Alessia Cara

I've never really aspired to the spotlight; I just wanted to do music, which is kind of weird because music comes with that spotlight.

'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.

Every time I sing, it it's a reminder to myself that I have to be confident.

I wanted to get through high school anonymously.

I was a troublemaking kid.

My house was very strange. I didn't do things other kids did because my parents were very strict - I stayed at home, quiet in my room.

I was always so scared to sing in front of people. That was kind of my weird thing.

Other than the 'Sesame Street' soundtrack, which I was obsessed with, the first artist I really felt I'd discovered on my own was Amy Winehouse. She was the first female artist I wanted to write like and sing like and be like.

Music was something I found on my own. I got my first guitar when I was around 10, and it just all developed over time.

Ninety per cent of my family are hairdressers, and the other 10% are construction workers.

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 and things like that - it's hard to understand, because it's just me, and I just think, 'What's so interesting about me?'

I barely have time to think. But the best way to stay grounded is to take it one day at a time.

Cats are evil, and they hate me.

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

I don't want to be cliched, but Buckingham Palace is beautiful, and the old red telephone booths are really interesting to me. I've always wanted to see those.

I'm not extremely outgoing, but I'm average, I think. When people meet me they'll say, 'Oh you're not that shy...' I never said I was! I see where they're coming from because my biggest single was about being shy at a party - I get it. But it's not 100% accurate.

In second grade, I told a bunch of kids there was a homeless person living between the portable classrooms outside our school. It caused panic, and the principal had to announce on the P.A. system that no one was living there. I pretended I didn't know who started the rumor.

I do feel pressure from the outside world a little bit just because everybody wants new music, which is really nice. It just proves that everybody likes what I'm doing. But at the same time, I feel like it's important to just chill and experience things and really make the songs true to me.

I think we all have the right to feel 100 percent beautiful and 100 percent confident without pleasing anybody 'cause we're not here for anybody else.

It took me a while to really believe in myself or feel determined about it, but then once I realized that it's possible for anyone, and these people who are singers started off very normal... I realized that it was not that hard to do.