Carly Rae Jepsen of “Call Me Maybe” fame released her new single “I Really Like You” on Monday (March 2). The song’s popularity has exploded in just the first day, thanks in part to its repetitive lyrical structure and help from fellow artist Justin Bieber.
“I Really Like You” features musical aspects very similar to her 2012 hit, “Call Me Maybe”—including a repetitive but catchy phrase that has become iconic with Jepsen’s lyrical style. Jepsen says the word “really” in her song a total of 67 times. In “Call Me Maybe,” Jepsen repeats the phrase “call me maybe” twelve times.
“People tend to prefer things they’ve been exposed to before,” said Elizabeth Margullis, Director of the Music Cognition Lab at the University of Arkansas, in her video “Why we love repetition in music.”
“When people hear a segment of music repeated, they are more likely to move or tap along to it. Repetition invites us into music as imagined participants rather than as passive listeners.”
It is this repetition that gives Jepsen’s songs the “earworm” status that listeners associate her with. An earworm in terms of music, according to the Oxford dictionary, is “a catchy song or tune that runs continually through a person’s mind.”
Some people criticize the simplistic message of the song. While Jepsen’s straightforward lyrics about feeling awkward toward one’s crush may be relatable to teens, some say “I Really Like You” may be too low-brow for the 29-year old artist.
“There’s nothing wrong with trying to appeal to teenagers. It’s a requirement for pop singers,” wrote Dave McGinn of the Toronto paper The Globe and Mail in a recent article. “But we should hold adult artists responsible for the ideas they sell to their teenage audience, especially at a time when young womanhood is so much more than waiting at home for a boy to call.”
News of the song’s release has been trending on Twitter and Facebook. The official version of the song on YouTube currently has 1.5 million views and is increasing.
Part of the reason for the viral spread of the song is that fellow Canadian artist Justin Bieber tweeted “Make my artist @carlyraejepsen #1 again!“, referring to when ”Call Me Maybe” was the best-selling single of 2012. The tweet has been retweeted over 47,000 times and favorited over 57,000 times.
Both Bieber and Jepsen are under the School Boy Records label, which is managed by Scooter Braun. Braun previously told Billboard magazine in an interview, “I told [Jepsen] that she couldn’t come out with anything unless it was on the level of ‘Call Me Maybe.’”
