Alessia Cara
Article by Gabrielle Groves
Hosted by: 1824 - UMG’s creative solutions team
Most people may know pop singer-songwriter Alessia Cara from her slow and honest debut single, ‘Here’ from 2015, which samples the 1971 song, ‘Ike’s Rap II’ by Isaac Hayes. Now, she has released her new album Love & Hyperbole, appropriately on Valentine’s Day. The album includes previously released singles such as ‘Dead Man’ and ‘Slow Motion,’ as well as ‘(Isn’t It) Obvious,’ a track with a guitar solo from John Mayer.
Love & Hyperbole is the fourth album for the Grammy, MTV EMA, and Juno winner from Ontario, Canada. Cara, born Alessia Caracciolo, shared on her Instagram Love & Hyperbole is her “favorite album [she’s] ever made.” It follows the 2024 expansion of her 2020 holiday EP Holiday Stuff, and her last full-length album In The Meantime from 2021. Cara had an estimated 46 songs written for the new album, and chose the final 14 based on the strength of the message they send and “sonically what makes sense.” Songs such as ‘Go Outside!’ talk about the crippling fear that comes from agoraphobia. ‘Dead Man’ details dealing with a failed relationship where the other person didn’t put forth the effort they promised they would, leaving Cara “talkin’ to a dead man.” When making the album, Cara says she was influenced by legendary artists such as Stevie Nicks, Fleetwood Mac, Stevie Wonder, and Joni Mitchell.
The soft-spoken singer describes herself as a romantic, but admits her views of love have changed over the course of her music career. She says, “My understanding of love was that you kind of have to make endless sacrifices in order to show someone that you love them… I think now that I’ve had the chance to experience the other side of it, I realized that real love is actually supposed to be something that expands you and shows you parts of yourself that you didn’t know were there rather than suppressing.“ An insightful piece of advice Cara has for young women in similar situations is: “You cannot have love and joy without really knowing loss and pain, and vice versa.”
After already performing ‘(Isn’t It) Obvious’ on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and Good Morning America, Cara announced The Love & Hyperbole Tour with dates for May, April, and June of this year. She also made the cover of Cosmopolitan Italia, and the digital cover of EUPHORIA Magazine. In addition, Cara landed a partnership with Lenovo and Intel, who helped create the trailer for the album. They also filmed a three-episode behind-the-scenes series for the trailer on Cara’s YouTube channel, which joined the lyric and music videos for the rest of the tracks on the album.
