New York, NY (Top40 Charts) Grammy Award winning singer-songwriter
Alessia Cara releases her highly anticipated second album The Pains Of Growing today via Def Jam recordings/Universal Music. Alessia kicked off her slew of TV appearances over the American Thanksgiving weekend with her profile on CBS Sunday Morning. She will also perform "Not Today" on The
Ellen Degeneres Show today and "Trust My Lonely" on The
Tonight Show with
Jimmy Fallon on Tuesday.
Alessia will also be releasing a 3-episode digital short series called "The More You Grow". Watch her first episode "Crushed Dreams" on her Twitter and Instagram.
The Pains Of Growing, a self-penned, auto-biographical 15-song album that chronicles Alessia's personal experiences over the past several years, is being welcomed with unanimous critical acclaim. "On her excellent second album, Cara really comes of age as a major voice of young-adult disenchantment," writes Rolling Stone's Rob Sheffield in a rare 4-star review. "Cara has grown way beyond 'Here' - but she still sounds loaded with confidence, brashness and a salt mine's worth of party-killer attitude. Her soulful voice has matured, with a touch of Billie Holiday in her upper register.... Cara sees herself as the outsider, the girl on the margins who never fits in. As she shrugs toward the end of the album, 'My kind of fun doesn't make any sense.' But all over The Pains of Growing, she's got a style that's all her own."
"Artfully awkward sincerity defined the Canadian singer and songwriter
Alessia Cara on her 2015 debut album, Know-It-All," wrote Jon Pareles in The New York Times. "Cara's second album, The Pains of Growing, doubles down on both the sincerity - she wrote all the lyrics - and the awkwardness… she is a singer with an agile voice but a young woman still figuring herself out."
"Alessia Cara is growing up before our eyes," proclaimed The
Boston Globe headline. "On her sensitive sophomore record The Pains of Growing," wrote Isaac Feldberg, "Cara acknowledges the pressures of that responsibility by crafting a record mostly about learning to take her own advice... her approach on this follow-up is more measured and introspective, her lyrical concerns more complicated. There's good reason for that; remedying the sometimes written-by-committee feel of her last album, Cara penned The Pains of Growing herself... an album most appealing in its straightforward sincerity."
The run-up to today's highly-anticipated release of The Pains of Growing began as far back as July, when Alessia first performed "
Growing Pains" on Fallon and Colbert, then in
September on The Today Show's outdoor Citi Concert Series.
Exposure continued this month at the MTV EMAs in Spain (where Alessia won Best World Stage Performance for MTV Spotlight @ Hyperplay), then on Austin City Limits, and just days later at her live performance premiere of "Not Today" on VEVO X. Throughout, Alessia has been draped in the same symbolic, oversized suit she wore in the "Trust My Lonely", "
Growing Pains", and "Not Today" videos, and now wears proudly on her new album cover.
"It's an artistic way of symbolizing the idea of growing up," she told the Today crew. "Sometimes you kind of feel like you're drowning and you feel like you're not ready for the roles life throws at you so this was my way of symbolizing it in an artistic way." Alessia clarified on her Instagram: "the oversized suit visually represents the idea of growing up too fast, or trying to fit ourselves into roles that can feel too large to handle. we aren't always prepared for life when it runs towards us full speed. sometimes it feels like we're drowning in it a little, sometimes it's mundane and stagnant. that's what the suit is."
ABOUT ALESSIA CARA:
2018's "Best New Artist" Grammy Award Winning Canadian singer/songwriter and Def Jam Recordings artist
Alessia Cara emerged onto the music scene in 2015 with her global anthem "Here". Cara's first release "Here" grabbed the world's attention when it garnered over 500,000 streams on Soundcloud in its first week, going on to become Spotify's Most Viral Song of 2015 selling over 3 million copies. A five-track EP, Four Pink Walls, soon followed before the release of the full-length Certified Platinum KNOW-IT-ALL. Alessia lent her voice to "
How Far I'll Go", the official song for Disney's animated film Moana, penned by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Her Multi-Platinum #1 hit single "Scars to Your Beautiful" is Cara's gut-wrenching take on female identity, on body image and on deleterious behaviors in the name of beauty. "Stay", her #1 hit with Zedd, has sold over 2 million copies and has been called the "Song of the Summer". "
1-800-273-8255", her most recent #1 smash with
Logic went Platinum 5x, contributing to her 6 global smash hits and 8.5 billion streams worldwide. She was one of the most streamed new female artists of 2017.
Most recently she won the MTV EMA for Best World Stage Performance and released her highly anticipated second album The Pains Of Growing.
