Call Me Maybe

In this flirty song, Carly Rae Jepsen locks eyes with a hot guy on a hot night and makes her move. "Call me maybe," she tells him, and hands over her number. It's a perfectly charming interaction. Instead of vetting the guy or timing her approach, Jepsen just declares her interest right in the moment, but not in a needy kind of way. By appending the "maybe," she lets him know she'll be just fine if she never hears from him. But she probably will.

"Call Me Maybe" was released in September 2011 and was everywhere by the summer of 2012. Jepsen and her signature bangs seemed to come out of nowhere, but she was a few years into her career and already a minor celebrity in Canada. Jepsen is from British Columbia and first came to the public attention in the summer of 2007 when she came third in the fifth season of Canadian Idol. After being part of the Canadian Idol Top 3 concert tour, she retreated to her home province to focus on writing and recording. Her demos earned her a deal with Fontana/Maple Music, leading her into the studio with producer/writer Ryan Stewart. Her debut album, Tug of War, was released in September 2008 and contained two minor hits in her native Canada. By 2011, she had signed with 604 Records, which supported her with a brigade of top songwriters and producers. "Call Me Maybe" she wrote with Tavish Crowe and Josh Ramsay, with the latter also producing the track. Ramsey is the frontman of the Canadian pop-punk band Marianas Trench. Months after the song was released as a single, it appeared on her EP Curiosity, and later, on her album Kiss.

The song's narrator is obviously no shrinking violet and is confident enough to ask a cute boy out. When MTV News asked Carly Rae if she is anything like that girl on her song, she replied: "I generally just play eyes at a guy and hope he comes and approaches me, but in this particular instance I was thinking this is how I would do it."