Run Away with Me

The saxophone hit at the opening is arguably one of the most perfectly deployed instrumental choices in 2010s indie pop — a single blaring tone that functions less like a musical phrase and more like a flare gun fired into the night sky. Everything that follows is in service of that initial burst of urgency: pulsing synths, a relentlessly driving rhythm section, Carly Rae Jepsen's voice pitched somewhere between desperation and complete exhilaration. Her vocal delivery here is not delicate or coy — it's full-throated and almost breathless, as if the words can't get out fast enough, as if staying still for even a moment might mean losing something irreplaceable. The lyric at its core is a proposal of mutual escape: abandon the ordinary, get in the car, go somewhere that doesn't have a name yet. It belongs to the tradition of the great road-trip love song, but filtered through an 80s pop production sensibility and the specific longing of someone who has clearly thought about this particular person far too much. Released in 2015, it became a slow-burn cult classic, beloved by a generation of listeners who found in it an almost unbearably accurate portrait of romantic obsession channeled into forward momentum. This is a song for driving too fast with someone you're terrified of losing.