rostam, Ariel Rechtshaid and Blood Orange’s Dev Hynes — became a cult favorite beloved for its squirmy ’80s R&B grooves and its tone of unabashed yearning. “We are blown away,” Jepsen, 39, said as the crowd loudly welcomed her and her band to the stage. Here are nine highlights from the show:
1. You knew the audience was in Jepsen’s pocket when, even before she came out, fans cheered the sight of a stagehand gripping a saxophone — the instrument whose silky wail opens “Emotion” like a siren call for unrequited lovers.
2. One of Jepsen’s most effective tricks as a pop sort-of-star is the modesty of her presentation, which lends a crucial believability to her many songs about feeling overwhelmed. Here, for instance, she used an electric fan — but a very small one — to blow her hair around just a little during “I Really Like You.”
3. After “Making the Most of the Night” — which, according to the internet, she hadn’t played live since 2018 — Jepsen talked about moving to Los Angeles from her native Canada when she was 26. “I had brought a little suitcase, and I kept calling my parents and saying, ‘Send more clothes!’” she said. “Five years later, I was like, I think I live here now. I’m very happy to say L.A. has become my home.”
Carly Rae Jepsen sang her 2015 album “Emotion” from beginning to end.
(Jasmine Safaeian)
4. In 2015, Jepsen’s celebrity guests at the Troubadour included Lorde and Tom Hanks, the latter of whom starred for some reason in the video for “I Really Like You.” This time, her mom and dad sat proudly in the balcony, shooting videos on their phones.
5. Can we give the bass player some love? Bobby Wooten III might have been Jepsen’s secret weapon on Tuesday, not least in the stretch from “Gimmie Love” to “All That” to “Boy Problems,” where his chewy pop-funk licks gave the music real bite.
6. “When I Needed You” climaxed with a moving a cappella singalong that had virtually the entire crowd belting Jepsen’s lines about discovering how far is too far to go to accommodate a selfish partner. (Say this for Jepsen’s faithful: They’ve got impeccable pitch.) The moment had big Robyn-fans-in-the-subway energy.
7. Jepsen famously said at the time of “Emotion’s” release that she’d written something like 200 songs for the album. “I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, so for me the only solution was to keep writing, and hopefully that would lead to something,” she told me that year. “It was a purpose, a hunger.” In 2016, she dropped eight of her outtakes on an EP called “Emotion: Side B,” and here she revealed that she’ll release half a dozen more — “C-sides,” she called them — on a 10th anniversary reissue of “Emotion” due in October. It’s hard to think of another artist who’s made such a deep vault of a single LP.
8. The strangest song Jepsen has ever written, according to Jepsen: “Store,” the improbably exuberant bop about grocery shopping that she sang at the Troubadour while two-stepping down an imaginary frozen foods aisle.
9. Tuesday’s show ended with Jepsen’s traditional closer, “Cut to the Feeling,” yet another “Emotion” outtake that’s taken on a second life as the subject of a durable internet joke about swords. (Say this for Jepsen’s faithful: They have memes.) Before that, though, she inevitably reached back for “Call Me Maybe,” delivering the song while pulling daffy faces that made her look like the star of some forgotten ’30s screwball comedy. “Before you came into my life, I missed you so bad,” she sang — still an all-timer of a pop lyric.
Thanks to breakout singles like “Diet Pepsi” and to praise from the likes of Charli XCX and Lana Del Rey, Addison Rae is considered by many prognosticators to be in the mix for a best new artist nomination at next year’s 68th Grammy Awards.
Now the 24-year-old singer could help determine the results of the ceremony as well.
The Recording Academy on Wednesday said that it’s invited nearly 3,600 music professionals to become members of the organization behind music’s most prestigious awards ceremony — among them the former TikTok star who’s become a major pop presence in the last 12 months or so.
In addition to Rae, the academy extended invites to the rapper Joey Badass, the singer Mariah the Scientist, the comedian Nikki Glaser and the members of the K-pop-style girl group Katseye and the regional Mexican music band Grupo Firme.
In a statement, Rae called the invitation “a huge honor” and said she’s “so lucky to be surrounded by talent and poise that inspires me to create fearlessly.” Added Glaser: “This is the greatest thing the Grammys have given me since the half of Benson Boone’s tuxedo I kept” after February’s show.
Of the 3,600 new invitees, approximately 2,600 (including the aforementioned artists) are being offered voting membership in the academy. The group currently has around 13,000 members who vote on the Grammys; last year, Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. told The Times that in addition to adding new members — part of a broader effort to diversify an electorate long criticized for being too old, too male and too white — the group was shedding voters that no longer met the organization’s qualifications for membership.
As an example, Mason described “voters that maybe had a hit record or a song published in the ’70s or ’80s and just kept voting.” His goal, he added, was a voting body composed of “relevant music people.”
In its statement, the academy said that 49% of the new invitees are women, 56% are people of color and 60% are people under the age of 40. Those invited have until July 31 to accept the invitation in order to take part in next year’s ceremony. First-round voting for the 68th Grammys (in which nominations are determined) opens Oct. 3; the show itself will take place Feb. 1 at Crypto.com Arena in downtown Los Angeles.
An image obtained by The Sun shows Dan locked in conversation with the stunning brunette, who he chatted to for 15 minutes after the pair were “drawn to each other” in the departure queue.
A source told The Sun: “We saw Dan Edgar chatting away to a woman who was on a hen do on our flight – the plane was full of the entire Towie cast.
“One of the girls from the hen do, he took a liking to. He was with her for quite a fair bit of the flight and his cast members didn’t seem too happy.
“You could tell it was a flirty exchange – they were laughing and touching. There were definitely sparks flying.
“Sat near where they were talking was Sammy Root, Elma and Ella Wise. Ella was giving death stares – it looked like she was fuming. It was a very entertaining flight.
“We noticed they were drawn to each other – we could see them eyeing each other in the departure queue.
“It looked like socials were exchanged so it seems their conversation went really well.”
Dan’s potential new romance comes as the Towie cast jetted off to Portugal to kick off filming for the long-running ITV reality series’ 15th anniversary.
Towie star sparks concern in worrying new video after horrendous trolling as fans ‘ask are you ok?’
He had been dating CBB star Ella in the run-up to her stint on the show in April.
While the last series saw Ella and Dan become “official” ahead of her stint on Celebrity Big Brother, it was revealed on the show that the two had split “amicably”.
The pair now face the first reunion since their split as the cast film scenes in the Algarve for the latest season, out later this year.
Sophie Kasaei, boyfriend Jordan Brook, Junaid Ahmed and boyfriend Joe Blackman also join them in Portugal.
Towie has been approached for comment.
Meanwhile, Matilda Draper and Jodie Wells have been soaking up the sun at the luxury resort’s pool.
Elma Pazar, Harry Derbridge, Amber Turner and Dani Imbert, AMY Childs and Lauren Goodger are also on the trip.
Dan is also set to face off with another of his exes – 31-year-old Amber Turner, who has since moved on from the Dancing On Ice star with Kent-based hunk Archie Chandler.
The pair have been together since May last year, with sources reporting that Amber has finally found “the one”.
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Dan seen on Towie last yearCredit: Lime Pictures
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Ella recently revealed their split on Celebrity Big BrotherCredit: instagram/ellaraewisex