An open love letter to vulnerability: Alessia Cara discusses her latest album, ‘Love & Hyperbole’
With a fitting Valentine’s Day release on February 14th, Love & Hyperbole is the latest project by the award-winning Canadian singer-songwriter, Alessia Cara.
Her fourth studio album, Love & Hyperbole arrived a decade after Cara’s debut single, Here which went triple platinum in both the US, gaining over 600 million streams since its release. Now with Love & Hyperbole, Alessia has curated even more of her introspective lyrics and soulful sound into what she has called her “best work to date - or at least [her] personal favourite.”
Released via Def Jam Recordings (a division of Universal Music Group), the 14-track album showcases her evolution as a powerhouse vocalist, empathetic songwriter and force of nature.
Before the album’s release, °1824 held a press conference with Alessia to delve behind the scenes of Love & Hyperbole, and here are our highlights from the conversation…
The album cover for Love & Hyperbole features two different versions of you holding yourself in a way that prevents you from falling backwards. Why is this the chosen album cover and how does it relate to the tone of the album?
“In the more literal sense, there’s the ‘love’ and ‘hyperbole’ sides so I wanted to represent their duality. But also, the specific position that I’m in right now is rooted in trust and having your own back but also trusting yourself because if one person lets go, the other is falling.
The sentiment that I wanted to get across on the album is that sometimes when we look at love, we so badly want it to work out and we base how we’re going to feel after on if it works or if it doesn’t, but I think that so much of love and life in general isn’t trusting that the thing will work out, but that you’ll be okay if it doesn’t. I wanted to convey this self-trust on the cover because I think trust in love and life is actually about trusting yourself and having your own back.”
Are there any new themes or experiences you’ve explored on this album that you haven’t before in your music?
“Yeah, there’s a few different ones and, again, on the topic of love, there’s new forms of love that I’ve experienced - like a relationship in love that’s very different from anything I’ve experienced before with a sense of security and comfort that’s allowed me to feel so much more like myself.
I also explored other topics in more detail than what I’d done before like impermanence, getting older and death - all the things like that have always made me really afraid. In Love & Hyperbole, I talk in a really open way about the fact that life passes so quickly and the sadness that I feel about that. It just takes getting older and older to be more conscious of that. Right now, I’m the youngest I’ll ever be but also the oldest I’ve ever been so I do feel that really heavily.”
All the visuals we’ve seen so far relating to Love & Hyperbole have included vibrant shades of red - sometimes they stand out against black, sometimes they’re integrated into the environment. How would you say that these visuals relate to the themes of the album?
“I have always been this way and always related colours and shapes and whole universes to every song and project of mine. I don’t know if that’s related to the thing I have called synesthesia but I have this thing where I see colours when I hear sounds and that’s always helped be a catalyst for what I wanted the different album worlds to look like. It’s inspired a lot of the visuals because I just have so many images in my mind and so, for this album, the obvious answer would be ‘love’ because we see the imagery of red when it comes to Valentines Day and things like that.
I also think red - especially that specific wine colour that’s on the album cover - feels very sophisticated and rich, and it has this warmth to it with cool undertones and I think the contrast of that is very indicative of what the album means to me. It’s all about contrast and how we need that in life; those two things, the negative and positive working in tandem. It just felt like the right thing to represent the music, and the album feels to me like this more rich and sophisticated version of myself.”
Which track from Love & Hyperbole feels the most personal to you, and why?
“There’s one song on the album called Fire that to me is the first time that I’ve ever written a love song without any fear, negativity or stubbornness attached to it. When I go to write love songs, there’s always an angle of melancholy or fear and I always have to put a negative spin on it because that’s just how my brain works and I tend to get negative sometimes when it comes to love and the outcomes of love.
This song is super personal to me because it’s the first time that I’ve just written about love in a happy, free way without ambitions or fear of anything - it’s just a love letter and that feels very open. I find it a lot easier to write about all the negative things I go through but it’s a lot more scary for me to talk about being in love in a lighter sense. It just feels more naked, so this song is super personal and it’s strictly a love letter to someone in my life. There’s no bells and whistles which feels scary but also so freeing and exciting.”
