Alessia Cara Creatively Solves NPR Tiny Desk Rejections

Remember in Curb Your Enthusiasm when Larry David gets so mad about being banned from Mocha Joe’s that he opens a coffee shop called Latte Larry’s next door to spite him? Well, pop singer Alessia Cara just did that, but with desks. The organization she’s mad at is NPR, as it has yet to bring Cara in for one of its iconic Tiny Desk Concerts series. “Well tiny desk said no to me a couple times so I exercised free will and built my own!” Cara tweeted on June 9. “‘Giant desk’ out June 10th. 6 songs live from an office with these cool cats.” Today, she released it.

Cara’s video opens with a logo that looks suspiciously like NPR’s logo, reading “A CARA Production.” (Vulture has reached out to NPR for comment, but it has not yet responded.) “Tiny Desk has refused to have me on now, many times,” the 2018 Best New Artist winner says as the video begins. “So I decided to make my own. Tiny Desk, my desk is bigger than yours.” Admittedly, this is not true. The actual desk she has in the video looks more like a side table than a desk. I could even describe it as actively small. It’s unclear why she wouldn’t call this a “Tinier Desk” concert or something along those lines, given that NPR’s desk is actually pretty large, as far as desks go.

Cara then went on to do a straightforward acoustic set of her music, beginning with 2021’s “Middle Ground,” then showing off a bunch of songs from her new album, Love or Lack Thereof. The NPR-esque “Cara” logo stays on the bottom right-hand corner of the screen the whole time. Even when she sings her major hit “Stay,” originally made with megaproducer Zedd, and strips away the electronics to showcase her voice, it’s hard not to get the idea that this concert was made with anger in its heart out of your mind.

The best moment is the finale, “Here,” her song about being bitter and annoyed at a party you don’t want to be at. The track’s main complaint is very similar to Cara throwing her own concert at home. “So holla at me, I’ll be in the car when you’re done / I’m standoffish, don’t want what you’re offering / And I’m done talking,” she sings. It’s a telling final track. “Thank you so much for listening and watching the first episode — and maybe the only episode — of Giant Desk,” Cara says as the video ends. Though she’s made it through a vocal marathon, Cara still sounds a little peeved that she had to do all this for herself. Maybe it’s her team — Brooke Dubek would have gotten her on that desk.