Disco Sweat

Disco SweatUnreleased album
Overview
Artist	Carly Rae Jepsen
Released	Unreleased
Recorded	2016
Genre	Pop • disco
Album Chronology
← Previous	Scrapped indie-folk album • 2014
Next →	Miss U Kiss U Scrapped 2018 EP

Disco Sweat was the first iteration of Carly Rae Jepsen's fourth studio album, which would later go onto become Dedicated (2019).

Work on the album commenced between 2015 and 2016, though it was ultimately scrapped and largely repurposed into songs for Dedicated.

Track listing

Draft track listing

§ Draft track listing shared by insiders

No.	Title	Writer(s)	Producer(s)	Length
1.	Disco Sweat	Carly Rae Jepsen • Dev Hynes	Dev Hynes	2:44
2.	Ricochet	Carly Rae Jepsen • Tavish Crowe	Tavish Crowe	3:17
3.	Hungry Heart	Carly Rae Jepsen • Tavish Crowe	Tavish Crowe	3:48
4.	No You	Carly Rae Jepsen • Dev Hynes	Dev Hynes	3:12
5.	So Different	Carly Rae Jepsen	Unknown
6.	Julien	Carly Rae Jepsen • Jared Manierka	Dev Hynes
7.	Tenderly	Carly Rae Jepsen • Tavish Crowe	Tavish Crowe	3:26
8.	Feels Like (feat. Blood Orange)	Carly Rae Jepsen • Tavish Crowe • Dev Hynes	Dev Hynes
9.	Emergency Love	Carly Rae Jepsen • Dev Hynes	Dev Hynes

Background

Disco Sweat was originally conceived by Jepsen as early as October 2015, during a "really prolific" writing phase she was going through after the release of Emotion. The project was envisioned as an "understated; dreamy, sexy disco" type of sound, inspired by the likes of ABBA, the Bee Gees, Feist, and Donna Summer. At the time, the project was still in its early writing stages whilst Jepsen was on tour. Carly expressed she was very eager to work on new music and cited a stroke of inspiration that wasn't apparent when development of her previous album began.

Writing and development

§ Disco Sweat development timeline: Disco Sweat (album) / Timeline

Writing on tour with Tavish Crowe

Disco Sweat was largely conceived on the Gimmie Love Tour with Tavish Crowe. Following the release of Emotion, as early as July 2015, Carly and Tavish were writing new music together. Sometime in 2015, the pair recorded I Am The Keeper. In February 2016, they wrote Feels Like, and, by April, they had written the songs Sails and Tenderly.

Across May 2016, Carly recorded multiple demos with Tavish. That month, she discussed the project with Vancouver Sun - stating, "I can’t explain what we’re doing right now, but we’re very much into disco-y things, whatever this next album may or may not turn out to be." Carly stated that she had written a total of seventeen "little demos" with Tavish Crowe and Jared Manierka whilst on tour , including the songs Ricochet, Hungry Heart, and Four Leaf Clover, written with Tavish, and Julien, written with Jared.

Sometime on tour, Carly had a meeting with songwriter and producer Rod Temperton in London to learn more about disco. Temperton was the songwriter behind Michael Jackson's Thriller. Carly stated, "It was just cool seeing his process, and meeting the man behind that killer hit. We just talked about what disco meant to him. I'm just going to dig in, and do my research, and figure out what exactly it is about disco that's exciting me."

Early development with Dev Hynes

In June 2016, Carly worked with musician Dev Hynes to record new versions of the original demos she had written on tour. With Dev Hynes, Carly recorded the leaked demos of tracks Disco Sweat and No You, as well Feels Like and Julien. On June 3rd, they recorded Emergency Love .

Development in Sweden

Towards the end of June 2016, Carly took a trip to Sweden to work on new material for the project. She states that, at the time, she was eager to meet Swedish songwriter and producer Patrik Berger, being a fan of his work on Robyn's 2010 song Dancing On My Own. At this point in development, Carly states she had written an extended-play's worth of music for the project and had been working on recording the additional demos she had written on tour. Whilst in Sweden, she worked with Emotion collaborators Mattman and Robin, Shellback, and Rami Yacoub, developing seven or eight new song ideas whilst there.

Whilst working on the project with Jepsen, Berger felt that the disco influence was too constraining. He advised her to "open the doors to everything", to which she says this was "mind blowing for her" at the time - and agreed, saying, "It’s one thing to have intention but it’s another thing to be so narrow when you’re in a creative space that you can’t let the magic come to you." Carly later elaborated on this by saying, "The idea of it being exclusively disco was sort of pigeonholing me because it wasn’t coming out naturally".

