Carly Rae Jepsen shares house-inspired new single ‘Motivation’ from her double album ‘Day and Night,’ out Sept. 18
Carly Rae Jepsen makes dance music that sneaks up on your feelings. On “Motivation,” released August 21 via Interscope Records, the Canadian pop auteur wraps a meditation on family and inherited expectation inside a glittering, house-inspired groove. It arrives from the “Night” half of Day and Night, her ambitious 24-track double album due September 18, and it is one of the record’s most candid moments.
The song started with a sound, not a concept. Jepsen was back in her hometown last fall when the crunch of leaves under her feet began forming a rhythm. From that small, tactile spark grew a track about the passion and high expectations she absorbed from her own family, and about the quiet work of making peace with them. She has called it “our little family anthem,” and she hopes it lands for chosen families as much as for blood relatives.
A Club Track With a Soft Center
That tension is the whole trick. “Motivation” is built for movement, all hypnotic shimmer and late-night club propulsion, but its subject is intimate to the point of tender. Jepsen wrote it with her husband, Cole M.G.N., who produced the track alongside Kyle Shearer. The lyrics wrestle with the tightrope of becoming yourself while honoring where you came from, a theme she first teased months ago with the postcard line “Always a tightrope, being me and pleasing you.”
The push and pull is the point of the whole album. Jepsen has framed Day and Night as a literal split, twelve daytime songs and twelve nighttime ones. The “Day” side, previewed by lead single “On Wires” and follow-up “After All,” leans into sun-soaked, left-field pop. The “Night” side, introduced by the ABBA-indebted rush of “Don’t Leave Me on the Dance Floor,” pushes toward maximalist, forward-thinking dance music. “Motivation” is now its second dispatch, and it deepens the case that Jepsen’s after-hours material is where she is taking her biggest swings.
Paris, Family, and a Familiar Face
The accompanying video makes the theme literal. Shot in Paris and directed by Caio Viera, who also helmed the clip for “On Wires,” it gathers a wide, warm cast of people around the song’s ideas of connection and kinship, representing both birth and chosen family. Among the faces is Gigi Goode, the RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 12 breakout who has since built a career across fashion, acting, and modeling. It is a fitting cameo for a song that stretches the definition of family past its traditional edges.
The release caps a remarkably busy stretch. Jepsen followed 2023’s The Loveliest Time with a period of near-constant writing and touring, including studio time with British hyperpop architect A.G. Cook and a one-night-only celebration in 2025 marking a decade of her beloved album Emotion. The rollout for Day and Night has been elaborate by design, seeded with cryptic postcards bearing coordinates, timestamps, and stray lyrics before the album was formally announced in June.
More than a decade past the ubiquity of “Call Me Maybe,” Jepsen has settled into a rare and enviable position. She is a mainstream pop star with the instincts of a cult artist, adored by a devoted fanbase that treats each release like scripture. “Motivation” is a reminder of why. She can make you dance and make you call your mother in the same three minutes. Day and Night arrives September 18.
