Alessia Cara’s Love & Hyperbole Is Her Most Vulnerable Work To Date
Samantha Colleran, February 2025
Alessia Cara’s album Love & Hyperbole released last Friday, February 14th, comes a decade after her debut single “Here”. Since her arrival on the music scene, Alessia has released countless hits, earned a number of awards including Best New Artist at the 2018 Grammys and 5 Juno Awards, and has connected with fans worldwide with her introspective lyrics. Despite receiving a number of gold and platinum certifications for previous works, Alessia has deemed Love & Hyperbole her personal favorite work to date.
Alessia grew up in Brampton, a city just outside of Toronto, which exposed her to a wide variety of music. She describes Brampton as a cultural mosaic; she grew up celebrating many cultures, religions, and ethnicities, which would later inform a lot of her songwriting due to having an openness and understanding of the world. The Toronto scene helped her develop her musical identity by expanding her emotional and creative horizons.
Whenever Alessia needs a fresh perspective or some musical inspiration, she turns to music released in the 60s and 70s. Some of the artists she looked to when working on Love & Hyperbole include Fleetwood Mac, Joni Mitchell, Stevie Wonder, Otis Redding, Billy Joel, Bob Dylan, and The Beatles, to name a few. She describes the music of the past as more free, and much of it was recorded live, a feeling Alessia worked to capture on her own album.
Previous albums of Alessia’s have a more closed off element that reflect her stubbornness and hesitation to let the world in. Although she still feels like the exact same person, she recognizes how much she’s changed her outlook on life and become softer as she’s evolved in her artistry. On this album, she works to turn the negatives into positives. Alessia expands on some different topics than in previous releases. Since the release of her 2021 album In The Meantime, Alessia has experienced new forms of love. The relationship was different from anything she had ever been in before, she felt as if she could be more herself. In previous relationships, she felt as if she needed to make herself smaller, when in reality, love is supposed to make you bigger and show you parts of yourself you didn’t know were there. Other topics of exploration throughout the 14 tracks include impermanence, getting older, death, life passing quickly, things that scare her.
The album cover represents the duality of love and hyperbole. Alessia chose to have the cover art be two versions of herself holding each other up, which is rooted in trust and having your own back. When looking at a love we want to work out, we base our self worth on whether that love works out or not. The art conveys the idea that as long as you trust yourself, things will be okay regardless of whether the love works out or not. Alessia has synesthesia, which causes her to see colors when she hears sounds. It’s a major player in how she develops the universes in which her songs and albums exist. For Love & Hyperbole, Alessia felt that a wine red would best suit the album. It’s sophisticated and rich with warmth and cooler undertones, the contrast felt indicative of the album’s overall themes.
The process of creating Love & Hyperbole was different from her normal approach. She’s often shy when it comes to songwriting, holding every song she writes close to her heart. In the past, she had been afraid to come to writing sessions without any ideas in fear of wasting people’s time, or a fear of sharing an idea that sounds silly. With this album, she challenged herself to try new things and share new ideas with the strangers she had never written or worked with before. Nearly all of the album was recorded live. Alessia traveled to different studios to work in person with musicians. They all fed off each other’s energy, and it felt special for Alessia to be making the music she wants to make in the way she’s always wanted to make it. When you’re face to face with the people you’re creating with, there’s a more raw element to the music that comes out of the sessions.
Alessia uses hyperbole in a humorous way to pacify her emotions throughout the album. Take “Run Run” for example; she turns her fear of sabotaging something great or beautiful into a more humorous approach. When you’re in love, a lot of emotions can feel dramatic or larger than life. Alessia exaggerates her emotions within the lyrics because they felt so exaggerated at the time she was experiencing them. She also wanted to convey a more romantic feeling than previous releases. She’s had a particular voice in music for a long time which centered around some darker topics, breaking out of that mold can often be challenging. She steps into this new voice with such ease, it seems so natural for her.
The most personal track on the album is “Fire”, a love song written with such excitement and freedom you can feel the passion in the lyrics. It was one of the easiest tracks on the album for her to write. When writing about love, Alessia tends to write about the more negative outcomes or the fear about falling in love. It was scary to write something a bit more lighthearted, but it existed somewhere within her, and letting it pour out of her was cathartic.
Alessia hopes that fans who have been along for the ride with her for some time can hear the evolution of her art both sonically and lyrically. If you’re a new listener, Alessia is ready to welcome you with open arms and continue growing the family! With Love & Hyperbole, Alessia hopes listeners can see the beauty in the contrast in pain and joy, love and loss. Loss and pain, Alessia says, simply means you’ve loved as hard as you could and truly given it your all.
Love & Hyperbole is available on all streaming services. To keep up with Alessia Cara, you can follow her on Instagram, and check out the tour page on her website to see if she’s heading to a city near you!
Thanks for sharing. Love her boice. Looking forward to listening to her new music !