5:00AM Sunday November 18, 2007
By Rebecca Barry
Alicia Keys has a new song called Superwoman: "Even when I'm a mess, I still put on a vest with an 'S' on my chest. Oh yes, I'm a superwoman."
"I'm talking about every woman who has felt weak before and is still so strong even in her weakness," she says on the line from New York. "But that's me. I'm talking about me."
Ask Keys what her weaknesses are, and she says "ex-weaknesses. Because I'm new and improved".
"I was a very chronic people-pleaser. Like, chronic. To the point where everyone else came first, even people I didn't know."
This might come as a surprise to her fans. Ever since she hollered the empowering A Woman's Worth, Keys has represented female strength and dignity, an anomaly in a music scene dominated by sexualised, well, people-pleasers.
She has nine Grammys. Her first album, Songs in A Minor, sold 50,000 copies in its first day. Her second, The Diary of Alicia Keys, released in 2003, has sold eight million. She has banked on her biggest hits - among them, Fallin', You Don't Know My Name and Unbreakable - with a popular live album, MTV Unplugged in New York, becoming the first female R&B artist to have three consecutive number one debuts on the United States album chart.
Then there are her critically acclaimed film roles, playing a kick-ass assassin in Smokin' Aces and Scarlett Johansson's best friend in The Nanny Diaries, her philanthropic work including a charity for poor kids in Africa, and her live shows where she plays the piano with her hands literally behind her back.
Now she has her new third album, As I Am, which has already spawned a No. 1 single, No One, on the US R&B charts. It could be prescribed as an alternative to Prozac, such is its uplifting powers.
"I think I'm a person who looks for strength. That's cool. As women we definitely have to feel strong about ourselves."
Yet when Keys came off a 2 1/2-year tour for Diary, she felt anything but strong. "I just remember getting home and being totally knocked off my feet."
Still, she launched into the film work, and couldn't say no to the "incredible" opportunity to visit Africa for her Keep a Child Alive charity. She was so busy, so exhausted, she didn't notice the black clouds gathering.
"It was pretty much a full-out crash, burn-down. I became a person I didn't even know. I didn't recognise myself. I didn't like myself. I didn't like how I felt. I didn't want to go to sleep because I couldn't sleep. I was just totally reaching a point that I never thought that I would reach.
"It made me so mad and I got mad enough to realise that I never wanted to feel that way ever again."
It was during the songwriting process for As I Am that Keys says she worked out what the problem was. She wasn't just a people-pleaser and a yes-girl, she was a control freak.
"When it comes to my music I always guess I've been a little bit controlling because I'm a young woman and people often take advantage of that.
"So I always felt like I had to have everything prepared so no one could pull anything over on me.
"Even in my personal life with friends and family I'd get to this place like, 'If you're not doing it it's not going to happen'. That's ridiculous. You can't expect to be the saviour and the reason for everything."
Although the album title suggests complete autonomy, she kept her promise not to over-commit and employed help from songwriters Linda Perry, John Mayer, Harold Lilly, Sean Garrett and producers Mark Batson, Dirty Harry, Swizz Beatz and Jack Splash.
She also worked with her long-term songwriting partner, and real-life love, Kerry "Krucial" Brothers.
And if it sounds as though she's speaking to someone, that's because she is. She wrote many of the songs as reminders to herself about what she'd learned.
On Sure Looks Good to Me, she sings, "Don't rain on my parade, life's too short to waste one day, I'm gonna risk it all, the freedom to fall."
"I was definitely in searching mode and I really found out a lot about myself," she says. "I was just determined, and I still feel very determined, to create the music in my spirit and heart and not dilute it or put expectations on it. I realised I wanted to be a person who was brutally honest to myself.
"To create what you hear in your head is not always easy. In this case I felt a lot more confident in my arrangements, my skills, my production skills, writing skills, just being an artist and I've become more strong and more confident. Overall that confidence made it sound grander and helped me achieve the things I heard."
As I Am has all the hallmarks that made Keys famous. There's that huge, Aretha-meets-Janis Joplin voice, with just the right levels of sexy huskiness and vulnerability. There are her classically trained piano hands working in the background - although this album puts more of the focus on her voice and less on the keys. And there are her big, 70s-inspired soul tunes that elicit a strong sense of empowerment, the diva who always comes across as such on the red carpet.
Ironically for all the tumult behind it, the result suggests Keys is happier than ever.
"I've learned that, sometimes to be the best, you don't have to try that hard. You just have to let it be what it's meant to be, that freedom and relaxing into the moment and just allowing the moment to be as opposed to controlling the moment. I had a lot of fun. I would leave the studio at like, 4 in the morning and look around, just wow, what a day. That's a great feeling."
LOWDOWN
Who: Alicia Keys
Born: Alicia Augello-Cook, January 25, 1981 Albums: Songs in A Minor (2001), The Diary of Alicia Keys (2003), As I Am (2007), out this week
