Carly Rae Jepsen, Social Media And The End Of The One-Hit Wonder

On a particularly steamy summer night in 2012, I found myself in a cab, windows rolled down, my wife and I suddenly lip-syncing the words to Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” in tandem with a pair of total strangers in a car stopped alongside us at a traffic light. As our respective vehicles began to move, a sort of mime-off occurred, culminating in one of the passengers across the way holding up an empty pizza box and grinning uncontrollably.

It’s difficult to explain how and why this happe...