Alicia Keys - special request topic from Justin Shuen

Alicia Keys. Such fantastic talent, amazing brains, and quite lovely to boot. I was lucky enough to catch her concert two years ago, after her second album The Diary of Alicia Keys was released and it was a great show (I didn't know she could dance!). So lets delve into the background of her and her music.

Born in 1981, she's sold over 20 million albums and singles worldwide and won 9 Grammys (so far). Keys was raised in Hells Kitchen, New York, primarily by her mother as her parents separated when she was young. She began playing piano when she was seven, learning classical music, and attended the Professional Performing Arts School in Manhattan, from where she graduated as valedictorian. Some problems with various record companies ensued when they tried to turn her into another Jennifer Lopez (good lord!). Keys prevailed and eventually released her debut album Songs in A Minor in 2001, an RnB/soul flavoured album that also reflected her classical roots. Her follow up

The first single from Songs in A Minor, was Fallin' is based on the bassline from a Chopin piano composition (I can't remember the title) and since then has been a favourite of Idol competition performers the world over. The lyrics are a lament on a relationship that produces confused and mixed feelings, varying between happy times and conflict, but that for all the pain the relationship brings, she's never loved someone as she loved the guy. This was linked to a somewhat fitting film clip where Keys travels to a prison where her bf is incarcerated.

Her follow up album The Diary of Alicia Keys (2003) contained the awesome single If I Ain't Got You which also became a duet with Usher (to pair with the duet My Boo on his Confessions album). Another Idol favourite, the song denounces the material trappings that are associated with happiness and love, declaring that theyre all meaningless without the other person. All together now, awwwww.

And so Alicia Keys, I tip my hat to you.
Justin, if this isnt enough, may I suggest wikipedia or her one of the many fansites online.