18-year-old Canadian Alessia Cara emerged almost out of nowhere earlier this year with Here, a pin-sharp dissection of that endlessly relatable feeling of being trapped in a social situation you can’t wait to get out of. Produced by Pop & Oak, who have worked with the likes of Nicki Minaj and Miguel, and constructed around the same Isaac Hayes song as Portishead’s classic Glory Box, Here zooms in on the various characters at house parties – the potheads, the vomiting lightweights, the gossips – and makes hanging out at one seem like the seventh circle of hell. With the video – which reconstructs the house party that inspired the lyrics – creeping up to 1.5m views already, and with a debut album due in the autumn, Alessia Cara is a name to keep an eye on. With that in mind we had a chat with her while she was in London about her home-town, fellow youthful mavericks and how Toronto’s music is dark blue….
2 places you’d take me to in Ontario
1. I didn’t really hang out at these place a lot, but I think they’re beautiful places to go and the first one is obviously Niagara Falls. But in the winter. It’s kind of torturous because it’s very, very cold, but it’s so beautiful. Everything’s frozen so it looks like crystal. Most of the waterfall is frozen too but there’s still some water flowing. So I’d take you there.
2. I’d also take you to Wonderland. It’s kind of like Disney World but without the Disney – it’s just a massive theme park. So it has the biggest roller coaster in Canada, or maybe in the world. It’s a really fun place to go in the summer. I used to go all the time. I’m good with rides – I get terrified but I love going on them. Other than that, we used to hang out in the mall in Brampton, where I’m from. Me and my friends would take the bus down there and just do nothing and sit in the food court.
4 other people under 20 who are killing it
1. Lorde – I think she’s doing really great things, so her for sure. I really love her.
2. Tavi Gevinson – I think she’s awesome too and she’s slaying all of life. I always watch her TED Talks, and as with Lorde it doesn’t matter how young you are. She just started her own movement – with the magazine and an online community. Rookie is awesome. She’ll probably release an album at some point and that will be number 1 too.
3. Raury – Definitely him. I just love how he brings this whole new view and his songwriting is so different – like an old folk singer but he’s only 19. He’s so wise.
4. Shawn Mendes – He’s from Canada, from a city really close by to me. He’s only 16 and he’s travelling the world and he’s such a good guitarist and he taught himself which is really cool. He developed his own fan-base too, all through Vine and YouTube. He’s an example of how it can all happen overnight, literally. I find the new blog-lead world quite scary, just because it’s all so instant. In the same way that a good thing can be instant, a bad thing can be instant too. You have to be very careful what you do now because people are constantly watching. People think I’m going to be horrible because of my age and then they’re surprised when I’m not. It’s a way of proving people wrong and it shows that you don’t have to put out complete bullshit just because you’re young.
6 things you’d rather be doing than going to a house party
1. The first thing I’d probably be doing is browsing YouTube and watching interviews and performances. Getting locked into a YouTube vortex. I was watching Ed Sheeran interviews last night and then I suddenly got into Iggy Azalea interviews. I don’t know how.
2. Go to my best friend’s house and just spend some time hanging out, because that’s a lot more fun than house parties. Most of the time with us we don’t have a plan, we just end up having fun anyways. Usually doing something stupid.
3. I’ll play guitar or write a song, which is an obvious thing. I tend to write all my songs on guitar or ukelele. I love my ukelele, I just got it last Christmas. If you know guitar you can automatically play the ukelele so that’s good. Plus it’s easier to carry around.
4. I haven’t been to the cinema recently but I do love going. I haven’t seen Jurassic World yet because I’m terrified of dinosaurs. Any movies with dinosaurs just scare me, I have no idea why. I don’t like those pop up scares, so if there are those with dinosaurs then it will scare me too much.
5. I’d probably watch some show on Netflix, because I’ve only just discovered it really. I’ve seen Orange Is The New Black but I need to start season three. I’ve heard it’s not that great though.
6. I like cooking and baking. I don’t know if I’m any good at it, but no one’s died after eating anything I’ve made. I’m more of a baker and I love making chocolate or vanilla cakes, and I love doing an apple pie. What would I bake Beyoncé? Oh god. I’d bake her something with honey it, like a honey cake because of Queen Bee. So I’d make a stupid pun about it and hopefully she’d laugh and we’d eat cake. Imagine if she didn’t laugh! That would be so embarrassing. I don’t know what I’d do – you can’t bounce back from that.
8 things that have inspired your music
1. People – They inspire my music. People that I know and people that I’ve just seen. I love to people watch – I’m creepy like that. I do this thing where you know when you’re in a crowd of people and someone walks by and then you’ll get the last little thing that they said, I’ll usually write it down because I’m a creep. A lot of the time it’s really interesting.
2. Trying to find my own sound – When we made the album we didn’t listen to any other music – I wanted it to be different from other people’s. No music is 100% original of course, but I really wanted to make my own lane which we did I think.
3. Ed Sheeran, Amy Winehouse and Drake – In terms of wanting to be as good an artist as these people I’d probably say those three. I love the honesty in their music. The writing is so different, which I love. With Drake it’s a whole new way of writing and he has this style of writing that’s completely his own. The phrasing he uses is really unique.
4. Travelling – I get more inspiration from a change of scenery. If I’m in the same place for a long time I start losing the inspiration because everything’s the same. I’m travelling so much so all these different places and people are provoking all this inspiration.
5. Literature – I love reading and I love stories in general. I started off writing short stories and poems in school and I just really fell in love with that. I’d write short stories for nobody. I like the different structures authors have, which is kind of the same thing I was saying with Drake – you can tell his songs straight away.
6. Producers – Most producers I like are the ones with their own style, so I love 40 (Noah Shebib) and I love Pharrell. I’d love to work with them someday.
7. Consistency – On my album I’ve worked with this brother duo from Toronto called Kuya Productions, who are really cool. I worked with Pop & Oak, who are awesome, and I worked with Fredro and Malay. So four producers. I wanted to keep the sound really consistent and if it works with a smaller set of producers then why change it? I wanted to stick to a certain sound. Even with co-writers, I kept it small – it’s just me and Sebastian Cole for the whole album.
8. Toronto – There’s a Toronto sound, definitely. It’s very chilled. Subconsciously it’s been an influence on my music I think. The Toronto sound is pretty dark and I’ve grown up loving darker music. To me music is either dark or light and I see music in colour, so the Toronto sound is very dark blue or black.
Credits
Text Michael Cragg
Photography Merideth Truax