Soul Strutter: Alicia Keys

Wednesday 25 January 2023

Alicia Keys - A Profile

Alicia Keys (Alicia Augello Cook) was born on this day in 1981 in Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan, NYC, and celebrates her 42nd birthday. She is a classically trained pianist who started composing songs from the age of 12 and was signed by Columbia Records when she was only 15. Following disputes with the label she was signed to Arista by Clive Davis and released her critically acclaimed debut album "Songs in A Minor" on Davis' J Records in 2001. It has gone on to sell over 12m copies worldwide with the debut single, "Fallin'", reaching #1 and went triple platinum. To date she has achieved four #1 and another five Top 10 Billboard Hot 100 #1 hit singles and has released nine albums with the first seven all reaching Top 10 (four #1, two #2 and another #4). Only the Christmas album failed to get into the top 100 with her last 'proper' album "Keys" (2021) reaching #41. Her albums have sold in excess of 20m copies with her single sales estimated at 38m.

Alicia is one of three mixed race children from her Afro-American father and Italian, Irish, Scottish mother who raised her as a single parent when her father left when she was 2 years old. Her surname is a combination of her mother's name, Augello, and her father's, Cook. She contemplated making her stage name to Alicia Wild and settled on Keys to represent the piano keys and also stating that keys open many doors.

She discovered a passion for the piano by the age of 6 and began classical piano training aged 7 and later received a gift of an upright piano from a neighbour who was moving when 10 which enabled her to practice. Keys wrote her first song on her piano by age 12 and also began studying jazz.

In 1994 aged 13 she was a member of a girl group trio formed in The Bronx. Her vocal coach suggested that his brother Jeff Robison should listen to her when she performed in Harlem. He considered her the 'total package' and took her under his wing becoming her manager and helped her to record some demos to showcase at labels. Robinson introduced her to Warner Bros A&R executive Peter Edge who wanted to sign her but at the time was on the verge of leaving Warner's to join Clive Davis at Arista so Columbia stepped in and signed her in 1995. Her time at Columbia was a tribulation as they wouldn't allow her to be creative and wanted to mould her image and music and bring in producers to tinker with it. She broke free and produced her own album and presented it to Columbia who didn't like it. Inevitably she wanted to leave and was reintroduce to Edge (who by now was working at Arista) who in turn introduced her to Clive Davis in 1998. Davis was impressed and helped her negotiate her way out of Columbia, crucially along with the songs she had created whilst there and signed her to Arista in late 1998. Davis allowed Keys the creative freedom and control she wanted and encouraged her to be herself, exactly the opposite of Columbia.

When Davis left Arista in 2000 he set up his own label J Records taking Keys with him. Rather than releasing her album straight away, Davis thought it better to showcase her performances live and got her prime time TV shows and persuaded Oprah Winfrey to agree to Keys performing her debut single "Fallin'" on her show a week before release which then went to #1 and stayed there for six weeks.

The debut album "Songs In A Minor", which contained much material rejected by Columbia, was released in June 2001 and debuted straight into the album chart at #1. It received six Grammy Award nominations at the 2002 Grammy Awards winning five: Song of the Year, Best Female R&B Vocal Performance, and Best R&B Song for "Fallin'", Best New Artist, and Best R&B Album.

The follow up "The Diary of Alicia Keys" arrived in Dec 2003 which produced two of her best singles, in my view, "You Don't Know My Name" and "If I Ain't Got You" along with "Diary" and "Karma". Interspersed she had a #1 hit with Usher on "My Boo" from his 2004 album "Confessions".

The next album was a live album recorded from MTV "Unplugged" in Oct. 2005 which contained a couple of previously unreleased songs including a cover of Brenda Holloway's "Every Little Bit Hurts" covered by many before her by the likes of Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight, Etta James and Teena Marie including by many British artists i.e. Cilla Black, Petula Clark, The Tremeloes, Spencer Davis Group, Ruby Turner, Elkie Brooks and Jaki Graham, even The Clash and The Jam had a go at it!

In 2007 her third studio album "As I Am" provided the singles "No One", "Like You'll Never See Me Again", "Teenage Love Affair" and "Superwoman". It was a mixed bag with some rock oriented tracks and the 60s throwback "Saviour" featuring on The Super Edition and a cover of Little Anthony & The Imperials "Hurt So Bad" featured on the Japanese bonus edition (which unfortunately isn't available on Spotify)

Then followed "The Element of Freedom" in Dec 2009 from which six singles were released ("Doesn't Mean Anything", "Try Sleeping with a Broken Heart", "Put It in a Love Song", "Put It in a Love Song" (featuring Beyoncé), "Empire State of Mind (Part II) Broken Down", "Un-Thinkable (I'm Ready)" and "Wait Til You See My Smile"). It was not one of her best with none of the singles faring well, two not charting at all and none making top 20.

The singles from her next album, "Girl On Fire" (Nov 2012) didn't fare any better with only one of the five singles, the title track, entering the Hot 100. The singles being "Girl on Fire", "Brand New Me", "New Day", "Fire We Make" (with Maxwell) and "Tears Always Win".

After "Girl On Fire" a decline has set in with none of her subsequent albums selling particularly well in comparison to her earlier work. All her first five albums were platinum sellers but her next album "Here" (Nov 2016) sold only 42k, "Alicia" (Sep 2020) 50k, "Keys" (2021) 21k. No singles from the remaining albums charted except for two lowly charting ones from "Alicia" (#69 and #90).

The playlist below has been stripped down from a short list of 35 tracks cherry picked from her albums which represents her absolute best work from a soul perspective (in chronological order of release) as much of her music has been pop/urban.

Keys has won fifteen Grammy awards from twenty nine nominations, five American Music awards, ten MTV awards, seven BMI Urban awards, eight ASCAP awards, thirteen various BET awards, sixteen various Billboard awards and countless others, far too many to list but if you're interested they are listed on Wikipedia.