Before her debut album was released, and long before her first single, “Here,” became the ear worm of the moment and a number one song on the American pop charts, Alessia Caracciolo, a.k.a. Alessia Cara, slipped into a small performance space in Harlem to play a few tunes.
Armed with only a guitar and her disarming voice, the young Brampton native, billed simply as Alessia, dropped a number of songs from her debut album to see how they would go over in front of a crowd.
“I made $30 in tips, and I thought that was the best thing in the world,” she says, of the first official gig of her professional career. “And they liked the songs.”
Now, it is hard to make it through a day without hearing one of Alessia Cara’s singles on the radio. Her debut album is beloved by fans and critics alike, and she seems destined for a Grammy Award nomination for best new artist. She was invited to perform “Here” with Taylor Swift at a stop on her 1989 tour, and most recently she toured as the opening act for a pretty decent little band called Coldplay.
“It was one of the best experiences ever,” she says. “We actually have the same agent and on the middle of my last tour, my agent went, ‘Hey they asked about you and want you to tour with them.’ I just said, ‘What is going on?’ ”
Cara grew up in Brampton in a typical suburban household of the Italian variety. She gravitated to music early on and started posting songs on YouTube when she was just 13 years old, first performing a cover of the song “Price Tag” by Jessie J.
It was a few years of happy and anonymous posting before a production company took notice of one particular video of her covering the Neighbourhood’s “Sweater Weather,” and soon her life began to change. And it hasn’t stopped yet.
“I’d been working away at this behind the scenes for many years,” says Cara, who turned 20 this past summer. “Things stared changing very quickly and even now it’s still hard being seen as an artist at all times, rather than just a person.”
Despite her young age, she seems to have some pull with the record label, who obviously recognize the unique talent they have on their hands and acquiesced to their budding star when it came to her debut single.
“I basically just told them, listen, don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s a shot in the dark,” she explains.
“But at the same time, I know how I want to be represented and introduced to world. This song places me how I want to be. I want to be myself. If I started off being someone else, I’d be stuck with that my entire career. I dont’ care how well it does, I just want to be represented with this song.”
Good call.
Alessia Cara plays Massey Hall on Nov. 2 along with Ruth B.
