Carley Rae Jepsen appeared as a guest of John Carroll Kirby at one his shows in Los Angeles this week, joining the revered multi-hyphenate to cover tracks by Kate Bush and Sade.
Charming a packed crowd at the iconic Zebulon lounge, Jepsen and Kirby were joined by backup singers Julia Ross and Sophi Bairley for the pair’s take on Bush’s ‘Wuthering Heights’, while Rostam Batmanglij joined to duet with Jepsen for a striking rendition of Sade’s ‘By Your Side’.
‘Wuthering Heights’ was released in January of 1978 as Bush’s breakout single, closing out the A-side on her debut album ‘The Kick Inside’. Sade dropped ‘By Your Side’ in October of 2000, making it the lead single of their fifth album, ‘Lovers Rock’.
Take a look at fan-shot footage of Jepsen performing the tracks with Kirby and co. below:
❕ | @carlyraejepsen covering By Your Side by Sade with producers Rostam Batmanglij and John Carroll Kirby. 🤍 pic.twitter.com/2EZrcMWbit
— Carly Crave (@carlycrave) October 8, 2021
❕ | @carlyraejepsen covering Wuthering Heights by Kate Bush with producer John Carroll Kirby. pic.twitter.com/EqSDM964u7
— Carly Crave (@carlycrave) October 8, 2021
In a post shared to her Instagram yesterday (October 9), Jepsen gushed that it was “an honor to jump on stage the other night at John’s show”, calling the producer, pianist and composer “a truly incredible musician and performer” and noting that she’s “a huge fan”.
Jepsen had previously declared her fandom for Kate Bush in an interview with Clash, saying: “I’ve been investigating her work and I’m late to the party, but I’ve been [realising] what an incredible writer she is, even visually. I think that would be someone I’d want to bring into influence the next project if I could.”
She pointed to ‘Wuthering Heights’ as her favourite song by the legendary art-pop artist. “I bonded with my makeup and hair stylist Aga [Dondzik] over that song,” she said. “She keeps doing the leg kick theatrically, the one she does in the video. I just like how emo she gets. She really goes there and that’s something that I’d like to do as well.”
Last month, Jepsen reflected on the ten-year anniversary of her smash hit ‘Call Me Maybe’, saying it “was like a lightning bolt to my little life”, and thanking her fans for having “opened my world and my heart with this adventure of a song”.
Her most recent studio album was 2020’s ‘Dedicated Side B’, the surprise landing last May a companion piece to her 2019 album, ‘Dedicated’. She followed it up last August with the standalone single ‘Me And The Boys In The Band’, and later teamed up with mxmtoon for the track ‘ok on your own’.
Jepsen also said last year that she’d made an “entire quarantine album” during lockdown, co-writing it with longtime collaborator Tavish Crowe. “We had to do it around Zoom or things like that so it’s been like a challenge,” she said at the time, “but a really fun one! You kind of write differently that way.”