Alessia Cara

“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 Ita...”

“Flannel shirts, denim, Converse, a guitar, messy hair? That's literally me.”

“I think all teenagers feel a lot of things at once; everything's going crazy in our brain.”

“'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...”

“When I was eight, I told my best friend I got a Hilary Duff autograph, but I just signed it myself.”

“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.”

“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 subconscious...”

“Singing was something I always did. I really don't remember a time when I wasn't singing, even as a little child.”

“I like to mimic accents. I don't even know if that's a talent. That's just a weird thing that I do.”

“Canada is a really big melting pot of cultures, so we ended up with a giant mosaic of different music.”

“Maybe I'm not a typical pop star, but I don't think there's a mould for a pop star or singer. You can do whatever you want.”

“I want to show people that I am comfortable enough to go on national television and just be myself.”

“I grew up in this little city called Brampton. It's pretty suburban - there's not a lot going on. In my neighbourhood, specifically, there weren't a lot of other kids so I would just spend a...”

“It's amazing: it's so cool being from Brampton, Ontario, and being able to travel the world and being embraced by so many countries.”

“The fact that there's people out there that care about what I'm eating for breakfast or care about a tweet that I posted in 2012 that they pulled up because they were searching on my Twitter...”

“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 beaut...”

“I think fame is such a scary thing, and it's something I can never understand. It's terrifying, but it's the only way I get to do what I love every day, you know?”

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