By now we have all heard Carly Rae Jepsen’s catchy song “Call Me Maybe;” possibly we are almost to the point of gagging each time it comes on the radio as every pop station airs the hit single in rapid succession. It’s a typical teenage love song, a girl falling hard for a guy she barely knows, and hoping for some reciprocation from him. It may be just another sickeningly sweet girl band song with inane lyrics that hardly make sense are held up only by the catchy tune; after all, she does claim that “before you came into my life, I missed you so bad!” How can you miss someone before you have even met them? Or maybe she has nailed on the head the human longing for love and companionship.
Who hasn’t dreamed of a perfect love, someone who will be their best and truest friend, and always stand by them? Who hasn’t imagine up a Prince Charming or Miss Right and hoped that someday that one would really come waltzing into their life and sweep them away into the happily ever after? And until that someone does appear, don’t we all long for that person, or in a sense miss them…before they even come into our lives? Even for those who aren’t on the lookout for a life’s companion, if the right person enters their life at the right time, the transformation can be mind-boggling. A person can be completely happy being single, but if that right person comes into their life it can fill them up and build them up to a level of happiness and of completed-ness that they never knew could exist. By comparison, their old life seems but a shadow of what it could be. Without knowing it, their life was missing something, someone to fulfill and complete it.
I don’t know if Miss Jepson was trying to convey this idea of longing or of lack that exists in human life that is not given in love to another. Her intention could have been only to put a nonsensical spin in her lyrics. Or it could be that she’s really onto something, maybe.
