Alessia Cara - (Isn’t It) Obvious

Some careers burn long and bright and others burn bright and extinguish as quickly as they started. In Alessia Cara’s case, it’s the latter. After her 2015 breakthrough song “Here", she went on a nice run with hits such as “Stay”, “Scars To Your Beautiful”, and the smash hit “1-800-273-8255” with Logic and Khalid. In many ways, Alessia Cara was a clone of Lorde, another young singer who made moody pop that was in stark contrast to the EDM craze of the early and mid-2010s. It was very obvious that her strain of “sad girl” pop was only going to last a few years before another pivot would be needed.

Unfortunately, 2017 marks the last year when she was a legitimate pop threat. In the intervening years, she’s released two unsuccessful albums, with her most recent, 2021’s “In the Meantime”, failing to chart at all on the US Billboard 200 albums chart! It’s been a stunning fall from relevancy for an artist who looked set to have a long respectable pop career. The main issue with Alessia has been that while her songs are catchy and her voice has a unique tone, her bread and butter downtempo songs are no longer in vogue. Also, it’s hard to classify her music as either pop or R&B, which further hurts how she is marketed to the general music listening audience. Every artist needs to have an unique point of view to set themselves apart from the thousands of new songs uploaded to Spotify, Apple Music and all other streaming services each week. That’s another major issue that Alessia continues to have and can be seen in her latest single “(Isn’t It) Obvious”.

In her new single “(Isn’t It) Obvious”, Alessia’s voice is instantly-recognizable and she sounds as good as ever. Granted, her voice is like vinegar so while some may love it, others may find it quickly grating. I’m part of the latter group and was instantly reminded of why I never became a big fan of hers. Her voice really does stay in one place throughout the song, never soaring. My biggest gripe is her poor pronunciation, leaving me scrambling to go on Genius to find the lyrics! When the singing was over and the gorgeous guitar outro came in, my ears felt instant relief. Frankly, this kind of music is not radio-friendly and is definitely geared towards the coffee shop music crowd. There’s simply nothing unique and interesting about this music, but it’s obvious that Alessia is trying to make avant- garde pop even though at the end of the day, she’s a middle-of-the-road bland pop star without a point of view. Maybe you’ll hear this song at Target or at H&M, but I definitely won’t be adding it to my Spotify or Apple Music playlist!