Alessia Cara is the Fresh Face for Female Pop Stardom
/Alessia Cara performs at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, MA on July 30th, 2016 (Benjamin Esakof/Roman's Rap-Up).
Alessia Cara came out on the Gillette Stadium stage like stadium performances were second nature. The up-and-comer is not still up-and-coming; she has already arrived. Take note. The young female artist opened Coldplay’s "A Head Full of Dreams" Tour stop in Massachusetts Saturday night, and she left little room for disappointment. She is only twenty years old and a recent recipient of the industry’s hot spotlight, yet the singer held a sense of professional maturity that surprised me as one of thousands in the concert’s sold-out attendance. Cara adorned a casual, all-black ensemble and piled her dark hair on top of her head in a Sunday-morning-fashioned messy bun. Her face was bare – very little to any blush, liners, or shadows coated it. This alone is notable. So many celebrities and artists perform and present themselves as fashion divas with model beauty that are actually only the production of hours behind a makeup chair. Instead, Cara sang naked of girly standards and sequined tops. That approach only left one thing for her audience to judge: her raw talent.
Alessia Cara performs at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, MA on July 30th, 2016 (Benjamin Esakof/Roman's Rap-Up).
Cara has one of those voices that make heads turn in a crowded room. Her debut album Know-It-All includes a deluxe edition that features thirteen tracks that simply demonstrate why she needs to be valued in the music industry. Her hollow, old-timey tone carries a mixture of Sara Bareilles and Norah Jones; however, her lyrics also have angst and emotion of a barely twentysomething trying to conquer the road of life, love, and happiness while breaking into stardom. Her performance included eight songs off the album beginning with “I’m Yours,” a sassy yet sentimental love song to a boy who breaks down Cara’s tough walls and wins her heart. That’s the important aspect of Cara’s career anchor though her deep vocal range is fit for a speakeasy: she carries punch in her lyrics that hurts upon impact even as a younger performer.
Throughout the set, Cara stopped to introduce songs with that same self-empowerment message throughout translated into different areas of life. “Wild Things,” her performance after “I’m Yours,” embraced all the parts of yourself, while “Four Pink Walls” and “Outlaws” broke out of a comfort zone to embrace a scary, exciting future. However, “Four Pink Walls” is regarding Cara’s career in the spotlight and “Outlaws” is about the serious risks we take for love. All of her moral messages circle back to taking a plunge into the unknown with the confidence of knowing yourself and your worth. This is no more apparent than her closing and most popular song, “Here,” that played on the radio for months. It’s a personal story of Cara’s; how unimpressed she was at a party a few years back; how people tend to put on a front like they’re having a lot more fun than they actually are. She slams high school and college party life by dissecting the different scenarios from that night that are so standard in most party environments. It is important that this was her first breakout hit because it is so different from the other pop songs whose lyrics blend together in similar meaning. “Here” highlights who Cara is, and she sang it Saturday on par with its radio version. I cannot tell you how impressive it is to see this single woman onstage at a place as enormous at Gillette Stadium with a casual yet determined composure about her, a no-fucks-given style from head-to-toe, with only her pure music to present for critique. She’s refreshing; she’s real; she should not be taken lightly.
Check out photos from her knock-out performance below:
