THUNDER BAY – Given the musical talent Canada has produced over the past 60 years, it’s almost surprising that no one from north of the border had ever won the Grammy for best new artist until Alessia Cara came along in 2018.
It’s an award that escaped the likes of Justin Bieber, Shawn Mendes, Alanis Morissette and Avril Lavigne, not to mention Bryan Adams, Celine Dion and Shaniah Twain.
Just 22, Cara hit the big time four years ago, her song, Here, named a can’t-miss track by Spin magazine. She’s since sung a song for Disney, played the Glastonbury Festival, opened for Coldplay and been featured on Saturday Night Live, while performing with the likes of Zedd, Logic and Khalid.
On Sunday night, in front of about 1,200 mostly female fans at the Thunder Bay Community Auditorium, she showed why she found stardom at such an early age.
From the moment she took the stage, which was set up to resemble the inside average home, dressed in a white pin-striped pant suit, Cara owned the venue.
Inspired by the likes of Lauryn Hill, Pink and the late Amy Winehouse, Cara’s powerful voice was quick to connect with the tweens and teens who stood dancing and singing along for the full 80-minute performance.
She kicked off her 18-song set with Growing Pains, seated on a living-room chair, then leapt to her feet and worked her way back-and-forth across the stage, occasionally reaching down to grasp the hands of an excited fan who’d made her way to the edge of the stage, looking to make a connection with a musical idol.
“I hope you like what we’ve done with the place,” said the former YouTube star, who also showed she can play a pretty mean guitar.
“We made this little house. It’s pretty different than what we usually do on tour, but I thought it would be a really good way of describing what this album means and how the whole feeling of the last couple years of my life has been.”
The album is The Pains of Growing, released late last year, a collection of songs on her thoughts on what it’s like to leave your teenage years behind.
She offered up plenty of advice along the way.
Leading into A Little More, Cara said, “This is a love song about being in love and being insecure at the same time,” adding a little insight for a young audience just starting down the romance path.
She also left her fans something to think about a song later, explaining Out of Love, the 11th track on her second album.
“It’s not the easiest question, but I still want to ask it,” Cara said. “How many of you have been heartbroken before? We all have. Judging by the show of hands, we all have, no matter what age we are – whether we’re younger or older. We’ve all experienced some kind of pain or sadness, or maybe someone made us feel bad or someone hurt us before.
“That’s a part of life. It’s a sad part of life, but in the end it’s a beautiful one because we learn and we grow from it.”
The Brampton, Ont. native brought out her inner Disney Princess on the Lin-Mauel Miranda penned How Far I’ll Go, from the hit movie Moana, touched on global turmoil on 7 Days, asking “Mr. Man Upstairs” why the world is the way it is, then ripped off her jacket for Nintendo Games, before telling the crowd to spend a minute letting go of something that’s been dragging them down before launching into Scars to Your Beautiful, the up-tempo closer on her debut album, Know-It-All.
“Thunder Bay, do you have any energy left, by chance?” she shouted, bouncing on a bed to close out the show with Stay, encouraging everyone to sing and dance along to the song, a 2017 collaboration with Zedd, that peaked at No. 7 on the Billboard charts two years ago.
