Day and Night

Background and recording

Following the release of The Loveliest Time in 2023, Jepsen continued writing and recording new material while touring internationally. In August 2025, she marked the tenth anniversary of her third studio album, Emotion (2015), with a one-night-only celebration. Throughout 2024 and 2025, Jepsen was sometimes seen in the recording studio, which included a session with British producer A. G. Cook. In the weeks leading up to the announcement of her new album, Jepsen posted cryptic messages on social media featuring images accompanied by locations, dates, and times. Images included photographs of artifacts and objects, as well as lines resembling lyrics from the upcoming record.

Composition

Day and Night's first half is described by The Line of Best Fit as "raw", featuring live instrumentation and elements of 1970s-inspired "psychedelic pop", while the second half is "exploratory and intense", resembling a "sleek, synth-driven dance-pop sound". As a whole, the collection is set to capture a "blurred, dreamlike sense of time", in which "nights stretch into mornings" and "days dissolve into nights".

Release and promotion

Jepsen announced Day and Night on June 22, 2026, scheduled for release as a 24-track double album. Twelve tracks are intended to represent daytime, while the remaining twelve represent nighttime. The album was recorded with collaborators Tavish Crowe, Kyle Shearer, Nate Cyphert, and Cole M.G.N. (also Jepsen's husband), as well as Noonie Bao, Patrik Berger, Markus Krunegård, and Pontus Winnberg.

"On Wires" was released as the lead single on June 26, 2026, followed by the second single "After All" on July 16, 2026 and the third single "Don't Leave Me on the Dance Floor" on August 7, 2026. "Motivation" was released as the album's fourth single on August 21, 2026. The album's release will be followed by a headlining performance at the All Things Go Music Festival on September 27, marking her first live appearance for the year.

Critical reception

According to the review aggregator Metacritic, Day and Night received "universal acclaim" based on a weighted average score of 83 out of 100 from ten critic scores. AnyDecentMusic? gave the album a score of 7.4 out of 10 based on ten reviews.

AllMusic's Heather Phares complimented the length of Day and Night, believing it allowed Jepsen to "take the kind of risks she often left for companion releases". Sam Franzini The Line of Best Fit described the album as Jepsen's "most creative and far-reaching work to date". He further referred to the Day material as artsy in a psychedelic manner, while the Night material was classified as more club-driven. Rolling Stone's Jaeden Pinder gave the album a four-out-of-five star review, referring to it as a "dissertation on love". She further noted the album's music and lyrical content, noting it as a "travelogue". In his review for MusicOMH, Steven Johnson noted how the album reflected the personal changes in Jepsen's life following the release of 2023's The Loveliest Time, which he felt enhanced the music on Day and Night. Paste noted the album's sound, describing it as "texturally interesting".

In a mixed review, Slant Magazine opined that while Day and Night was Jepsen's most "sonically adventurous" album, they felt the album was also a "little unwieldy". Similarly, NME felt the album was a grower in comparison to her previous works, noting that what it lacked in originality it made up for in "conceptual clarity". For his review, Will Hodgkinson of The Times felt that the length was to its detriment, opining that the album was not Jepsen's "spiritual home". Echoing Hodkingson's remarks about the album's length, Pitchfork's contributing editor Marissa Lorusso felt that a more condensed release would sustain the album's concept better, believing that the album lacked "razor-sharp hooks" that Jepsen is known for in her previous releases.

Track listing

Notes

^[a] denotes an additional producer.

^[c] denotes a co-producer.

Personnel

Credits are adapted from Tidal.