The "Call Me Maybe" Phenomenon

By Cam on April 21, 2012

It’s everywhere. Honestly, it came out of nowhere, and the last few weeks it has been all that I’ve heard at home, class, cafeteria, randomly in other people’s playlists, and frankly, my own head. I’m talking about “Call Me Maybe” by Carly Rae Jensen.

What’s that? You’ve never heard the song? For those of you who are reading this and haven’t, I’m truly sorry for exposing you to this catchy, catchy monstrosity. WARNING: This song is extremely catchy; do not watch this video if you do not like getting songs stuck in your head. You have been warned.

http://youtu.be/fWNaR-rxAic

The music video alone has gotten over fifteen million views in a month, that’s pretty viral in my opinion. Who knows how many plays the audio track has gotten by itself? A billion times, maybe? What is it about this song? Is it the catchy beat that draws in the ear? Is it the allure of Jensen’s voice? I really do want to know what exactly about this song drives me crazy with how catchy it is. The crazy thing is, at least among younger people, this song doesn’t really have a “demographic” that it targets. There are simply three main groups:

  • People who love this song, whatever the reason may be
  • People who loathe this song, which includes a large amount of people I know personally
  • Finally, people who are on the fence, like me.

I mean, sometimes I think I dislike this song; other times I think I like it. At the end of the day, the fact that neither my iPod nor I can escape the clutches of this track has to count for something, right?

As for the artist herself, Carly Rae Jensen placed third in the fifth season of Canadian Idol in 2007 and released her debut album in 2008.  She’s been semi-popular in Canada and was relatively unknown stateside, but that all changed when she released this catchy nightmare. “Call Me Maybe” was in the top ten on the Billboard 100 for a time, it is still in the top ten singles on iTunes, and it landed Jensen a performing spot on The Ellen DeGeneres Show two weeks ago. Only time will tell if this song ends up being a one-hit-wonder or not; for now, everyone knows her name (or at least this song). Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go try to drown the lyrics of this curse out of my head.

Link to Jensen’s Wikipedia entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carly_Rae_Jepsen

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