• Start Date: May 26, 2025
• Doors open: 07:00 PM
• Start Time:   08:00 PM
• Event Location: 777 Homer St, Vancouver  Get directions

ALESSIA CARA

Sensitive, strong-minded, and undeniably soulful, Alessia Cara writes songs that speak to the most hidden parts of the heart. Since signing with Def Jam Recordings at just 18-years-old, the Toronto-based singer/songwriter’s down-to-earth honesty and larger-than-life talent have earned her massive acclaim and countless accolades, including five Juno Awards and a 2018 GRAMMY for Best New Artist. In the making of her fourth album Love & Hyperbole, Alessia brought her newly emboldened vision to a body of work exploring emotional territory previously uncharted in her music: the beautifully strange thrill of finding true happiness.

As Alessia reveals, Love & Hyperbole surfaced from a profound shift in her songwriting approach. “For the longest time I was a very shy writer—I’d write all alone at home, then bring those ideas to my collaborators and build them up from there,” she recalls. “This time I felt unashamed to just grab the mic and work things out in the room, instead of holding back out of some fear of saying a bad idea out loud.” Growing up in a Toronto suburb called Brampton, Alessia first started writing songs at the age of seven after forming an all-girl band with her cousins, then took up guitar at ten. By age 15 songwriting had become an obsession, thanks in part to her discovery of formative influences like Amy Winehouse, Lauryn Hill, and Carole King. When her YouTube channel caught label attention, Alessia made her debut with “Here”—a widely lauded wallflower anthem that emerged as Spotify’s Most Viral Song of 2015 and landed on best-of-the-year lists from the likes of Pitchfork and Rolling Stone. After taking home the Juno Award for Pop Album of the Year with her platinum-certified 2015 full-length debut Know-It-All (featuring the five-times-platinum ballad “Scars to Your Beautiful”), Alessia went on to win the Album of the Year prize for her 2018 sophomore LP Pains of Growing, in addition to achieving such triumphs as teaming up with Logic and Khalid on the eight-times-
platinum, history-making 2017 smash “1-800-273-8255.”

As she reflects on the making of Love & Hyperbole, Alessia notes that the album served as a major turning point insolidifying her identity as an artist. “Every project so far has felt like a step in the right direction, but this album felt more like a leap,” she says. But despite bringing a greater level of confidence to every aspect of the process, she remains fully in tune with her more vulnerable side. “One of the things I hear most often from fans is that my music has helped them feel seen in some way,” she says. “The whole reason I started making music was that I didn’t always feel seen in my own life, so it’s really touching to know that expressing myself might help someone else feel understood. That’s always the goal with my music: to create something very specific and personal to me, but also open enough so that everyone can see themselves in my songs.”