The Elephant In Every Room

Alessia Cara “Rooting for You”

“Rooting for You” comes from a remarkably healthy place, in emotional terms: Smart enough to know when it’s time to cut a toxic friend out of one’s life, but kind and generous enough to not be especially angry or dramatic about it. Alessia Cara sings no-nonsense lyrics with a lot of warmth, and focuses on a feeling of disappointment when her friend’s issues get in the way of honest communication. The tune has a sunny lightness to it and nods in the direction of a ska groove without fully committing to the genre. The song doesn’t fit into any particular genre, really – it’s that sort of mutt pop that’s a bit of everything and produced with a gloss that makes it difficult to peg down to a particular year. This could be 1998, it could be 2003, it could be 2008, it could be any time since then. As such, it gets to have a vaguely nostalgic feeling about it without recalling any time in particular or feeling at all dated.

Buy it from Amazon.