In March 2001, and his powerful voice so that the doors of music were opened wide with the success Fallinfirst single from their debut album, Songs in A minor. She was 20 years old and, since then, the daughter of an actress who raised her alone and who spent her adolescence in Harlem has only achieved success. Now, on the verge of 25 years since that song and that album – with which she won five Grammy Awards in 2002, including best R&B album and best new artist – the singer has assured the magazine People that it was all “crazy”. She did it on February 18 in West Hollywood, California, during an event for the initiative, co-founded by the singer and which aims to encourage the participation of women in this industry and “the most beautiful way to give women a place at the table,” as she stated in about that night.
“I don’t know how to take in this existence called life,” Keys told the magazine during the event. “It’s crazy, wonderful, exciting and amazing.” The artist, who has since won 17 Grammys, further stated: “I just think about the girl in me at that time and how I had no idea about anything, not even the slightest. I was doing what’s known as ‘fake it until you make it’; that’s what that girl did, and she did it wonderfully.” In fact, he did it so well that Fallin It stayed at number 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 for six weeks. “The more I grew, the more I learned,” the singer also said of other hits such as Girl on Fire (2012). “And that’s why I think of her and appreciate her very much, because she was strong, she had clarity. Although she didn’t know everything, she knew what she didn’t want and she knew what she should hold on to: authenticity, truth, honesty and music.”
Keys also acknowledged that she is “very proud,” because today she continues to recognize that girl in what she does: “It’s something beautiful. Having come so far and having all these years to create and not having reached even the smallest expression of my path is really exciting. I’m grateful,” she said during an event in which she coincided with other women very present in the music business, including the one who took her under her protection at the beginning of her career, Jody Gerson. Gerson, CEO of Universal Music Publishing Group and co-founder with Keys of She Is the Music, was, in the artist’s own words, “my editor since I was 14. So, without a doubt, she took me under her wing and saw something special in me.”
Keys’ musical passion comes from her maternal family – her father was not very present in her life – in which her grandfather was a radio host and her grandmother was a pianist. Keys spent her early years in a less glamorous environment than those she may frequent now. As she herself explained in 2021, shortly after the 2020 publication of her biography, , she grew up in an apartment first in Hell’s Kitchen (where her mother rented a subsidized apartment for actors and aspiring actors) and then in Harlem, on 137th Street: “There was so little space that she would sit on the bed and play the keyboard trying to get songs to come that fit the feelings in her heart,” she said in , speaking about her in the third person. In an interview with the media Bustleher mother said that, since she was a child, her daughter was clear about what she wanted, explaining that “at 7 years old she played the piano and at 11 she composed,” and that from the age of 9 she was taking on small jobs to earn her own money and help around the house.
