Alicia Keys Bio

Biography

Keys is the daughter of her Italian-Irish mother, Terri Augello, and an African-American father, Craig Cook. She has two half brothers. She grew up in her home town of New York. At the age of seven she came into contact with a piano for the first time. She learned classical music from Beethoven, Mozart and Chopin (her favorite). She wrote her first song Butterfly when she was fourteen. That song is also on her debut album Songs in A minor. To a large extent it was her mother who supported her in developing her talents.

Her sources of inspiration were mainly Prince and Stevie Wonder, with whom she has already performed a number of times, Marvin Gaye, Nina Simone, Donny Hathaway, but also Notorious B.I.G., 2Pac, Jay-Z and Wu Tang Clan. In December 2015 she performed at "Sinatra 100 - An All-Star GRAMMY Concert" in Las Vegas with a song by and for Frank Sinatra (in honor of his 100th "birthday")

Click here to find Alicia Key's phone number.

Begin: Songs in A Minor

In 2001 she broke through worldwide with her debut album Songs in A Minor, and the accompanying singles Fallin 'and A Woman's Worth. For this album she received a VMA, two Billboard Awards, two American Music Awards, two NAACP Image Awards, three Soul Train awards, two World Music Awards, an ECCHO Award and most important of all: five Grammy Awards. The album sold 235,000 times in the first week, and has been sold 12 million times worldwide so far. Fallin 'is still often seen as Keys' "signature".

Her breakthrough was in part due to a performance she gave at Oprah Winfrey, which could have been arranged by her record manager Clive Davis for her.
2003-2005: The Diary of Alicia Keys and Unplugged

In 2003 her second album The Diary of Alicia Keys was released. The album includes the songs You Don't Know My Name, which was also the first single for the album, If I Ain't Got You and Diary. Of this album, 618,000 records were sold in the first week, and have been sold 8 million times so far.

In 2004 she released her collection of poems, called Tears For Water. It contains both poems and the lyrics of previously released songs.

Around 2005 Keys wanted to do more than just sing. She played in a film co-produced by Halle Berry, about a pianist who lived at the beginning of the 20th century, entitled 'Compositions in Black & White'.

In October 2005 her third album was released, a live album, recorded on July 14, 2005 in New York. The album is titled MTV Unplugged. The album contains mostly songs from her previous albums, but there are also a number of new songs on it. The single Unbreakable did well on the radio.

In November 2005 she started filming the feature film Smokin 'Aces. Ben Affleck, Ryan Reynolds, Jeremy Piven and Andy García play among others. Alicia Keys plays a female assassin. The film was released in January 2007.