They'll call her maybe

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Carly Rae Jepsen is nominated for two Grammy Awards. (CHARLES SYKES / INVISION / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES)

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The 55th annual Grammy Awards will be presented Sunday at Staples Center in Los Angeles and broadcast live on CBS and Global, 7 p.m., hosted by LL Cool J.

Awards are handed out in 81 categories, although not all at night -- some will be presented during an afternoon ceremony

Key performers include: Alicia Keys and Maroon 5, Justin Timberlake, Bruno Mars, Rihanna, and Sting, Frank Ocean, Taylor Swift and The Black Keys.

This marks the first time in four years that Timberlake will grace the Grammy stage, and will be his debut TV performance on the eve of his first studio album in seven years.

Canadian nominees heading into the Grammys:

Drake (three nominations): best rap album (Take Care); best rap song (The Motto); best rap performance (HYFR)

Carly Rae Jepsen (two nominations): song of the year (Call Me Maybe); best pop solo performance (Call Me Maybe)

Tamia (two nominations): best R&B song (Beautiful Surprise); best R&B album (Beautiful Surprise)

Arcade Fire: best song written for visual media (Abraham's Daughter from The Hunger Games)

Michael Bublé: best traditional pop vocal album (Christmas)

Deadmau5: best dance/electronic album (Album Title Goes Here)

Melanie Fiona: best traditional R&B performance (Wrong Side Of A Love Song)

Loreena McKennitt: best new age album (Troubadours on the Rhine)

Howard Shore: best score soundtrack for visual media (Hugo)

Tegan and Sara: best long form music video (Get Along)

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LOS ANGELES -- Cooking a meal alone, at home, has become something of a luxury for Carly Rae Jepsen.

That's what she was doing the night the Grammy nominations were announced. She was making dinner, which she notes "sounds like something normal," but it was the first time she'd done it in probably a year -- in her cheeky words, it was her "one big domesticated moment."

She was cooking (a chicken dish and salsa, she thinks) and waiting, to be perfectly honest. She says she hadn't really been thinking about the Grammys until people kept asking her about the Grammys, over and over, until eventually the thought did creep into her mind: wouldn't it be nice?

So she had one eye on her chicken, and one eye on the Grammys site. Until she refreshed and her heart sank. No nominations.

"I went through the motions of being like: 'Oh well, it was a good year. I can't really complain. No big deal.' But (I was) kind of a little bummed out secretly, I guess."

Then she got a call from her father and stepmom, both screaming their enthusiastic congratulations about her Grammy nominations. She convinced them they were wrong at first, before the trio put their heads together and discovered the problem.

As it turns out, Jepsen had been looking at the wrong website, proving that the 27-year-old has figured out only how to dominate the Internet, not necessarily operate it.

"It was a really funny way to discover," Jepsen said with a laugh. "And then I proceeded to do like the ultimate kitchen dance, with the spoon in hand."

One imagines the Mission, B.C., singer has had plenty of occasions for such jubilant jigs over the past blessed year.

The nominations, by the way, were for song of the year and best pop solo performance, both for Call Me Maybe, a devilishly simple spiral of demure, disco-pop cotton-candy with a chorus that has been permanently tattooed on our collective cultural memory. It was a juicy wad of bubblegum that still hasn't lost its taste.

The song topped charts in Canada, the U.S., New Zealand, Austria, France, Ireland, Denmark, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. It occupied the top spot in the U.S. for nine straight weeks, achieving a summer ubiquity typically reserved for the pinging bells of an ice cream truck. It elicited goofy covers from Justin Bieber, the Miami Dolphin cheerleaders, the Harvard University baseball team, Cookie Monster, and -- thanks to some clever editing tricks -- U.S. President Barack Obama, kind of.

And it transformed Jepsen, from a Canadian Idol also-ran who was seemingly treading water in her home country's indifferent music industry into an international star whose signature catchy, carefree musical bonbon was as difficult to dislike as it was to avoid.

Jepsen followed with the well-received full-length Kiss -- which both proved her songwriting chops beyond her first single, and established Jepsen's neon-splashed sound, rooted in blithe '80s new wave -- and loaned her pipes to another Top 10 smash in her Owl City collaboration Good Time.

But Jepsen certainly never presumed Grammy recognition.

"The Grammys, to me, has always been one of those things that you don't really allow yourself to dream about -- at least I hadn't," said Jepsen, who wrote Call Me Maybe with Marianas Trench frontman Josh Ramsay and guitarist Tavish Crowe.

"I never really pictured myself there. It's kind of just been an eye-opening year."

The perky Jepsen then segues into a familiar inspirational refrain, about the realization that dreams can be attainable with work and luck and the good sense to recognize an opportunity and run with it.

But, crucially, she understood the flip side just as well -- the demoralizing frustration of an artist struggling to break through, and the accompanying fear that the window to that broader world was inching shut, year by year.

"It was really nice," she says, "to feel the hunger and fight of it not working for so many years. And really, really getting hungry, and trying different ways and putting up your own posters and hoping people would show up at your concerts."

Certainly, the whiplash immediacy of Jepsen's fame isn't lost on her -- particularly since the memories of what life was like before are still so recent.

Indeed, Jepsen seems refreshingly normal, suitably gobsmacked by the position in which she finds herself.

She still marvels at the power of her "huge machine of a team," which incluwdes Bieber's powerful manager, Scooter Braun. She cheerfully shrugs off the suggestion -- floated by Braun and others -- that she was "snubbed" out of a nomination in the best new artist category, convincingly insisting she's "honoured with whatever I've gotten."

And when discussing the Grammys generally, she still seems to feel closer to the young woman who spent so many years gazing at the sparkling stars parading along the red carpet -- rather than the budding starlet about to strut along the same. (In fact, she confides that she's been agonizing over which of two dresses she wants to wear, and her bandmates -- "I tour with boys," she snorts -- have been no help).

"I've been the ultimate popcorn and PJs (viewer), really judgmental over which girl was wearing the coolest dress -- that kind of watcher," she recalled, laughing.

"My favourite part was always the beginning. Maybe it's the girlish little fashionista in me, who was just sitting there and having fun deciding -- like out of 10 -- which dress is the best one. And seeing it later on if it made the list.

"Now, all of a sudden, to get to go through those old pictures and think: 'Oh my gosh, what am I going to wear?' This is a whole new thing."

It's of course not unexpected when Jepsen doesn't make any claims about her chances to win an award -- even the chaste come-on delivered in her chart-topper is tempered with a shrugging "maybe." But it's a topic of discussion for many Grammy watchers.

Although Grammy voters sometimes seem reluctant to support youth-skewing pure pop, some prognosticators are curious whether Jepsen's tune could prove an exception in the stacked song of the year category, where it will compete against singles including the booming fun. anthem We Are Young and Miguel's soulful earthquake Adorn.

"(It was) the biggest, most popular, most recognizable song of the year and I think it deserves to win when you look at the rest of the people in the category," MuchMusic VJ Lauren Toyota said in a recent telephone interview.

"It was the most purchased song of the year. Everyone loves this song. Everyone. Across the board. Knows it, knows who she is because of it. I just can't see it going to anyone else."

-- The Canadian Press

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 9, 2013 G1