What were the easiest and hardest songs to write on the album?
“Obvious felt like it just came out of me and same with fire even though it was an open song to write, those two songs felt like they already existed in a way and I just caught them somehow. Some of the songs that weren’t necessarily hard but took on different forms and new lives throughout the process were Slow Motion and Nighttime Thing. Those songs, we had to fine tune and evolve a little bit to get them to the place that I wanted to get them to, so they were some of the more difficult ones to nail.”
Can you share how to theme of ‘hyperbole’ translated into the storytelling of this album?
“I was definitely using hyperbole in a humorous way and kind of allowing it to pacify some of the heavier emotions. The song, Run Run is about me fearing that I’ll sabotage something really great and potentially beautiful, and I use a lot of humour there to say that in a hyperbolic sense to really soothe that hard, sad feeling under the surface.
There’s also the other side to it which is about how when you’re in love in a positive way or feeling heartbreak in a not-so-positive way, a lot of those things can feel super dramatic. Especially for me, I’m a Cancer and a very emotional person so sometimes love can feel like the end of the world and the only thing that matters so the hyperbole there is about the exaggerated emotions that I was truthfully feeling.”
What was the most impactful part of the production process?
“The most impactful part this time around was the fact that I had the chance to record 90% of this album live with live musicians in the room. We had an orchestra, string players, a horn section and a bunch of musicians came in so we got to feed off of each other’s energy and that just felt really cool and different. I love live music so much and so much of the music I love is from the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s that was all made predominantly live - even with the singing being one or very few take all the way through.
Getting to do that this time around and make the music that I’ve always wanted to make in the way that I’ve always wanted to make just felt super exciting. You just get a different outcome when you’re all in the room together and there’s nothing quite like a bunch of people jamming - I feel like that’s how music is supposed to be and I’m really glad I got to do that for this album.”
Are there any artists you love from those eras that you felt influenced the creation of Love & Hyperbole?
“There’s so many! When I’m looking for a fresh perspective or inspiration, I tend to go back in time. I love Fleetwood Mac so I was listening to a lot of them, as well as Stevie Nicks, Joni Mitchell, Otis Redding, Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel, The Beatles and Bob Dylan - just a bunch of legends. They’re people who have informed a lot of what music is now, and I think it’s always good to go back to the source and to a time where music just felt more free and had that live element.”
You grew up in Brampton, just outside of Toronto, where the music scene was much larger. How did your upbringing in a smaller city influence your perspective on music and the way you approach songwriting?
“I’m very fortunate to have grown up in a city that celebrates so many different cultures, religions and ethnicities. People always say that Canada is like a ‘cultural mosaic’ and it definitely informed a lot of my songwriting because of the openness that it brought me and the understanding of the world when you’re able to speak with people from different backgrounds and walks of life. It really expanded my horizons emotionally and I think Toronto has such a sound and identity for music that’s been formed over the last couple of years, so that’s also very influential, too.”
In your interview with the Toronto Star, you said that you wanted this album to feel softer and more romantic than your previous work. What was that transition like when writing this album, and how did it feel to dive into different emotions in order to spark your creativity and write the music?
“The experience admittedly was kind of challenging in the beginning because I’ve had a certain voice for so long lyrically and it’s always kind of challenging to talk about things when they’re good in life. At least for me, to find inspiration in happiness can be challenging because I’ve always gathered my inspiration from pain and things that didn’t feel so good.
We don’t usually vent and complain when we’re happy - it’s when there are things that we don’t like that we want them out of our bodies. So, it was interesting to find a new voice and angle for me. It was a good exercise to do something that didn’t necessarily feel super intuitive but that was exciting and new for me. It was a good challenge and I feel like now, it’s a lot easier to write from that place because I’ve trained that muscle a little bit. I felt like I needed a break from talking about too many sad things - even though there’s a lot of sad songs on this album because this took place over the course of three years so there were a lot of sad feelings going on. Just because I’m a lot better than I used to be doesn’t mean those negative feelings don’t still come up, but it was really nice and I’m glad that I challenged and pushed myself to write from a different place because the outcome just feels fresh and happy.”
With such a diverse audience, how do you balance staying true to your creative vision while also connecting with so many different listeners?
