Carly Rae Jepsen

Carly Rae Jepsen writes and sings her own pop songs, and an early global hit made her name. Rather than chase a sequel to it, she followed her own taste toward the sound of 1980s pop, and that shift produced Emotion, an album made with collaborators she chose herself that drew warm notice from critics.

Her process favors abundance: she has written hundreds of songs while making an album and kept only a small fraction of them. She has also stepped away from the recording studio to play the title role in a stage production of Cinderella.