Alessia Cara Quotes

I’ve never really aspired to the spotlight; I just wanted to do music, which is kind of weird because music comes with that spotlight.

It’s not that I don’t care how I look, but I’d rather turn the attention to the music as much as possible.

When I was really young, I was convinced I wanted to be a visual artist. I would paint and draw and make crafts.

I remember making a ‘thank you’ video when one of my videos got to 50 views!

I loved the Black Eyed Peas. I was obsessed with them, and they were my favorite group ever, and Amy Winehouse, as well; I love her.

For some reason, I’m constantly attacked on social media in terms of how I dress. I’ve never understood that. That’s been very hard.

I think the media can definitely show more diversity – different sizes of women, different colours of women, just more diversity in general.

I’m definitely not a supermodel, a thousand per cent.

I think that my music is really empowering. I just want people to know – especially young people, but really everyone – that you don’t have to be so caught up in what everyone else is thinking. You don’t have to be the coolest, most popular person. You can just be you and be vulnerable.

I’d like to shut off all the noise and allow people to be creative without all the judgments and standards that we think we have to follow.

I think the world is very closed-minded sometimes and very dated. We need to start opening our minds.

Ninety per cent of my family are hairdressers, and the other 10% are construction workers.

Throughout my high school years, I was very quiet, I didn’t have many friends. I distanced myself from a lot of people.

I’m not extremely outgoing, but I’m average, I think. When people meet me they’ll say, ‘Oh you’re not that shy…’ I never said I was! I see where they’re coming from because my biggest single was about being shy at a party – I get it. But it’s not 100% accurate.

Often, as teens, we think we know everything, but actually we’re just trying to figure life out, and we don’t know much at all.

It’s hard to consider myself one when a lot of my fans and people who are calling me a role model are people my age and sometimes older than me. I feel like they’re at the same walk of life that I’m in right now, and they can probably teach me things about life, too.

I feel New York is too crazy for me, especially when you go to Times Square.

I feel like my whole life, I’ve had to prove myself to so many people because I’m young and because I’m a female; it’s just constant. I’m always surprising people.

As a female and someone who’s young, I’m still coming into my own, and I still have struggles. I know how I look; I know what my flaws are – I don’t need anybody to tell me that.

‘Wild Things’ is saying, ‘I don’t have to belong anywhere. This is where I belong.’ It’s a place in the back of my mind that I created, and it’s cool, and I love it here.

In late elementary school, early high school, I started losing my hair in chunks in the shower. It was one of the scariest things. It got to the point where it was visibly gone.

I am stubborn enough to know not to change myself.

I’m here to make music; I’m not here be a fashion model.

I would love to host ‘Saturday Night Live.’ That’s one of my goals in life – just putting that out there. I don’t know if I’m funny enough, but we’ll see.

‘Looking For Alaska’ by John Green is a very great book. I feel like every teenage girl says John Green’s ‘Fault In Our Stars,’ but ‘Looking For Alaska’ is better.

I’ve never been one to crave attention, which I know means that this is probably the worst career to pick. I get anxious even when people come up to me for pictures sometimes. That’s the one thing that makes me hesitant about my future. But I love music too much to not do it.

When I write, I like squeezing as many words as possible into each bar – I’ve listened to the Fugees and Lauryn Hill for as long as I can remember, so probably a big chunk of it subconsciously comes from that.

It took me a while to really believe in myself or feel determined about it, but then once I realized that it’s possible for anyone, and these people who are singers started off very normal… I realized that it was not that hard to do.

I always get criticized for my clothing because I like wearing jeans and T-shirts. There’s nothing wrong with dressing sexy. It’s just I don’t want to be anything that I’m not. I’m not here to be a fashion icon. I am here to make songs.

I’ve never hosted a party in my life, not even my own birthday party. I’d feel really uncomfortable saying, ‘Hey everybody, let’s celebrate me!’ But I’m not antisocial. I don’t hate people.

When you’re from an unknown place, I think it’s hard for you to believe it’s possible. You think you have to go to L.A. or New York to make it, but I don’t think that’s true. I’m glad to be an example that you can make it from where you are. All you need is talent and hard work.

I see songs in colors; I see days of the week. Each day of the week I relate to a gender, and it’s very weird. I can taste words sometimes. It’s very strange.

Realize that everyone that you think is perfect feels like they’re not good enough, too.

I don’t want to have one hit, one song of the summer, and then have me disappear forever. I really want my things to last, and I want my songs and my bodies of work to resonate with people. I want to hit people – at least make a dent in them. I want to make a mark somehow.

I was always so scared to sing in front of people. That was kind of my weird thing.

I guess people don’t think that young girls or young artists have opinions, but I’m so glad that there’s artists like Lorde and Raury and Kehlani because they’re showing other people that young people can have an opinion and a voice and do really well with it. I’m glad I can be one of those people.

I just try to tell my stories in a way that is still light-hearted and fun to listen to. I’m not trying to bash you over the head with what I have to say.

