Fifteen grammys and six studio albums into her career, Alicia Keys still has not cracked the formula for hit song
"I just don't know how to do that -- I just don't! And I've tried!" the singer said ahead of a performance at New York's Apollo Theater.
"I've
been like, 'Okay, I'm going to take those same chords that I did
before, but I am going to play them differently, which is going to make
me write something different,' and it just doesn't arrive because you
are trying."
Instead, every new track is a fresh start. Where she typically writes alone at her piano, for her latest album, "Here," Keys decided to collaborate with a team, gathering "a hub of interesting, creative people."."Put all of us in a room together and give us nothing but space, an
opportunity, and all of a sudden boom! When you write a great song, you
don't know how you got there."
Regardless of who else is involved, Keys stresses that genuine feeling
is at the core of any good song. Musically, she strives for a striking
tension between the bassline, the melody, and the way the song is sung
that ends in a feeling of relief. Lyrically, it's about channeling
emotions.
"Songwriting comes from an emotion. It comes from a feeling. It comes
from something you can't contain, something that makes you cry,
something that makes you laugh, something that you can't describe
because it is like a stone in your chest," she says. "It's some kind of
emotion, and it provokes you to find the words."
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