Four Pink Walls

Album: Four Pink Walls (2015)
Play Video

Songfacts®:

  • Alessia Cara had the idea for this song prior to her music career taking off, but she wrote a big chunk of it more recently now she's away from home a lot. "I wanted to tell the story while it was happening," she told MTV News. "I wrote the rest of it on the way to the studio in the car."

    "This one is more personal to my life and what I went through but anyone who has a dream or a goal can relate," Cara continued. "When you wake up in a different place every day, you forget where you are sometimes. I used to hate being in my room all the time, but now I wish I could just go back there, so I can just be normal for even a day. It's like bittersweet feelings."
  • The four pink walls represent Cara's childhood bedroom, where she spent much of her time. "I was constantly in my room, I wouldn't do much else," she told iHeartRadio. "I was pretty much a loner as a child, and I always aspired to do all these amazing things with my life, and I had all these big dreams, but my dreams were way bigger than what I was doing, and they were way bigger than my life at the time. So I was so oblivious and ignorant to the life outside of my four pink walls.

    Then, once my dreams came true, and everything that I wanted came true, like right now, it's happening slowly. I'm starting to realize how I'm seeing those walls less, and less, and less, and that can be a very contradicting feeling. Because it can be happy, obviously it's a great thing, but then also I start to realize how much I miss them now. So it's just about that, and about me wanting to live my dream."
  • Alessia Cara is especially proud of this track as it was the first song that she had written completely by herself. She told HMV.com: "It was just me and a producer with me dictating everything so that feels like a personal accomplishment."

Comments

Be the first to comment...

Editor's Picks

Timothy B. Schmit

Timothy B. SchmitSongwriter Interviews

The longtime Eagle talks about soaring back to his solo career, and what he learned about songwriting in the group.

80s Video Director Jay Dubin

80s Video Director Jay DubinSong Writing

Billy Joel and Hall & Oates hated making videos, so they chose a director with similar contempt for the medium. That was Jay Dubin, and he has a lot to say on the subject.

Let Me Be Your Teddy Bear: Teddy Bears and Teddy Boys in Songs

Let Me Be Your Teddy Bear: Teddy Bears and Teddy Boys in SongsSong Writing

Elvis, Little Richard and Cheryl Cole have all sung about Teddy Bears, but there is also a terrifying Teddy song from 1932 and a touching trucker Teddy tune from 1976.

The Truth Is Out There: A History of Alien Songs

The Truth Is Out There: A History of Alien SongsSong Writing

The trail runs from flying saucer songs in the '50s, through Bowie, blink-182 and Katy Perry.

Church Lyrics

Church LyricsMusic Quiz

Here is the church, here is the steeple - see if you can identify these lyrics that reference church.

Don Dokken

Don DokkenSongwriter Interviews

Dokken frontman Don Dokken explains what broke up the band at the height of their success in the late '80s, and talks about the botched surgery that paralyzed his right arm.