It’s hard not to like Alessia Cara. The 19-year-old Canadian singer-songwriter, with her smile and sweetly self-deprecating between-song banter, typifies everything both endearing and enthralling about young North American pop stars. Say what you like about her countryman Justin Bieber, but Cara sits not far from where he once was: like him, her YouTube covers of other people’s hits led neatly from strumming a guitar at home to a major label contract.
In Cara’s case, that’s a deal with Def Jam records, who are due to release her debut album following the recent EP Four Pink Walls. That collection’s title referenced the pink room in which, as an adolescent, she sang and recorded covers of acts like fellow teen alt-popper Lorde and pop-rock band the Neighbourhood. A few years on, Cara’s earning Twitter endorsements from Taylor Swift. But you can hardly tell: she’s still in that fresh stage of her career, not yet dead-eyed and jaded.
At this first-ever London gig, she’s also bashfully on the charm offensive. She opens with I’m Yours, coating its mix of electropop and light hip-hop with the breathy voice that first made her YouTube covers stand out. Whether flouncing across the stage or grinning at the crowd before covering Drake’s Hotline Bling, Cara trills meticulously over songs that show a musical depth belying her age. She’s at her most evocative on Here, a song about feeling out of place at a party while paradoxically hosting a shindig of her own.
After politely shouting out Sebastian Kole, her co-writer and opening act, she debuts a new song about body image, reminding us all to love ourselves. What could seem saccharine in other artists’ hands appears genuine with Cara, as when she says: “let me drink one more time” – and swigs from a bottle of water rather than a glass of booze. Perhaps this promising young talent has learned from Bieber’s mistakes.
