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To understand how Carly Rae Jepsen arrived at her recently released seventh studio album, The Loveliest Time, we have to start back in 2020, when the pop star wrote an entire musical project while in isolation due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I wanted to face my loneliness and write about all the discovery I found in that place,” she tells Billboard of the creative inspiration that hit her at the time. “My imagination went to some pretty extreme places. I had a thought of, should I text my ex and rekindle that terrible relationship? [laughs] It was fun to write songs about all the extreme reactions you get from loneliness, like joining a dating app or going to some reflective place where you’re thinking about choices you’ve made or some grief for some stuff you haven’t unpacked that you finally have time to do. I was definitely looking at this theme of loneliness as a really cool starting place.”

As a result, 2022’s The Loneliest Time was born, filled to the brim with social media viral hits like the album’s title track, “Western Wind,” “Beach House” and more, keeping fans company during their own lonely moments. But Jepsen wasn’t done with the concept of growth through isolation. “It was always an intention of mine to look at this piece of work as a package,” she explains.

Throughout her hectic touring schedule in 2022, Jepsen still made time to revisit some of the B-sides that didn’t make the cut for The Loneliest Time. “I think, partially, having some time away and then coming back to them sort of helped me have new perspective on them,” she says of the songs. “There’s strength in leaving things and coming back and looking at it, and I felt like it was really helpful for me to sort of unlock some things that needed to be solved on these songs.”

That refreshed energy led to the aptly titled The Loveliest Time, which officially arrived on July 27. “The Loveliest Time was always the intended name for the album, but I was still in a lonely place when I wrote it,” she says of turning her two recent projects into sister albums. “It was just my imagination taking shape with, ‘what about when the world opens up?’ and the extremes of love and of being able to travel, like, getting to live in this really loud, fearless way. I don’t think I could have gotten to The Loveliest Time without going through The Loneliest Time.”

Capturing quite literally the loveliest time in her musical career, the album shows a new, experimental and free-spirited side of Jepsen, as she plays with unique sounds while still remaining true to her bubbly, colorful personality. She mentions “Psychedelic Switch” specifically, a rave-ready track with an unexpectedly extended intro leading into a euphoric, transcendent chorus. “If you hear the beginning of ‘Psychedelic Switch,’ it’s still dance-y, but it’s more slow. It was the work of [producer and co-writer] Kyle Shearer, who started going to raves with his wife when the world opened up after COVID. He comes into the studio, and I hadn’t seen a hot minute, and he’s like, ’So, I’ve been into rave music.’ And he starts playing ‘Psychedelic Switch’ and it sounds like a rave, and I’m like, ‘Let’s go!’ There was this playful energy, not only in my experience creating with people in person again, but also for everyone else who was a part of this and I think it brought this energy of like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is our renewal back into music.’ It has born some new, crazy energy in me.”

On the other end, The Loveliest Time also sees Jepsen dive deeper introspectively, as seen in “Kollage,” a mid-tempo track in which the 37-year-old superstar opens up about her fragility in how she deals with heartbreak and pain. “I think with The Loneliest Time and having some songs that offered a little bit more depth to them, I kind of realized that my audience seemed really welcoming to it,” she says of feeling ready to be more vulnerable. “I realized I was ‘allowed’ to be anything. In fact, there is no ‘allowed.’ Who made these rules? As long as my music feels sincere. Getting to write about subjects that are a little bit more nuanced, that feels so refreshing for me — being in the pop industry for so long and not feel like I have to be so cookie cutter or black and white.”

She concludes with a perfect representation of who she is as an artist right now: “It’s all so deliciously gray and everything in between.”

Listen to The Loveliest Time below.