With her debut album Know-It-All boasting smash hits “Here” and “Scars to Your Beautiful,” Alessia Cara defined herself quickly as one of the most outstanding young voices of the late 2010s. At only nineteen, Cara had three tracks in the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100, and by age 21 had gained four Grammy nominations and one win. Now, marking a decade after her debut, Cara’s new release Love & Hyperbole notes her increased emotional maturity sonically and thematically. Ahead of the album’s Valentine’s Day release, Cara sat down at a press conference hosted by °1824 to discuss her newest project and all the big emotions behind it.
Alessia Cara is here to tell a story of love that feels larger than when we last saw her. This expansion weaves into every aspect of Love & Hyperbole, from the album art and title to the emotional journey of each song on the tracklist. Visually, the album cover boasts a deep wine red, bringing maturity and an element of emotional contrast. “That specific wine color that’s on the album cover just felt very sophisticated and rich, and it has this warmth to it with some cool undertones” Cara notes, “I think the contrast of that…was just very indicative of what the album means to me: how we need contrast in life. I think that’s what makes life beautiful…It just felt like the right thing to represent the music and it just feels like how the album feels to me. This kind of rich, more sophisticated version of myself that has warmth and cool in it as well.”
Even in choice of title, Cara approaches her vision with authenticity and self-effacing humor: “There’s two sides of [the word hyperbole]: using it for humor, but also just being reflective of what I was really feeling in those moments.” “I was definitely using ‘Hyperbole’ in a humorous way…allowing it to pacify some heavier emotions,” Cara explains. She expands, “[The song] ‘Run Run’ …is about me fearing that I'm gonna sabotage [a relationship]. I use a lot of humor in telling this person to run away from me. A lot of the lyrics are hyperbolic, but in a way that soothes that really hard, sad feeling under the surface.” Cara then adds,“There’s the other side to it which is just about how love can be sometimes super dramatic. Especially me. I’m a cancer; I’m a very emotional person” She jokes.“Sometimes, things surrounding love can feel like the end of the world, or the only thing that matters in the world…I think hyperbole is about the exaggerated emotions I [have] truly [felt].”
Reflecting on her personal and artistic growth, Cara acknowledges the contrast of how much evolution she has faced while still feeling so similar. Discussing Growing Pains, the last release from Cara, she explains “The DNA of that album and who I was at the time is still very much there. I think that version of me could look at me now and recognize exactly who this is.” But, Cara’s personal development and artistic narrative have both shifted over time. “There was…this heavy stubbornness, this view of the world [I had] that was a little closed off…I had this fire in me that was fueled by angst.” Cara reflects that she is “a lot softer than [she] used to be” and has expanded in many ways.
This newfound emotional openness is the foundation Love & Hyperbole built itself on, not only in theme but in its artistic process. “The process of making this album felt very different in a good way,” she admitted, sharing that she is “mostly a shy person” who is “very close to the chest” with her songwriting and “very precious about everything that [she does].” “The personal breakthrough for me on this album was…allowing myself to write freely in front of someone else and not worry about [it]…The confidence that I’ve allowed myself to feel is a nice change.”
Specifically noting the track “Fire,” Cara dives deeper into her capacity for vulnerability for Love & Hyperbole, “[‘Fire’], to me, is the first time I’ve ever written a ‘love song’” Cara comments, forming air quotes with her fingers, “without any sort of fear attached to it, or any sort of negativity or stubbornness around it…This song feels super personal to me cause it’s the first time that I've just written about love in a happy free way without inhibitions or fear of anything. It's just like a love letter and that feels very open. I find it a lot easier to write about all the negative stuff I go through. But it's a lot more scary for me to talk about being in love in a lighter sense…it feels more naked, or something.”
Love & Hyperbole marks a definitive change for Cara, her evolution reaching even into her own perceptions about the album’s central theme: love. She shares, “Before, my understanding of love was that [it was]...a noble thing to make yourself smaller for someone else, suppressing myself as an act of love. Now that I’ve had the chance to experience the other side of it, I’ve realized that real love is supposed to be something that expands you…Love makes you bigger instead of smaller.”
When asked to share advice for people who are as young as she was when she rose to fame, Alessia Cara states: “We see pain and loss and joy and love as two different things…I think having contrast in life is super important…You cannot have love and joy without really knowing loss and pain…If you are going through a period of time that’s really difficult, you can reshape that and learn to build around it…I think loss and pain just means that you loved, that you tried your best and that you gave everything to something…That’s where the lesson is.”
With Love & Hyperbole, Alessia Cara continues to refine herself, embracing a concretely wise and uniquely human perspective on love and emotion that is new to both Cara herself and the consistent Cara listener. As Cara continues to evolve, her music serves as a beautiful reminder that love, growth, and life’s contrasts are not just inevitable—they are essential.
