Produced by Kanye West and featuring a then-unknown John Legend on backing vocals, this song came as Keys wanted to keep the “mixture between vintage and future” that had sent her debut to No 1 feeling fresh for her second album. These are some of her favourites that did anyway. “None of my songs should have ever worked, to be honest,” she says. Almost 20 years ago, she risked upsetting purists by bringing modern drum programming into classic soul and jazz by embracing a relatively demure image, she risked seeming old-fashioned. She has since won 15 Grammys across six albums, with a seventh, Alicia, out this week, having been postponed (like the publication of this interview) from a spring release by coronavirus. Nevertheless, in 2001 Keys closed the deal in living rooms across America with a career-making performance of her song Fallin on Oprah, a song that “was nothing like anything ever, not yesterday, today or tomorrow”, says Keys. Meanwhile I was 19 with cornrows from Harlem.”
All the radio stations thought I was a 40-year-old jazz crooner. “But at the time I was bringing my music into the world, it was not on trend, at all. “If you put me in a room, I will close the deal,” she says, filling her hotel room with infectious CEO energy, all emphatic statements and eye contact. M usicians can be prone to false modesty or putting their achievements down to whatever spiritual energy is currently in fashion.
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