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Review: Alessia Cara makes an auspicious Dallas debut at the Granada

Few things are more important for a new artist than his or her breakout single, the song that ends up serving as an introduction to the world at large. Think about Mariah Carey's "Vision of Love" or Mary J. Blige's "Real Love" — those early shots told us exactly what we needed to know about the artists delivering them.

I kept thinking about artists like Carey and Blige on Thursday evening as 19-year-old Canadian singer-songwriter Alessia Cara took the stage in front of a packed Granada house. Like those groundbreakers, Cara blends old-school soul vocals with more modern pop and hip-hop sensibilities. She's classic but fresh, and her breakout song couldn't be a more perfect introduction.

I'm referring to "Here," last year's sleeper-hit single on which Cara sang from the point of view of an "antisocial pessimist" who'd much rather kick it at home with great music than hold up the wall at a wild party. It's considered an introvert's anthem, with lyrics that go the opposite way of most of the pop songs on the radio.

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"Here," which unfolds like an infectious, melodic inner-rant, was obviously what the full house was waiting for on Thursday. They went crazy and sang every word with Cara toward the end of her short headlining set. But they'd been plenty content leading up to that moment, thanks to Cara's powerful presence and the energy of the four-piece band accompanying her.

(Lawrence Jenkins/The Dallas Morning News)
(Lawrence Jenkins/The Dallas Morning News)

The live players lent some rock urgency to nearly a dozen compositions from Cara's Four Pink Walls EP and Know-It-All LP, both of which came out last year. She was brought out an acoustic guitar to strum (a reminder of her YouTube cover-version beginnings) on a couple of songs, but for the greatest part of the evening the young singer focused on playing to the fans and emoting in front of her mike.

Not all of her songs are as unique as "Here," which is understandable, but everything I heard had hit potential. That included the ebullient new-love jam, "I'm Yours," which opened the show, and self-help ballads such as "River of Tears" and "Stars." Her strikingly mature vocals stood out even more on the coming-of-age tune "Seventeen" and a just-funky-enough rendition of "Four Pink Walls."

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Cara seemed to be a ball of energy throughout her performance, talking a million miles an hour between songs about her own journey and attempting to encourage the young fans in front of her. Before singing "Scars to your Beautiful," she laid out an artistic mission statement of sorts

"Girls go through this thing where we are brainwashed to not like ourselves," she said. "But I realized I am not here to be a supermodel; I'm here to give you what I have from my heart."

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What Cara has to give continues a long tradition of artists who've known themselves and their strengths from the very beginning. The future's bright for this one.

Hunter Hauk on Twitter: @hausofhunter