Alessia Cara | Understanding Duality, Mental Health | Ep. 109

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Welcome to the Pretty Intense podcast today we have Alessia Cara. Alessia is Canadian. bet you didn’t know that. Alessia was 2018 Grammy winner for "best new artist." She has her third album coming out, called In "The Meantime." Two songs on the album are rooted in duality. A topic we love. These two songs are Sweet Dream and Shapeshifter, which you should check out her great videos for these songs on YouTUbe. Alessia is a really insightful deep thoughtful young woman. She’s in her mid-20s talking about some hugely mature concepts. We are talking about the inspiration behind this album, and the things that she went through last year that let her to where she is today. Alessia's vulnerability is really endearing and I think that’s why her music resonates with so many people. This album is full of big songs that came from some of her sleepless nights, and some of the discomfort she had. Insomnia, anxiety, which so many of us have gone through in the last year. She turned that discomfort into art. Alessia is a really beautiful soul, brave, vulnerable, very honest and a damn good singer so enjoy the interview.


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Alessia Cara uses pop music as a diary. Over the last five years, she has matured alongside her audience, first capturing the highs and lows of adolescence with camera-like clarity, and then documenting her first, tentative steps into adulthood on deeply resonant songs like “Trust My Lonely” and “Out Of Love.” Now, she looks inward—again—on album number three. In the Meantime reflects on a period of intense self-doubt and traces the Grammy winner’s slow journey back to happiness. “There's a sense of duality to this entire project, that’s the common thread,” Cara reveals. “It's introspection and despair, followed by the first inkling of hope.”
The 24-year-old teases both ends of that spectrum on the album’s first two singles. “Shape Shifter,” a feisty, mid-tempo bop, represents the dark, while the instantly catchy “Sweet Dream” symbolizes the light. The former was recorded in producer Salaam Remi’s home studio—a holy place of sorts for Cara. “I was super nervous because that was where Amy Winehouse wrote all her music,” she says, still in awe. “I remember thinking, ‘Amy if you're out there, please don't let me look dumb!”
A sweeping kiss-off that oozes attitude and swagger, “Shape Shifter” has all the elements of a summer smash. “I felt a little mistreated by somebody and a little wronged,” Cara admits. “I was in a period of my life where I was just mad at the world.” She channeled those feelings into a fictional narrative about a cheating husband. “The song would be the wife’s response,” she explains. “It ended up just coming out of me. I don't know if it was the universe or maybe Amy really had my back.”
“Sweet Dream” is similarly multi-layered. The song explores pandemic-induced anxiety and insomnia, not that you would know it from frequent collaborator Jon Levine’s bright, breezy production. “I like writing darker lyrics over the top of a lighter instrumental. I've always enjoyed that juxtaposition,” Cara says. The result is one of 2021’s most deceptively hard-hitting earworms and another reminder that nobody does relatable pop quite like the “Here” hitmaker.
Speaking of that ubiquitous loner anthem, Cara’s early success informs her new music—at least indirectly. “I think being thrust into the music world at 18, I never really had the chance to process my emotions,” she says. “Now that I've had a year of stillness [due to the Covid-19 pandemic], I realize how special and insane that time in my life was.”

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