Growing Pains

Alessia Cara was just 18 years old when she released her debut single, "Here," in April 2015. The song became a sleeper hit, charting all over the world. The lead single from Cara's second album, The Pains of Growing, finds her reflecting on her feelings of confusion and isolation as she tries to find peace of mind in the face of her rapid-fire transition from childhood to becoming a young adult and successful artist. Make my way through the motions, I try to ignore it But home's looking farther the closer I get Don't know why I can't see the end Is it over yet? Hmm Cara explained to Genius: "When I was younger, I felt like being able to fulfill all my dreams would make everything okay. And it makes a huge part of my life amazing and lovely, but there's still something there that no circumstance can necessarily fix. I think a lot has to come from you. And I just didn't know how to quite do that yet or where to start."

Hey, hey, hey, yeah, hey, yeah And I can't hide 'cause growing pains are keeping me up at night Cara's chorus relates to her habit of going to bed really late and then staying awake thinking about everything. She explained: "Thinking about my day that just happened. Thinking about the next day that's about to happen. In this case, what was keeping me up at night is just the feeling of sadness and not knowing why, and being mad at myself for being sad. Because I was like, "Why are you sad? What's going on?" And I didn't understand myself. It's frustrating enough that I felt like no one else understood me, but then I couldn't even understand myself. It's like one part of me was mad at the other part of me for being confusing and weird. So yeah, that was keeping me up for a very long time. It's hard to get to sleep and to turn that side off. Especially when you're so distracted throughout the day, you don't have time to even think. And then it just all comes out when you're alone in the dark, I guess."

The song was produced by Cara's frequent collaborators "Pop" Wansel and "Oak" Felder. The production duo's other credits include Big Sean's "Marvin & Chardonnay" and Usher's "Good Kisser."