Alessia Cara on ‘Tonight Show’ Breakthrough, Being ‘Terrified of Fame’
A publicist, a label rep and Alessia Cara are huddled around a smartphone in the Victorian lobby of Cara’s midtown hotel, watching a video on Twitter. It’s a short clip of Jimmy Fallon introducing the 19-year-old Canadian singer-songwriter’s performance on The Tonight Show the previous night, her TV debut. Fallon is poking fun at the oft-mocked streaming-music service Tidal, and says he discovered Cara (whose name is pronounced “Ales-sia Cahr-a”) on the site as part of their $20,000-per-two-hours subscription plan. Tidal has responded to Fallon via a tweet.
“Jimmy, we’ve refunded $20,000 on your account,” Cara reads aloud. “Here are free codes on us.”
“That’s so cool! I’m going to tweet that.” Cara exclaims, before thinking a moment longer. “Wait, where’d my thing go?” she asks, referring to Tidal’s omission of her own Twitter handle in the post. “They should give me something too. I’m out on Tidal!” she laughs, before deciding to use the codes to watch a legit stream of the “Feelin’ Myself” video. “That’s the only reason I want this!”
While Cara think of herself as debilitatingly shy, today she’s in an engaging mood, perhaps aided by the mochas that line the table. Still running on adrenaline from the Fallon taping — attended by her parents, her brother, her aunt and her friends, as well as everyone from her label, Def Jam — she’s in New York for another day promoting the forthcoming Four Pink Walls EP, out August 28th, which includes her breakout leave-me-alone-at-the-party anthem “Here.” She heads back to Toronto tomorrow, but today we’re talking about Amy, being discovered online and Frank Sinatra.
What was your first TV performance like?
It was very, very, very, very surreal. Even now that I’ve done it — you can see it and watch it back, and I know that I was there — but I just feel like I wasn’t there. Even during my performance I was like, “What’s going on?” I just blanked.
I like how you shouted out Jimmy at the beginning. After that, it was all you.
That was really fan-girly. I really tried. I knew I had to give my everything, even for him, because he was so nice, I wanted it to be great. I love Jimmy.
Four Pink Walls is your first release. How did you decide what you wanted it to sound like?
When making the album, I didn’t really want to listen to a lot of music or compare it to other music, because as a new artist, I really wanted to be different. Something is always going to sound like something else, but I really wanted to make my own kind of style.
It was difficult for me at first because I had never made a song, so I didn’t know what my style was. But I think it just came naturally. I just started working in the studio, getting to know what the studio was like, what production was like. It just kind of developed naturally.
I knew I didn’t want it to be crazy pop; I still wanted to have this edge to it. I do love pop music, but I do love music that’s edgy and cool, so I tried to incorporate that.
