Carly Rae Jepsen's 'Fuller House' theme: EW review

Fuller House has barely begun streaming and the Internet has already started blasting Carly Ray Jepsen’s theme song — in the bad, “Let’s judge this” way, not the good, “Girl, turn it up!” way.

The unfortunate truth is that Jepsen, who only recently absconded from the plague of “Call Me Maybe” punchlines by knocking us off our feet with her stellar 2015 album Emotion, is falling back into an arena rife for teasing thanks to her auto-tuned recreation of the original Full House’s theme “Everywhere You Look.”

But I shout thusly: Give the girl a break! And don’t give the song one!

There was no victory for any artist taking up the mantle of covering the saccharine melody, not the least of which is because the 1987 original bears the kind of generically sentimental, D.A.R.E.-approved lyrics that mean basically nothing in reality but somehow gird you for saccharine intake when they’re played before a sitcom.

Jepsen is not the one to blame for the nonsensical Hallmark one-liners: Don’t sell your dreams so soon! But also, when you’re lost and alone because your dreams are trash, a light is waiting to carry you home! Everywhere you look! Hold onto a heart! Milkmen and paperboy and evening TV!

The lyrics are heartwarming but mismatched, like trying to assemble one 500-piece puzzle of a National Geographic cover from five different 100-piece puzzles of Pizza Rat. Jepsen’s saddled with more gibberish than when she inexplicably recorded “Run Away With Me” in The Sims language. Is it Jepsen’s fault if she doesn’t seem like the kind of 30-year-old woman who rocks a tartan settee and pines woefully for the simpler days of milkmen and paperboys?

Sonically, there’s ribbing to be had (for no one’s pleasure) at the heavy hand of auto-tune, the crowdsourced echo of “Lah lah lah,” and Jepsen’s weird blend of lounge singer-meets-struggling barista. The arrangement is upbeat and inoffensive, and melodically, Jepsen’s fine — so perhaps the greater issue is how we’ve just decided to reject any theme song of dated virtue. Bad as the lyrics may be, sitcom theme songs have long deserved a renaissance, with few modern comedies daring to devote the screen time or creative experimentation to the Next Great TV Jingle. We must allow “Everywhere You Look” to exist, so that our children’s children may aspire to write a better TV theme song. We simply can’t continue to live in a world where The Big Bang Theory is the gold standard.

So don’t take it all out on the singer—she is not deserving of the vitriolic hate. Instead, direct your criticism towards the real problem here: Fuller House.