‘Saturday Night Live’ music: Alessia Cara performs ‘Scars to Your Beautiful,’ ‘River of Tears’

Tonight, Alessia Cara was the musical guest on “Saturday Night Live,” and for the first time in several weeks, we actually got to see someone on this show perform a song we’re actually familiar with.

Cara started off her set tonight with “Scars to Your Beautiful,” one of her biggest hits and a song that contains a rather fantastic message to go along with it. We know that she’s a great performer, and we certainly don’t want to diminish that here. However, at the same time you gotta give the show some credit for finding someone with some hopeful music at a time when not many people have a lot of hope. The fact that it’s a catchy song and she’s a great singer are wonderful to go along with it. This performance didn’t try too hard, but it didn’t need to — it was pretty great just the way that it was. A nice way to start her “SNL” performing career, and a nice way to break up a really ridiculous show.

Second song – This was “River of Tears,” a song we were not anywhere near as familiar with. That didn’t matter all that much, though, since we were able to get into this just by listening to her sing it. This was incredibly emotional and heartfelt, and once again, delivered the perfect sort of contrast that you would want from the rest of the show. This was a big, loud, and hilarious edition tonight. It needed someone who could find a way to command the stage in their own right, and Cara did that. She didn’t make any cameos in other sketches and stuck to the musical numbers, but we do have a feeling that she probably won over so many fans tonight with this. We’ll see if she gets asked to do this again, but we think it’s fairly likely based on what we saw here.

What did you think about Alessia’s performance? Share in the comments, and head over here to get some more news when it comes to tonight’s episode.

Also, let us know if you want to see Cara perform on the show again. (Photo: NBC.)