[INTERVIEW] Alessia Cara

The best piece of advice Alessia Cara ever received was to take things slowly. “That was from my parents, [and it’s] probably the best advice ever, especially in this industry when things can get pretty overwhelming,” the 19-year-old Brampton native said.

Since the release of her single, “Here,” last spring, followed by her debut album Know-It-All, Cara’s life has been transformed. In the past year, she has appeared on Jimmy Fallon, been featured in numerous publications and performed with Taylor Swift. Despite her unprecedented rise to the spotlight, the fame has yet to get to her. “It’s crazy to even think of that word [famous], because it’s so new to me and I don’t think of it like that so everything feels surreal still,” she said.

Performing with Taylor Swift was a similar experience. A longtime fan, Cara said, “It didn’t even feel real. I’ve always wanted to meet her and I’ve always wanted to ask her so many questions and it was so cool to be on stage with her.”

In a sea of manufactured talent and mediocre songwriting, Cara’s songs stand out. They are earnest and utterly relatable. (Nothing has ever encapsulated how I feel in large groups quite like “Here.”) She is obviously connected to each of her songs on a personal level, a trait she strives for with her music. “I think [songwriting is] a lot easier when you’re feeding off your own experiences because then it’ll inevitably become different,” she explained. “When I try to make music I don’t try to compare it to anything else or at the same time I don’t try to make it overly different from anything else.”

Know-It-All is more than the name of her album. It also represents an overarching theme in her lyrics. While at first Cara wrote songs simply for the pleasure of it, when it came time to assemble the album, she looked for songs with a common link. “There’s this strong feeling in all of [the songs]. As teenagers, we have these strong emotions and sometimes we like to think we know everything but at the end of the day we don’t,” she said.

Cara performed at McMaster last week as part of her Know-It-All tour. Singing in front of a crowd of students her own age, she looked comfortable and relaxed onstage, pausing at one point in the show to ask if any audience members called Brampton home. Her rise to stardom may have come as a surprise to her, but Alessia Cara is undoubtedly a natural.

Header Photo Credit: Meredith Truax, in-article: Jon White/Photo Editor