It's been just over a decade since the world was first introduced to a 19-year-old Alessia Cara with "Here." Similarly, it's been nine years since she last hit the Festival d'été de Québec stage. In and out of short-form storytelling to a predominantly younger and women-centric crowd, the Brampton vocalist proved that she's a master of not only the stage, but emotional intelligence.
Alessia Cara, born Alessia Caracciolo, shared that she was days away from her 29th birthday on Thursday night (July 3), sporting striped black slacks and a black bardot top — an apparent uniform on her current world tour behind Love & Hyperbole. Her style is laidback, and so is her stage set-up; a four-member live band accompanied her, standing in front of a velvet curtain-adorned backdrop that projected the title of her latest project.
Cara doesn't hide behind pyrotechnics or back-up dancers. Instead, her live show is anchored by her vocal fireworks and an occasional acoustic guitar solo to keep the audience engaged. She's a ball of energy, jumping from one end of the platform to the next, swaying whimsically while handling a corded mic. The singer-songwriter has an incredible ability to keep her vocals intact while running around, a stamina that separates her from a class of internet pop artists without IRL performance chops.
For a younger crowd, the audience wasn't glued to their phone screens, even though the lack of singing along prompted teasing from Cara about how many people knew some of her deeper cuts. Blank stares didn't seem to faze the crooner at all; she performed newer songs such as "Subside" and "Fire," then moved on to her mega-hits — mainly from her debut album, 2015's Know-It-All — like "Scars to Your Beautiful" and "Wild Things." Here, the projection faded to black and white, as though to signal that performing these songs now feels like a nostalgic look through an old photo album.
The stories she recited covered the relatable woes of being an impressionable 20-something, reflecting on love and loss, as well as early stardom. The overall theme seemed to be a plea to remain hopeful of better days ahead — a message she's proud her younger self was wise enough to follow, even when she felt helpless.
In the sea of teens and adolescents, there were a few middle-aged women who sang along to Cara's older songs with vigour and passion. The Grammy-winning singer's music clearly transcends age, speaking to a woman's experience of embracing the wild, the uncertain and the messy, and finding beauty in it all.
Cara's headlining set felt like an intimate stop on her tour rather than an end-of-the-night festival performance. She shared her hopes for concertgoers to leave her shows feeling emotionally lighter, her soothing sermons between songs and high-energy stage presence breeding an environment for just that: cathartic relief.
If she was a confused and unsettled teenager 10 years ago, Cara has owned her mistakes to confidently come into herself as an artist. By the time she returned to the stage for a planned encore of "Here," she had impressively performed for well over an hour, the crowd mirroring her magnetic energy back to her. She's undoubtedly got the last laugh now.