She has sold over 65 million records worldwide. Keys has received numerous accolades in her career, including 15 competitive Grammy Awards, 17 NAACP Image Awards, 12 ASCAP Awards, and an award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame and National Music Publishers Association. Her sixth studio album, Here (2016), became her seventh US R&B/Hip-Hop chart topping album. In 2013, VH1 Storytellers was released as her second live album. Girl on Fire (2012) was her fifth Billboard 200 topping album, spawning the successful title track, and won the Grammy Award for Best R&B Album. In 2009, Keys also collaborated with Jay Z on 'Empire State of Mind', which became her fourth number-one single and won the Grammy Award for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration. Her fourth album, The Element of Freedom (2009), became her first chart-topping album in the UK, and sold 4 million copies worldwide. She, along with Jack White, recorded 'Another Way to Die' (the title song to the 22nd official James Bond film, Quantum of Solace). In 2007, Keys made her film debut in the action-thriller film Smokin' Aces. Her third album, As I Am (2007), produced the Hot 100 number-one single 'No One', selling 7 million copies worldwide and earning an additional three Grammy Awards. Keys released her first live album, Unplugged (2005), and became the first woman to have an MTV Unplugged album debut at number one. Her duet 'My Boo' with Usher became her second number-one single in 2004. The album garnered her an additional four Grammy Awards. Her second album, The Diary of Alicia Keys (2003), was also a critical and commercial success, spawning successful singles 'You Don't Know My Name', 'If I Ain't Got You', and 'Diary', and selling eight million copies worldwide. The album earned Keys five Grammy Awards in 2002. The album was critically and commercially successful, producing her first Billboard Hot 100 number-one single 'Fallin'' and selling over 16 million copies worldwide. After disputes with the label, she signed with Arista Records, and later released her debut album, Songs in A Minor, with J Records in 2001. A classically-trained pianist, Keys was composing songs by age 12 and was signed at 15 years old by Columbia Records.

On Is It Insane, Keys dives deep into vintage jazz for a torch ballad of sinister, obsessive jealousy, while Billions drifts off into the space funk cosmos for a gauzy evocation of eternal romantic dedication.Alicia Augello Cook Dean (born January 25, 1981), known professionally as Alicia Keys, is an American musician, singer, and songwriter. The production here crosses epic, John Barry-style Bond balladry with a dark trip hop drama evoking Portishead, as Keys insists “You’ve got to put the time into timeless”. She lays out her artistic manifesto on the noirish Nat King Cole, which is not so much a tribute to the great crooner as a dedication to becoming (like his theme song) “unforgettable”. Using her considerable classical piano skills as a songwriting base, with her fluid yet emotionally raw voice travelling from resonant low notes to etheric heights, she joins the dots between hip hop, jazz, old school R&B, sci-fi club bangers and intimate balladry. If anything, Keys’s eighth album is just too multifarious to fit into straightforward commercial boxes. But there has been no diminishment in her talent as she follows last year’s critically acclaimed ALICIA with the extravagant double album KEYS (see what she did there?). It has been nearly 10 years since 2012’s Girl on Fire landed her a significant hit single and chart-topping album. At 40, Keys may no longer be the hottest contemporary female singer-songwriter on the planet. Pop music relentlessly seeks out the next big thing. The two performed Bob Dylan’s Make You Feel My Love together (with Keys on piano) at Keys’s annual charity ball in 2008, when Adele’s star was still rising. And if this reminds you of anyone, then you shouldn’t be surprised to learn that Adele once told Rolling Stone that hearing Alicia Keys as a youngster was “life defining”.

Her 2021 debut album, Songs in A Minor, sold 12 million copies and saw her hailed as the saviour of soul music. Her breakout single (Fallin’) was a huge global smash, a heartbreakingly romantic piano ballad with a preternatural, octave-busting vocal that touched Aretha Franklin heights, with songwriting that drew comparisons to Carole King. She burst onto the world stage aged just 19.

Alicia keys youtube playlist