“That’s always a tightrope that you kind of have to teeter on because on one end, I love to be self-indulgent and explore and make whatever the hell I want to make because it’s fun but I’m also mindful of the fact that there are people listening to my music who look to me for guidance, relatability and the understanding that someone’s in the same boat as them. Whilst I try to make my songs very personal and specific, I try to keep them also universal enough that if someone’s listening, they’re not just thinking of my life but their own.
It’s a balance between writing about yourself and doing things to indulge your own creativity and sooth yourself, but also understanding that there are people who have to relate as well. I do think it’s the job of an artist to some degree to speak of their own experience but to reflect the times and the people who are listening as well.”
Do you consider yourself to be a romantic, and how do you think your views on romance have changed throughout the years?
“I definitely would say that I’m a romantic, and even was in the times when I didn’t want to be and was shamefully one because of the outcomes of some of the romances that I experienced in my life. Begrudgingly, I was one and still am one now, but I think my view of love has definitely changed now that I’ve had the chance to experience a real love that I want and have always kind of strived for.
Before, my understanding of love was that you had to make endless sacrifices in order to show someone that you love them. To some degree, I think that’s true but what I took as ‘sacrifice’ was actually me making myself very small and suppressing myself as an act of love because I thought that’ what real love was supposed to be about. Now that I’ve had the chance to experience the other side of it, I’ve realised that real love is supposed to be something that expands you and shows you parts of yourself that you didn’t know were there, rather than supress yourself. Real love makes you bigger, not smaller.”
Were there any moments while making this album that felt like a personal breakthrough?
“Yes, honestly! I’d say that the process of making this album felt very different for me in a good way. I’m mostly a very shy person especially when it comes to songwriting as I’m very close to my chest and precious about everything that I do. In the past, I’d have to go into the studio with an idea already or song already done just because I was scared of saying a stupid idea in front of someone. I always thought that if I went into a studio and I couldn’t write anything that day or nothing came to me that I would’ve been wasting someone else’s time and not proving that I was good at my job.
The personal breakthrough for me on this album was just going in with a stranger and having nothing to say at first but just trying things in front of them and mumbling, saying stupid ideas and not being too precious about it.
With Love & Hyperbole, I allowed myself to write freely in front of someone else and not worry about wasting their time. It’s never a waste of time if you go in and try: if you get it, you get it but if you don’t, you try again the next day. To learn to meet new people and just try things was my biggest breakthrough with this album. This new process of writing and the confidence that I allowed myself to feel was a really nice change.”
You mentioned writing over 40 songs for this album before narrowing it down to 14. What was the process of elimination like for you? How did you decide which songs would make the final cut, and what qualities or factors made a song stand out as essential for the album?
“It’s a tough one because I think the exact number that I wrote was 46 or 47 songs. It was really challenging because each song of mine, I take super seriously. I always go in writing about very real feelings, so each of those songs were very real to me and it’s tough to understand and differentiate between what’s worth saying, what will relate to the most people, what fits best and belongs within the world of the album and what song conveys each feeling in the best way.
I had to let some songs go that I really love - and can maybe find new homes down the line - but I think really it’s about sonically, what makes sense, which song conveys each feeling in the best, most well-rounded way and which duet would I miss the most if it never came out?”
Three tracks from the album were first released as singles: Dead Man, (Isn’t It) Obvious and Slow Motion. These show different dynamics and stages of being in a romantic relationship, but all exist on the same album about love. Would you consider a track like Dead Man a love song, and what does a love song mean to you?
“I guess there are a few definitions so in some ways, Dead Man could be considered a love song but maybe not as a song about active love and the kind that I necessarily want for my life. I do think there’s a form of love there, but it’s more of the idea and potential of a person which I know we’ve all gone through - maybe holding onto someone longer than you should because of who that person could be for you, or who they used to be or who you thought they were.
There’s an element of love there, but it’s the ending of love and seeing the end of something as it’s just beginning and bracing yourself for impact. I do think there is still real love there even though it’s maybe not the love you want or can have forever, it’s still valid and real just shaped a little differently.”
You’ve had several remixes of your songs, but do you have a personal favourite and what excites you most about hearing your music reimagined by other artists?
