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Alicia Keys

American singer and songwriter

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Alicia keys posing with a hat

Why Alicia Keys

Why is Alicia Keys the best?

It's unusual for an artist to be so multi-talented. Alicia Keys is a classically trained pianist and started composing when she was 12 and signed at 15 years old by Columbia Records.

Her debut album, Songs in A Minor, sold over 12 million copies worldwide and earned Keys 5 Grammy Awards in 2002. Best New Artist and Song of the Year for "Fallin" are a few of her accolades. She is also the second American artist ever to receive five Grammys in a single night. All of her albums except for her fourth, The Element of Freedom, peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in the US.

Alicia Keys is a 15-time Grammy winner and has sold over 90 million records worldwide.

Songs

My favorite songs by Alicia Keys

Cover of YouTube video If I ain't got you

If I ain't got you

A song recorded by the artist herself for her second studio album The Diary of Alicia Keys (2003). Inspired by the 2001 death of singer Aaliyah, the September 11 attacks, and other events in the world and in Keys' life, the song is about "how material things don't feed the soul".

Release

February 17, 2004

Lyrics

"Some people live for the fortune
Some people live just for the fame
Some people live for the power, yeah
Some people live just to play the game
Some people think
That the physical things
Define what's within
And I've been there before
That life's a bore
So full of the superficial
Some people want it all
But I don't want nothing at all
If it ain't you, baby
If I ain't got you, baby…"

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Cover of YouTube video You don't know my name

You don't know my name

It was written by Keys, Kanye West and Harold Lilly, and produced by Keys and West. The song contains a sample from the 1975 song "Let Me Prove My Love to You" of The Main Ingredient (J.R. Bayle).
In this music video, rapper Mos Def plays Michael Harris, Alicia's love interest, and Keys plays a waitress at a restaurant. One day, Keys meets this man in the café, and she falls in love with him. Later on, Keys is at a house party where she runs into that same man.

Release

November 10, 2003

Lyrics

"Baby, baby, baby
From the day I saw you
I really, really wanna catch your eye
There's something special 'bout you
And I must really like you
'Cause not a lotta guys are worth my time, oh
Ooh, baby, baby, baby
It's gettin' kind of crazy
'Cause you are takin' over my mind..."

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Cover of YouTube video Fire we make

Fire we make

"Fire We Make" is a downbeat neo soul ballad with adult contemporary R&B influences, in which Keys and Maxwell adopt sensual falsetto vocals.The music video was filmed in New Orleans, Louisiana in April 2013, with parts of the video shot inside a boarding house in the Garden District and the French Quarter neighborhoods. It marked Keys' tenth collaboration with the same director.

Release

March 28, 2013

Lyrics

"It's crazy
It's crazy
Come on, come on yeah
I wanna tell you really
Oh yeah, all I wanna know yeah
Hey
I wanna know yeah
Hey baby how you doing tonight
I wanna let you know
I wanna tell you just how I feel
I wanna love you baby
And it's going so right
I wanna burn a candle
Turn the darkness to the light…"

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More songs

More songs by Alicia Keys