Alicia Keys, MORE MYSELF: A Journey

[1:35]Zibby Owens: Hi. I'm Zibby Owens, and you're listening to moms don't have time to read books. This thirty minute podcast features a new author interviewed by me every single day, three hundred and sixty five days a year for about thirty minutes. I am also the publisher for Zibby Books, which publishes 12 books a year in fiction and memoir. Our books are already out now. You can check it out on zippybooks.com. And we have a magazine called Zippy Mag where we have lots of wonderful essays and lifestyle features. That's at zippymag.com. We have classes at zippy classes dot com. And I recently opened a bookstore in LA called Zippy's Bookshop at 1113 Montana Avenue at 11th Street in Santa Monica. I hope that you are able to enjoy some of our other offerings, but this here podcast is the basis of all of it and started in 2018. And no matter what I do, this is basically my favorite thing. Enjoy. Hi everyone. As I mentioned before, on the weekends I am re releasing some of my favorite episodes from long ago that maybe you heard but forgot, or you never heard. Anyway, today I am re releasing my conversation with the one and only Alicia Keys, which was so crazy to even do. Was freaking out at the time and she remains, you know, one of my most favorite episodes, and, I'm just such a huge fan. So enjoy my episode with Alicia Keys.

[3:07]Alicia Keys: Hi everyone. I had the privilege of interviewing Alicia Keys recently, which was just so amazing, and I just love talking to her. For those of you who might not know who she is, which is impossible, but just in case, Alicia Keys is a modern day Renaissance woman, a 15 time Grammy award winning artist, songwriter, musician, producer, an accomplished actress, a New York Times bestselling author, a film, television, and Broadway producer, an entrepreneur, and a powerful force in the world of activism. Since the release of her monumental 2,001 debut album, Songs in A Minor, Alicia Keys has sold over 65,000,000 records and built an unparalleled repertoire of hits and accomplishments. Alicia's forthcoming seventh studio album, Alicia, is slated to be released worldwide later this year. The first single, Show Me Love earned Alicia a record extending eleventh number one on the Billboard Adult R and B Songs AirPlay chart. Current single Underdog was the most added song at Top 40 Radio upon its release and has already topped The US iTunes chart. Alicia released her new book, A Journey, on 03/31/2020 through Flatiron Books. I am so excited to present my conversation with Alicia. Enjoy it. Hi, How are you? Yay. Hi, Bizzy. Hi. I'm good. How are you doing? I'm good. I actually I hope this is okay. Just for the first two seconds, I have my two daughters here who are huge fans of yours, and they're six and 12, and they just wanted to say hello. Hi. Hi. How are you doing today? She said, how are you doing today? Good. We're doing good. Oh, I'm glad. They spend half the day singing this girl is on fire. I love it. And you're on fire. I'm so happy to hear your voices. You're amazing. Oh, thank you so much for doing this with me. It's truly just amazing. I'm so excited. I'm so happy that we could get on the phone. Does everything sound good? Like the reception and everything? I think so. Does my Does mine sound okay to you? Yes. It all sounds perfect. Awesome. Well, Alicia, thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. This is such a huge treat and I really appreciate all of your time. I'm so happy to be on and let me tell you, I'm so excited about what you're doing and there's nothing more true that moms don't have time to read books because I'm always complaining. Like, I just want to read a book. I just want is to read a book. Seriously, it's like the second I sit down, someone's like jumping on top of me or like pulling the book away or something. It's always something. I know it's really hard. Then if you and then you're like, that's okay, I'm going to read tonight. And then you get into bed and then you're asleep. That's exactly what happened. Totally. I'm like, well, I'll just read a few. Well, let me just check my phone first. Yeah. Yeah. Same thing. Well, I'm glad we found the time. Me too. And your book, on the other hand, did not put me to sleep at all. Warm Myself is fantastic. And I loved, by the way, being able to see on your Instagram how excited you were about it because that just made the excitement even more contagious when you're jumping up and down and doing your little, you know, celebrations. It's so awesome. I am. I'm so excited about it. I love it. And it's been such a project and such, and it's so different from writing a song because it just, I think it does compare to creating a whole body of work though, because even though writing a song does take a little bit of less time, creating the entire body of work or an album or a project or whatever does take a considerable amount of time. So the book as well took such, it's such a lengthy process and it's still kind of tedious and you want it to reflect what you really want to say properly and it covers such a long spectrum of time. So I really am excited about it because I feel like I've been able to achieve what I wanted to achieve, and I love how people are responding to it and how it's a conversation that we can all have together, especially right now in the world. And just because where we all are, and we're all trying to figure out who we are, and I guess that's going to kind of be a constant thing we're doing, maybe for the Totally, especially now. I love how in your book you talk a lot about creativity itself, kind of like what you're saying with the difference between a song and a book. I could just read this one quote. You said, Creativity is inherently messy. It's chaotic and nonlinear. It comes to life in fits and starts, disjointed and seemingly random. So I was just hoping you could talk a little more about your creative process with whatever you're trying to achieve. Yes. Well, yes, I do feel like that about creativity. I never have an exact way that it happens. In fact, it's constantly intimidating. I think that it's always, you never, the