Last summer Carly Rae Jepsen, a then-25-year-old singer and third-place finisher on Canadian Idol, began work on a new song called ''Call Me Maybe.'' But what started as just another attempt at stardom by a young artist with a scant handful of minor home-country hits soon became something she'd never imagined. Over the next 12 months, ''Maybe'' turned an irresistible hook and a Justin Bieber endorsement into a viral smash beloved (and be-YouTubed) by everyone from a former U.S. secretary of state to the Harvard baseball team. Now a No. 1 smash in 13 countries — America included — the song may just be having the biggest pop-zeitgeist moment since ''Rolling in the Deep.'' Its creators recount the crazy, convoluted journey of the Little Song That Could (Never Leave Your Head).
Summer 2011: Jepsen begins writing the song with guitarist and frequent collaborator Tavish Crowe, later bringing in producer Josh Ramsay (of Canadian emo band Marianas Trench) and mixer Dave ''Rave'' Ogilvie.
Carly Rae Jepsen ''Call Me Maybe'' came out of a regular jam session between Tav and I. When I went to work with Josh [who declined to speak with EW for this article] I showed him the idea, and he stopped me once I hit the ''call me maybe'' line and he said, ''Repeat that part — that part is our chorus!''
Dave ''Rave'' Ogilvie Josh gave me a call last summer and said, ''You gotta come out and check out this new song I'm working on with Carly.'' So I was able to get an early listen before it was finished. We both kind of looked at each other like, ''This is really good, right?''
Jepsen When we started, it was a bit of a folk song. We brought the idea to Josh, and he helped us pop-ify it.
Ogilvie With the bass we were like, ''Is it loud enough? Let's turn it up. Loud enough? Let's go a little more.'' We finally got it so loud that we thought it would blow up car speakers, so we had to cut it off at that point. [Laughs]
