Alessia Cara has become a star very quickly. Her coming out party, which came in the form of the loner anthem “Here,” exposed a receptive world to a soulful R&B sound. Cara’s lament about a less-than-enjoyable party made her a poster child for Introvert Nation at a time when shyness—thanks to writers like Susan Cain and various digital media outlets — has been recast as an identity unto itself.
Def Jam, Cara’s label, soon released more of her songs, several of them country-tinged pop that recall artists like Taylor Swift and Haim. In Cara’s case, that sound tends to go hand in hand with bland, vaguely “rebellious” lyrics. In the pop songs on her Four Pink Walls EP—including the potential megahits “Seventeen” and “I’m Yours”—Cara’s appealing personality is sometimes hard to unearth from under the layers of pop gloss that have been poured on top of her.
But the EP seems to have been what the label was looking for, at least as evidenced by the fact that its five songs have been transposed onto the front of Cara’s debut album, Know-It-All, in the same order, with very few changes made. The speed at which Cara is being groomed and prompted to put out new releases feels distasteful if sadly not unfamiliar, something like an AAU prospect being coaxed to go pro before he’s entirely ready.
In many ways, though, Cara is ready. Her winning personality shines in recent public appearances (watch her slay “Here” on “Late Night on Seth Meyers”), and her voice, with its warmth and character, can transform a so-so song into something far more compelling. She’s able to mine an otherwise simple ballad like “Stone,” from the second half of Know-It-All, as if it were a rich emotional deposit, bringing pathos even to a bland line like, “I think I think too much.”
Though “Stone” is the only song that explicitly features Sebastian Kole, he contributed plenty as one of the album’s producers and a co-writer. Kole, who has been in the factory songwriting system for a little while now also makes his own music. Two things jump out at a first-time listener: his gorgeous voice and painful earnestness. That helps explain why he’s helped construct such compelling vocal showcases for Cara, but also why her punchiness has been overtaken by something more cuddly. (“Wild Things,” which transforms Cara’s grousing into a lame children’s book reference is the most obvious example.)
A Times profile of Cara from May reveals something of Kole’s approach. As a songwriting exercise, he compelled Cara to write confessionals as if they were meant for no one but her — and then email them to him. The sound of those emails may well be reflected in the soppy ballad “Stars.” “I need you, baby I need to, let down my guard, and give you my scars/ Open up my heart and we could be stars,” she sings. It’s easy to see how this form of diaristic writing could be confused with the honesty that made “Here” such a winner. But writing from the heart does not automatically imbue lyrics with depth.
Never is it more apparent that the factory approach is not allowing Cara to fulfill her potential than on “Scars To Your Beautiful.” The first verse is so arresting that I’m tempted to just quote it in full. It’s about a woman who deeply wishes to be beautiful and feels that she isn’t. The verse ends on a showstopping, deeply upsetting line: “She tries to cover up her pain, and cut her woes away/ Cause covergirls don’t cry after their face is made." It is frustrating, though sadly inevitable given Know-It-All’s tendencies, that the chorus then reverts to uplifting pablum. The hook forces itself not only to redeem the devastation of the verse, but to do so cloyingly, without any kind of subtlety or empathy for the subject it rendered so well.
The industry has always wanted its pop stars to be all things to all people, and it’s easier to be kind and inspiring than it is to write songs that can be difficult to hear. But generality is the enemy of good songwriting, which, on some level, Cara clearly knows. She urged her label to release “Here” as a debut single and thankfully they listened. As she gets older, her voice should get stronger, on her own songs, and in fighting to get the right ones made.
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