Songfacts®:

• "Girl Next Door" finds Alessia Cara reflecting on her experience with celebrity and fame.
  
  I may not be a genius
  I'm just a girl with some reasons to stay Plain Jane
  But I won't go 'til you hear me
  I'll be sure not to leave 'fore you know my name
  
  Cara explained in a video that he wants to be known for her music rather being "reduced down to the girl who dresses bad." She is determined to be remembered as the "girl next door."
• As a child listening to music Cara never thought about what her idols looked like, and in her naive, innocent way she expected to be taken seriously as a songwriter, rather than her appearance. She explained that in "Girl Next Door" she is expressing her frustration that as a young woman in the industry she gets judged harder for the way she looks than an equivalent man does.
  
  "This song for me was just like a 'stick it to the man' type of thing, but also like to pacify myself and remind myself that like I'm not going to be forgotten just because I'm simple or because I'm flawed," Cara said. "You know, I have a lot more to say and a lot more to do on earth than to be reduced down to anything less than someone who has something to say and has important things to say. Your purpose is what you decide it is and what you make of it and looking at life in the world in the grand scheme, these little things that we place importance on do not matter."
• Cara has branded the wearing of a large men's suit as a statement about her frustration over being judged on her appearance rather than looks. She donned the oversized apparel for her "Growing Pains" and "Trust My Lonely" videos as well as on the record covers and in several live appearances.
  
  Despite getting a lot of hate on social media for wearing the oversized suit, Cara is glad she's making the statement.
  
  "I get it, like it's not flattering, it's very strange, it's weird," she said. "But, I think now I wear it even more proudly because I see all the hate that I'm getting and I see how close-minded people are, and it makes me want to keep doing it to show them like, I can still be here and I can still be successful wearing whatever the hell I want, and I don't care if it's not flattering to you. Like I said this before, I'm not here to be easy on people's eyes, I'm here to sing my songs, and if you want to see fashion, go to the Victoria Secret fashion show and watch that."