In her breakout hit, “Here”, Alessia Cara asks to be excused for seeming like an “anti-social pessimist,” but in truth the 21-year-old singer is a determined force for positive change.
“A lot of people call me a rebel without a cause sometimes, but I don’t think that’s the case, I think I definitely have a cause, I’m saying things that I believe in and I’m speaking against things that I don’t believe in…
I think I’m my most powerful when i’m unapologetic and I’m speaking my mind,” she told Billboard in an interview. The Canadian singer has been using her unique voice to deliver a message of empowerment and self-acceptance.
Her song “Scars to Your Beautiful” has been celebrated as an anthem of self-love and acceptance and its accompanying video, which features transgender models and cancer survivors, recently won a “Best Fight Against the System” award at the MTV 2017 Video Music Awards.
“I made [the song] for young women like myself, because I think the media’s beauty standards affect us the most,” she told Teen Vogue. “But it wasn’t until I released the song that I realized how many other people were affected and connected to it, whether it was older men or women. But that’s the beauty of it. It proves that so many people, regardless of if we think so or not, are affected by that kind of message.”
When she realized that her song had touched such a wide range of people she made sure to show all forms of beauty in her music video.
“I wanted all kinds of people — young, old, whatever their situation, whether it’s visible scars, non-visible scars — just a bunch of different women, and there are some men in there as well, because it can reach out to guys too,” she told Cosmopolitan magazine. “I wanted real shots of real people telling their stories, and showing the story through little vignettes.”