“It’s always really cool to hear my music like that because it just brings a whole new life to it. It’s so interesting because you don’t realise how much the production and bed underneath a song can change the feeling of it so much and change it altogether.
I’ve always loved listening to the Here remixes and there’s one on TikTok I’ve seen where it’s sped up and I’ve always thought that one was really cool. It just gives it a different feel - they changed the production, sped up my vocals and pitched them so I thought that was really cool. There’s also one where they slowed it down and it reminds me of those bootleg songs you’d find on YouTube.
I’ve love it and invite it too, and that’s why I release acapella versions of songs and the stems because I encourage people to do different things with the songs. It provides them with new meanings and lives every time.”
Your 2018 album, The Pains Of Growing, resonated with many young girls as they learned how to sit with themselves and become more comfortable being alone and growing up. From then to now, how have you navigated that journey, and has the narrative of it changed for you?
“I feel like on one side of it, I’m the exact same person and the DNA of that album and who I was at the time is still very much there. That version of me could look at me now and recognise exactly who I am, but I’ve also changed so much since then, too.
My early albums like Know-It-All and The Pains of Growing had this heavy stubbornness and view of the world that was very closed-off, and I had this fire in me that was fuelled by angst and there’s a lot of stuff in there that’s just not there anymore. Now, when I look back, I feel a lot softer than I used to be and a lot more expanded in so many ways. That stubbornness and default melancholy is still there but I feel like I just have a different view of the world and of life now. I’ve used a lot of those negatives traits about myself and harnessed and reshaped them to learn how they can actually help me now in my life. I’ve used those feelings of nostalgia and difficult emotions I was always feeling to allow myself to stay more present and have turned them into something that I feel more proud of and am able to cope with better.”
With such rapid success in the beginning of your career, what has kept you motivated throughout the release of your fourth record?
“It’s important no matter how much success you have or how early on it was to continue to have goals and work towards something, even if it’s not necessarily concrete. I always try to reshape the goal to myself and think: what do I want to challenge myself on for me and my own personal life rather than saying I want to do ‘this’, ‘this’ and ‘this’ in my career.
I think having expectations can kind of sabotage your creative process when you’re trying to make something that will specifically be aiming for one thing. I also think it’s strange to compare yourself to things you’ve done already and your younger self because you’re always kind of looking backwards and I don’t think that’s healthy. It’s challenging when you’ve had all those things young because you tend to compare yourself and be compared to an older version of yourself, so comparison is the thief of joy for sure.
On one end, I try not to focus too much on expectation, but on the other to maintain goals that are healthy because it’s important to have goals and not think that you’ve already done it all. For me, those goals have become more personal rather than tangible and material.”
Adolescence is full of big emotions, self-reflection and a little bit of hyperbole where everything feels like the biggest moment of our lives. How does Love & Hyperbole capture that feeling, and what advice would you give to young women navigating their own intense highs and lows?
“Its tough to say because when I think about what people will take from this album, I hope that they’ll just take anything and I don’t want to tell people what to feel because they might feel something totally different from what I initially intended but it’s still very real, valid and important.
The one thing that I hope people take from it -especially young women - is the fact that we see pain and loss, and joy and love as two different things but I do think that having contrast in life is super important. Especially as young women in this day and age there’s a lot of insecurity, fear and pain that we go through but if you were to crack it open and look inside it, ultimately you’ll see a lot of wanting to love. You can’t have love and joy without really knowing loss and pain and vice versa.
I hope that if people are going through a period of time that’s really difficult or hard, they know that you can can reshape it - instead of pushing it away and thinking that it’s bad - you can use it to teach you so many things and inform so much of who you are now and in the future. You will get on the other side and learn to build around it, but loss and pain just mean that you loved and tried your best. To give everything to something is where the lesson is, so never push away those feelings or feel as if it’s a loss in itself to feel that, because you’ll always gain something from it.”
In celebration of the album’s release, Alessia has since announced her ‘Love & Hyperbole Tour 2025’ with dates across North America, Australia and Europe:
Whilst we wait for tour to begin, make sure to follow Alessia on Instagram and stream the rest of her discography on Spotify:
