Carly Rae Jepsen on Looking Up to Tina Turner and Finding Success 10+ Years After 'Call Me Maybe'

Meredith Jenks Carly Rae Jepsen

More than a decade since "Call Me Maybe" dominated radio airwaves, Carly Rae Jepsen is performing her biggest headline concerts to date — including a recent, sold-out show at New York City's Radio City Music Hall in support of her new album, The Loneliest Time.

"When you think about a pop artist back in the day when I started, those are 17-year-olds, and then they peak. But my dream's always been inspired by the Tina Turners and women who've found a way to move into the maturity of pop music," the Canadian singer-songwriter, 36, tells PEOPLE. "I'm beyond mind-boggled and can't believe I'm still on this little journey. It's my passion, and I'm so excited to see this thing grow."

Following the success of "Call Me Maybe" and 2012's Kiss album, Jepsen made a pointed decision to step back from mega pop stardom. She tried her hand on Broadway playing Cinderella and took a few years to craft her next album, 2015's Emotion, writing hundreds of songs in the process.

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Meredith Jenks Carly Rae Jepsen

"I really got a jolt into some kind of fame and stardom. There were fun things about it, and there was a lot that scared the s--- out of me," she says. "I was like, 'I know I love music, and I know I love performing. There's some high I get from this, but there's parts of Hollywood I don't totally jive with. How do I figure this out?'"

Emotion earned widespread critical acclaim and sent the musician into a new space within the pop landscape. Jepsen embraced a smaller, yet more-devoted-than-ever fanbase, which has continuously grown through the releases of 2019's Dedicated, and now, The Loneliest Time. "It's been a really slow, step-by-step evolution to kind of rebuild back some confidence about the music that I'm excited about sharing," she explains.

The 13-track album, out now, marks Jepsen's most vulnerable body of work to date, as it was crafted throughout the pandemic, during which her grandmother died after a long period of illness. Isolated in California, she wasn't able to travel home to be with family in Canada and found herself experiencing loneliness like never before.

Courtesy School Boy/Interscope Records Carly Rae Jepsen

"That was my first experience, really, of love lost to that degree," explains Jepsen. "It's a really hard thing to even wrap words around. When I have an emotion so extreme that I don't know what to do with it, part of my therapy has always been to try and process it through songwriting."

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In an office-turned-home-studio, she wrote through hardships and familial experiences on tracks like "Bends" and "Surrender My Heart" — but didn't think such personal material would end up on the album until showing them to executives at her label, Interscope Records. "To my surprise and almost discomfort in a way, they really connected to this theme," recalls Jepsen. "We started talking about how loneliness is the key ingredient to all of those extreme emotions, and that became really exciting to me."

Of course, the album's creative process featured purely exciting moments as well. Following the period of solitude, Jepsen penned the title track of The Loneliest Time — which is currently popping off on TikTok — and invited fellow Canadian composer Rufus Wainwright into her makeshift studio to record it with her. She felt "starstruck" to work with the musician, who's long influenced her artistry, and later became slightly embarrassed by technical difficulties.

"When he came in, everything was working except for the headphones — eight pairs," quips Jepsen. "We were laughing, and we're like, 'Oh my God, these ones have to work.' I felt like I was wasting his time. I'm going to send him a really nice pair of headphones as a 'Thank you. I'm so sorry about that' gift."

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Meredith Jenks Carly Rae Jepsen

Recording with another icon from her home country marks a hugely full-circle moment in Jepsen's career, which launched with a 2007 stint on Canadian Idol, where she finished in third place. Long after experiencing mainstream radio success with "Call Me Maybe," the fact that Jepsen's artistic skill has kept her career steadily growing is a testament to the drive she's held since auditioning for Idol — where she bravely sang an original song against others' encouragement.

"I thought it would be my one second on television, and I wanted to show people what I wrote," she says. "I feel protective of the doe-eyed and vulnerable version of me that went on Canadian Idol in a weird way. [She was] about to get into some wild, intense scrutiny from all directions for the first time ever."

If Jepsen could go back and give advice to her 21-year-old self waiting in line to audition for the singing competition show, what would she say? "I'd want to put on that layer of alligator skin, like, 'Get ready. This is going to be tough, but it's tough love that you need, because the business out there is going to be even tougher,'" she expresses. "In hindsight, I wish I could've told myself, 'This is going to hurt, but it's going to be worth it to see if you have the stamina to handle this thing.'"