"Call Me Maybe" is a song recorded by Canadian singer-songwriter Carly Rae Jepsen for her EP Curiosity (2012) and later appeared on her second studio album and first international album Kiss (2012).
The song was written by Jepsen and Tavish Crowe as a folk song, but its genre was modified to pop following the production by Josh Ramsay. It was released as the lead single from the EP on September 20, 2011, through 604 Records. Jepsen was signed to Schoolboy Records, releasing her single in the United States through the label, as the first single from Kiss.
Musically, "Call Me Maybe" is a teen pop, dance-pop and bubblegum pop track that alludes to the inconvenience that love at first sight brings to a girl who hopes for a call back from a new crush.
"Call Me Maybe" topped the Canadian Hot 100. Outside of Canada, "Call Me Maybe" topped the charts in Australia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Hungary, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Poland, the Republic of Ireland, Slovakia, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States.
It peaked inside top 3 of the charts in Austria, Belgium (Flanders & Wallonia), Germany, Israel, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden. After peaking at the top position of the Canadian Hot 100, Jepsen became the fifth Canadian artist to do so in her home country since 2007. In the United States, the track reached number one on the Mainstream Top 40 chart and is the first number one by a Canadian female artist on the Billboard Hot 100 chart since 2007's "Girlfriend" by Avril Lavigne.
An accompanying music video was directed by Ben Knechtel. In it, Jepsen seeks the attention of an attractive boy next door who is revealed at the end of the story to be attracted to a male band member. As part of the promotion for the song, Jepsen performed the track on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, where she made her US television debut, and at the 2012 Billboard Music Awards. "Call Me Maybe" has been covered by several artists, including Ben Howard, Big Time Rush, Fun, Cimorelli, Lil Wayne, JPEGMafia, and Cody Simpson, and parodied by Cookie Monster and some of the news staff of National Public Radio. It was also covered on "The New Rachel", the season premiere episode of the fourth season of Glee.
"Call Me Maybe" was nominated for two Grammy Awards, for Song of the Year and Best Pop Solo Performance at the 55th Annual ceremony, but lost to "We Are Young" by Fun and the live performance of "Set Fire to the Rain" by Adele, respectively. On December 11, 2012, "Call Me Maybe" was named Song of the Year for 2012 by MTV.
In its 2012 Year-End issue, Billboard magazine ranked this song #2 in the Hot 100 Songs, Digital Songs, and Canadian Hot 100 charts. The song was also ranked number one by the Village Voice's annual Pazz and Jop poll, which compiles the votes of music critics from all over the United States.
Call Me Maybe was the best-selling song on the iTunes Store worldwide of 2012. With worldwide sales of 18.6 million copies as of July 2022 and over 863 million streams on Spotify, it became the best selling single of the 21st century by a female artist and one of the most successful singles of all time. Call Me Maybe is considered Jepsen's signature song and one of the defining hit singles of the 2010s.
"Call Me Maybe" was the best-selling digital single of 2012 worldwide and is the seventh best-selling digital single of all time. The song is ranked at #47 on Billboard's Greatest Songs of All-Time.