While politicians from the U.S. seem hell-bent on ruining the country and trying to bring the world down with it, Alessia Cara, a pop princess from north of the border, used 2017 to make the world a better place, guest-vocaling for world peace.
Born in Brampton, ON, the young Cara got her start like fellow Canadian wunderkind Justin Bieber: a record executive watched her YouTube channel. Fast forward and Cara’s 2015 platinum-selling release Know It All is a bevy of unflinchingly sober-eyed, totally danceable Top 40 anthems. Songs such as “Scars to Your Beautiful” with lyrics like, “You don’t have to change a thing the world can change its heart” became earworms for those of us who need reminding that our tender hearts are not the problem.
But it was in 2017, amid Trump’s tweets, McCain’s votes, Moore’s vile hubris, etc., that Cara did what is so desperately needed. She worked with others to make things better. She brought her gravely gravitas to Zedd sleeper hit “Stay,” grounded Logic’s suicide prevention track, “1-800-273-8255”, and, poignantly, added life to Troye Sivan’s previously released track, “Wild.”
Sivan’s original was dreamy, reminiscent of that last summer before adulthood hits. With Cara, a reckoning is introduced without sacrificing the lightness of the track. Cara sings, “Can we make the most out of no time?” It is an almost impossibly poetic question that, when heard at the end of 2017, highlights the fact that no matter what fortunes befall the United States and the globe, our time is finite, and all we have is each other. FROM BOMB MAG’S 2017 LOOK BACK. READ MORE! CLICK HERE!