I’m just glad that there’s some diversity in the music industry with women so people know that you can be literally anything and still be able to make it.

The definition of being a feminist is equality, and if you’re not a feminist at this point, then what are you really promoting?

I just dress how I wanna dress. Not to say that I don’t care about how I dress or that I’m a slob or anything like that… I just don’t have to worry about the outside opinions of what people are saying.

I don’t really think I got the full high school experience, only because when I got to high school for the first year, it was grades 9-10. We didn’t have older grades. But besides that, it was normal. It was a regular public school. We didn’t have much going on. It wasn’t too crazy.

Talent is talent, but fashion is separate, and it shouldn’t be used to judge me as a singer.

I love experimenting with clothes for photo shoots, but when I’m onstage, I want to show people that there are other options. You can just be yourself and still make good music.

I don’t wear a lot of makeup ever, even when I do interviews or when I’m on TV. I just keep it me, and I think it’s important to show people I’m a regular person and regular people are beautiful, too.

Every time I sing, it it’s a reminder to myself that I have to be confident.

I never thought I’d have a career because of YouTube.

It’s so cool though when I see thirty-year-old men that are coming in to watch my shows. It’s like, ‘You really like my music? Like a teenage girl, you relate to it?’ It just proves how much people are alike.

All I’m really good at is making music and singing and doing this. I’m not good at fashion, so I don’t see a point in trying to be good at that.

Being in the public eye, you’re always worried about what angle people are going to take pictures of you at. I don’t really care anymore.

I don’t really dance. I don’t drink or smoke. Being at parties is very awkward.

It’s important to show that there’s different ways of doing things. Some people like to be glamorous, and that’s perfectly fine, and that’s amazing. If I were that style, then I would do that. I’d wear heels every day, and I’d strut around in a dress, but that’s not me.

I’m not a fitness model; I’m just a singer. If people focus on that, that’s what I care about.

YouTube is my first love.

I first picked up a guitar when I was ten years old; my parents surprised me with it for my tenth birthday. I started taking lessons when I was thirteen, but only for a few months, and then I just kept teaching myself.

I always find power in struggles. You end up a lot happier that way.

I wanted to get through high school anonymously.

The biggest critics are in the comments online. People are so judgmental of me. It’s like, ‘Why is she wearing this?’ or ‘Why isn’t she wearing that?’ or ‘Why does she talk like that?’ That’s the worst because they’re judging for no reason.

I was always told that music isn’t a ‘realistic’ path to take, and like a normal human being, I doubted myself over and over because I was afraid of failure.

Everywhere I go, every city, they’re always like, ‘What’s in the water in Canada? What’s in the water in Toronto?’

We should just know that we can all create this special, safe place within ourselves that we can feel comfortable in and that doesn’t necessarily have to be with other people.

Once you put songs out, they’re not yours anymore. They’re everyone else’s.

I had a fairly regular childhood. I was a pretty boring kid. I didn’t do much. I was always thinking, but I didn’t really say a lot.

Other than the ‘Sesame Street’ soundtrack, which I was obsessed with, the first artist I really felt I’d discovered on my own was Amy Winehouse. She was the first female artist I wanted to write like and sing like and be like.

When I was shopping around trying to get signed, I made it a point to say, ‘This is who I am.’ I dress the way I normally dress, and I just wanted to find a label that would accept me for that.

People want to create something bigger for themselves, and making up drama that isn’t there gives people the impression that they have haters. It’s all for attention so it looks like they are important.

Music was something I found on my own. I got my first guitar when I was around 10, and it just all developed over time.

I was always singing around the house, even when I was two years old.

I never really necessarily liked being quiet.

I want ‘Scars to Your Beautiful’ to reach different types of women. The girl I am talking about, it’s me, it’s you – it’s every girl who has struggled with feeling not good enough. I want to talk about all the different extremes that girls go through to feel beautiful.

You don’t always have to be popular and do things everyone else is doing.

If I’m kind of an outsider, it just happened that way, and people responded to it.

It’s good to have a reminder that we can love ourselves and be beautiful even though we don’t really fit into certain standards of what beauty may be.

I’d never make something pointless that I don’t believe in. I don’t think I could do it.

As a kid, my parents would always listen to a lot of Beatles, Queen, Elvis. My mom was born and raised in Italy, and my dad was born in Canada and moved back and forth between Canada and Italy, so they would also listen to all the big Italian stars like Eros Ramazzotti, Gigi D’Alessio, Tiziano Ferro, Laura Pausini.

I was a very strange child.

I was a troublemaking kid.

We all act like we know everything in life, but nobody really does. That’s what I want people to realize. For me, I know that I’m the same person. Nothing has changed. My family and friends know that.

I think we all have the right to feel 100 percent beautiful and 100 percent confident without pleasing anybody ’cause we’re not here for anybody else.

As long as each song makes somebody feel something, I think that’s the point of it all. I don’t want it to just be background music, you know?

Cats are evil, and they hate me.