fact that you don't know how it's going to actually come to fruition is also part of the magic. And that part of it that I think I'm most addicted to, I'm most crave, is that pride, you know. And even after doing it for many times or writing songs for a long time or you know playing in front of many people or whatever it might be that you do, it still has this insecurity part of it that is I think the purest part of what creating something is. So it doesn't have a straight line and I think I like that the most about it, to be honest. I feel like that might intimidate some other people, lack of sort of control or linearity. Don't I mean, maybe not creative people. Yeah. No, I guess that's why I said it because I think that sometimes people maybe think that it might be easy for some people, you know, and sometimes maybe we stop ourselves from trying our version of creativity because we see other people and we might see them be successful at it or what we assume success is or what we attribute to success. Then we think for ourselves, Well, I couldn't do that or I probably wouldn't be able to do it. And so then we don't start. I thought sharing that is intimidating for me. Creativity is also intimidating for me was kind of maybe more encouraging just because for everybody there's this unknown about being creative or about putting together something that you've never done before or that has never been done before or specifically that no one thought you could do or however it might unfold. And there's something really scary about that. But I think the scariness, once you get over it and push yourself past it and just give it a shot, you find something that's really special that comes out of it. Absolutely. Can you tell me a little about your decision to write this book, which you call a journey? What made you decide to write it? And how long did that process that you were describing before actually take? Man, it took it. I mean, it was at least two years. It was so interesting because it's not because obviously I haven't written a thousand books. And I don't know, again, I would wonder because for me as a songwriter, I've written so many songs, but still I find myself that at the beginning of writing a song, I'm like, well, do I do this again? What do I do? How do you act like a way to get it? I find that I'm always asking myself that question. So perhaps even if I wrote a thousand books, I'd still be asking myself that question in that world as well. But because it's such a new process for me, it was so interesting and part of it was terrifying and definitely like daunting because I was like, this is crazy. How do you go back and think of all these pieces? But the inspiration really came probably around my album called Here. I really started to ask myself a lot of questions. It was the beginning of my own search for my own identity and who I am and who I want to be, kind of who you become in the world because you think you're supposed to be that, and then who you actually are or who you actually want to be. And I was starting to really ask myself those questions because I started to realize that I maybe was who I thought people wanted me to be. I didn't realize that that had taken me over so much. I started to kind of dissect the ways that that was happening and different moments in my life were revealing that I was quite oppressed, I would use the word, from the standards of what it is to be a woman, what it is to be a successful woman, what it is to be beautiful, what it is to be, you know, beloved or whatever it is. I started to find myself kind of changing myself or being extra concerned when I picked up my kids from school, you know, do I look nice enough to go out with and all these things that were really, I just truly didn't understand how convoluted that was, how that was affecting me. And I didn't even realize that I was like that person. I never even thought I was that person. I thought I was super independent and completely a feminist and really strong. And I realized, wow, there's so much of me that I'm discovering. And so that discovery started to uncover parts that I wanted to share and I wanted to think more about and really challenge the way that we're told to be who we think we're supposed to be because we see it in front of us since the day we're born and we don't really get a chance to meet ourselves. And that was what I was starting to do. And I wanted to share my personal journey with discovering more of myself. That's amazing. I love how early in the book you talk about the photoshoot you went on and how you were basically against, not against your will, but just slightly manipulated in a way that sort of set the course for being careful not to let that happen again forever and how that became a symbol for you of how you needed to use your voice and become who you are and all of that. Can you just talk a little more about that moment? Definitely. It was the very, very first time that I, you know, had been asked to do a pretty important photo shoot with a really important photographer and it was the very beginning of everything. And, you know, here you are. You're a young up and coming artist and you really just want people to hear your stuff and start to know it and be excited about it and it seems like it'll probably never happen because that's, you know, that's usually the way it all crumbles. And so when I found myself in this space with this photographer and for this magazine, it was the very first time I had done, I hadn't done a ton of photo shoots either and they've photo shoots in themselves are just awkward. Like, you know, what do you do? Like, where do you stand? How are you supposed to, like, look? What are supposed to smile? Do not smile? What's the face feel like? Is it what tilts it like, you don't know what to do. You just- you're standing in a blank room with a person. It'd be different if you had a bed to sit on or a chair to sit on, you could actually do something that's just normal, but it's completely abnormal. It feels totally weird And so, and so it was my first time on top of all of that. And so, you know, you also discover that people often are looking for