Project scrapped and Dedicated

After their discussion, Carly wrote For Sure with Patrik Berger and fellow Swedish songwriters Pontus Winnberg and Noonie Bao. In July 2016, For Sure was the first song written for Dedicated post-Disco Sweat, although the new direction of the project was still yet to be decided on. Regarding the song's relation to the original project, Carly commented, "I don’t know what [that song] is, but it's not disco, it's a mamba or something". It was also around this time that Party For One and Fake Mona Lisa were written with Anton Rundberg.

In August 2016, Carly discussed the disco influence for her next project and stated she was instead "allowing [herself] the freedom to not be totally committed [to just one sound]". Later in August, she attended a writers camp in Maderas Village, Nicaragua, and, alongside collaborators Kyle Shearer and Nate Cyphert, would rework the original Disco Sweat demo of Julien into the version of the song that was included on Dedicated. The new version of the song would see a reworked production and sound from Shearer, and would inspire Jepsen to decide on the new direction to take the project in.

From this point on, Disco Sweat was scrapped and work commenced on what would later become Dedicated. Despite being mostly shelved, various songs from the initial Disco Sweat sessions would be further reworked for Dedicated and Dedicated Side B between 2016 and 2019, such as Julien and This Is What They Say. Ultimately, the Disco Sweat album was never released.

Post-Dedicated release

Shortly before the release of Dedicated in May 2019, Jepsen briefly referenced Disco Sweat in an interview with Vice. She mentioned, "I had every intention when I set out on making Dedicated – before I even knew it was called Dedicated – that it was going to be this understated 'music to clean your house to' ABBA-inspired disco. (...) There are elements of that: Julien is an example of where we started. But I just decided to let go of any mission statement and let the album be what it wanted to be." Carly first officially disclosed Disco Sweat's existence later that month, in which she revealed she had written an entire extended-play's worth of music for the project and spoke of the initial writing sessions she had with Patrik Berger.

Carly would later clarify that the project wasn't just an EP, but an entire album that "will probably never be released, and shouldn’t be." Jokingly, she stated that the album is buried in her backyard and was "just for her and her bandmates to laugh at". She later elaborated on this, by saying that "nobody [else] should ever hear Disco Sweat" and jokingly claims she would only release the album "over her dead body".

Development of The Loneliest Time

During the initial development of The Loneliest Time in 2020, Carly teased the possibility of reworking Disco Sweat and the original material from those sessions. In August 2020, when asked by a fan if she had plans to officially release Disco Sweat, Jepsen replied that she "just might" and, later promised to eventually release some form of disco music in the future "once she figures it out".

Carly's statements eventually materialised in the release of The Loneliest Time in October 2022, featuring disco influence in the album's title-track and elements from the song Disco Sweat being reworked into Shooting Star.

Disco Sweat leaks and insider reports

Snippets for the songs Disco Sweat and No You first leaked online in January 2020, before leaking in full alongside a snippet of the original Julien demo on March 3rd 2021. Alongside these initial leaks, insiders stated that the album was left in a rough state, not making it past initial production. They described that the project features mostly "guitar-based songs" and that "only about three tracks could actually be considered disco."

A second handful of Disco Sweat songs leaked in December 2022, including Ricochet, Hungry Heart, I Am The Keeper, and Tenderly - these were confirmed to be songs from the Disco Sweat sessions by insiders, who shared their placements on the draft track list for the album.

Songs written for the project

At least twenty-four songs are known to have been written during the development of Disco Sweat, according to Jepsen - though it's likely not all of these songs were intended to make the album. Below is a comprehensive list of the songs that were either confirmed, reported, or speculated for the project:

Track listing

1. Disco Sweat
2. Ricochet
3. Hungry Heart
4. No You
5. So Different
6. Julien
7. Tenderly
8. Feels Like (feat. Blood Orange)
9. Emergency Love

Outtakes

• I Am The Keeper
• Sails
• Four Leaf Clover

Speculated

• Summer Love

Album credits

Performance

• Carly Rae Jepsen - vocals (all tracks)
• Dev Hynes / Blood Orange - vocals (track 8)

Writing and production

• Carly Rae Jepsen - songwriting (all tracks)
• Tavish Crowe - songwriting (2, 3, 7, 8) production (2, 3)
• Dev Hynes - songwriting (1, 4, 8, 9), production (6, 8-9)
• Jared Manierka - songwriting (track 6)

Navigation

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Disco Sweat

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References