Alessia Cara gets reflective about ‘Growing’
Few artists capture young people’s anxieties better than Alessia Cara.
Since breaking out in 2015 with what has been dubbed the ultimate introvert anthem, “Here,” the pop singer has used her music to speak out about topics such as body positivity (“Scars to Your Beautiful”) and suicide (Logic’s “1-800-273-8255,” on which she’s featured). Now, she’s back with thunderous new single “Growing Pains,” which wrestles with loneliness and taking on adult responsibilities. Cara, 21, says she got the idea for the song a while back but didn’t sit down to write it until about a year and a half ago, when she was on tour.
“The beauty of pain, in a weird way, is that it’s temporary and we can grow from everything we go through.”
“One day on the bus, I was feeling very down,” says Cara, who took home the best-new-artist Grammy Award in January. “I was confused about myself and my place as a person and just this weird identity crisis at age 19. So I went to the back of the tour bus and thought I would write the song that day, because I was really in the thick of it.”
True to form, her lyrics are conversational and almost diary-like, employing vivid wordplay as she admits her tendency to overreact. (“A short leash and a short fuse don’t match.”)
“In many ways, I’ve felt like I’ve been on a short leash, whether it’s because my privacy has been compromised now that I’m in the industry, or because of the responsibility and pressures of it,” Cara says. “But also emotionally, I felt like a lot of the time my emotional state was always restricting me from being truly happy and finding myself, and that was really confusing for me. And then, of course, the short fuse aspect is just my personality. I am a very anxious person and feel things very, very intensely.”
Later in the song, she talks about the sadness of being away from her family because of her hectic work schedule, confessing, “Don’t know if I even care for ‘grown’ if it’s just alone.”
“I don’t get to be home with them because I’m waking up in a different place every day, for the most part,” Cara says. “There is loneliness in that, and I feel like I’m missing out on my brother growing up and being around my parents. I know it’s for a good reason, but it’s hard sometimes.”
While “Growing Pains” comes from a vulnerable, frustrated place, Cara hopes fans will hear its message of strength in getting through the bad times.
“It’s good to show the negative side of things, because sometimes we can find comfort in the fact that there is someone else going through the same thing that you are,” Cara says. “I also want to be positive and remind people that everything is temporary. The beauty of pain, in a weird way, is that it’s temporary and we can grow from everything we go through.”
“Growing Pains” reteams Cara with frequent collaborators Pop & Oak, the production duo behind many of the tracks on her debut EP, “Four Pink Walls,” and album “Know-It-All.” It’s the first single from her forthcoming sophomore album, “The Pains of Growing,” which she plans to release in September. Its “reflective” new songs, she says, are structured as a story and inspired by the past three years of her life.
“‘Know-It-All’ was a very fist-in-theair, sort of teenage rebellion album,” Cara says. “This one is more personal and introspective, and it’s less about angst and more about facing problems, rather than rebelling against them. It’s letting everybody know the truth about how I feel. I don’t think I’ve really done that in detail in the past.”