![]() By 20, she had achieved global fame with her debut album Songs in A Minor, which sold more than 12 million copies and secured her five Grammys. She began writing her own songs at 12 and bagged her first record deal with Columbia Records at 15. ‘Piano was my freedom, a way to escape,’ she tells me. I don’t have to have so many people in the studio because I can play it, I can produce it, I can write it, so able to move independently and I’ve always loved that.’Ī classically trained pianist, Keys was raised by her single Italian-Irish mother in Hell’s Kitchen, New York – an area notorious for pimps and prostitutes that’s just blocks away from Broadway’s tantalising bright lights and the promise of something better. ![]() I never needed to be dependent on a bunch of people. It was just my mother and I, and she was always working. ‘Because I’m an only child, I had to move around a lot by myself. Keys puts this down to her childhood growing up with a single mum and choosing an instrument that legitimised her love of solitude. ‘I never had a bunch of fake friends or fake people around me.’ When I’m in the studio I’m by myself – like right now. She may count fellow icons Beyoncé and Oprah among her inner circle, but she’s adamant that she’s a natural introvert. Street-wise, funny and fiercely intelligent, she has that energy people gravitate towards at a party. I don’t have that reservation any more.’Īlicia Keys doesn’t strike you as the type of woman who ever really had reservations about expressing herself. Keys is all about losing that reservation. It’s easy to default to the woman you usually are, but we can actually be our most magnificent… most fancy, smart, beautiful – all those things so many of us hold back. ‘One of the things I’ve learned with age is that there’s so much to who we are. Keys features two iterations of every track – a piano version showcasing the classical skills that first made her famous, and a more experimental ‘unlocked’ version, which she admits allowed her to express deeper parts of herself. The release of her new double album next month – her eighth to date – marks a turning point for Keys, and triggered excitement on social media following a teased sample of the new single Best of Me to her 50 million+ followers. If the dictionary definition is anything to go by (‘returning to your truest, most vocal self’), the phrase neatly sums up where she is as she ends her 40th year. ‘As I like to say, “I’m back on my bullshit”. ‘I feel super-empowered right now,’ says the 15-time Grammy winner, a glint in her eye. Yet the same intensity and passion is there. Today, her style is characteristically pared back – yellow denim jacket, white polo neck, gold-hoop earrings, a touch of lip gloss.
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