an angle. They're looking for something to sell. They're looking for something that's racy. They're looking for something that's, you know, going to challenge or spark interest. And I didn't know any of that. I wasn't thinking of any of that. And so, know, the guy kind of started to suggest that I, you know, pull my pants down a little more like this or cover my shoulder a little bit like this or I pull my shirt down a little bit more like this and because I didn't know what the hell I was doing anyway, I was kind of like, okay, guess would that look nice? Know, because you're searching in a lot of ways for approval, which happens I think in our lives in many ways, you know, for many, you know, it doesn't matter if you're new or not or just starting something or not, we're all kind of looking for approval in some way. And so they knew better than me and I tried it and I did it and I felt uncomfortable the whole time but I kind of felt uncomfortable anyway so I just didn't I couldn't tell the difference between my discomfort of just feeling awkward standing in a blank room or you know pulling my shirt down too far. And so that all got confused and convoluted and fast forward three or four weeks later when I saw the picture, I mean it was I was devastated. I looked away that I never wanted to look. My pants were too far down. My hand was covering my boobs. I just completely looked like I was trying so hard and I didn't want to be that person. I didn't even know how I got there. But I realize now that, you know, it taught me a lot about speaking up and it taught me a lot about really understanding your own gut. And if your gut is saying like you feel uncomfortable or you don't feel right, you got to stop. What's making me not feel right? I don't like this. That makes me uncomfortable. And you got to speak up because if you don't, you're going to have a picture on your hand that's pretty embarrassing or God knows what else. So of course I didn't know how to do that then and part of it is also lessons that you learn as you go and you need those lessons so you can't beat yourself up about it, which I did. But it affected me enough to know that I didn't want that to happen again and I really didn't want to feel that way. I didn't want to feel compromised or feel uncomfortable or taken advantage of. And so it changed a lot for me because then going forward, I had a different perspective. I love how in the book, it's not just about you, but it's a lot about motherhood in general. It's about your relationship with your mother and your grandmother. It's a relationship with you becoming a mother. I just wanted to hear a little more about that aspect and how becoming a mother yourself has affected your creativity and even your perception of your own mother's mothering. Because I feel like whenever we all have kids, of a sudden you look back and you're like, Oh, I get it. Like that's how my mom was. Oh my god. How has that affected you? Yeah, I mean, motherhood in general has affected me in a really, I feel like an awesome way. I think I definitely met a part of myself that I didn't know before. You know, I didn't know that I could be so tender. I didn't know that I could feel so deeply and I surely felt deeply prior to it. I definitely, you know, I felt deeply in the many songs that I wrote before I was a mother or I felt deeply in different experiences I had in the world or seeing the world and all this chaos and I felt that deeply but nothing was as potent and as uncontrollably emotional as when I became a mother. So I met a part of myself that I definitely didn't know existed. I also met a part of myself that was much stronger. I didn't know how to be as strong for myself prior to becoming a mother. I was very, very much about always compromising. I found myself to be a super people pleaser, which you know to this day I fight myself against being in a detrimental way. There's nothing wrong with being good to people, there's nothing wrong with pleasing people, but if you're doing it to the self detriment, you know, to the detriment of yourself, then it does become a problem. And I was doing that. I was- I never considered my own well-being and I oftentimes just did what I thought was, you know, would make other people happy. And I met a new side of myself with that because once I had a baby, I really realized the boundaries that I needed to set, not even for me, but for the baby. And so by default, I started to take better care of myself and that started to teach me something and show me something and open my eyes to things. I remember I was a super workaholic. I'd probably pick that up from my mother. She's always been a very hard worker, always worked many hours and kind of could live off of very little sleep and I became that person. I was that person but then when I had a baby, things weren't as important anymore as being actually present in this young tiny being's life and being able to be home and do those special things as a mom. So it definitely started to give me a lot more balance. It started to give me a lot more perspective and I started to meet myself in a brand new place. That was cool. And then I definitely respected my mother on a whole other level because my mother raised me a single mother, know, she was just her and that, you know, is a mind blowing thing. She's, you know, she worked all the time. She still figured out how to get me in the worst trouble ever. I don't know how she did it. I'm like, you're not even here, how am I in trouble? And so she ended up having to be everything and somehow she did it. And she definitely had to be tough as nails for a girl growing up in Hell's Kitchen in Harlem in New York City, but she did it. And so much of that toughness and that grit and that kind of like the common sense that I have came from her really not allowing me to have any room for any foolishness. She would grill me so hard about whatever I was telling her that if I didn't have my facts straight and all my thoughts organized, I was not making it out alive. Like I wasn't. And I think that gave me a lot even as I became a businesswoman and as I became a person who had to control my own life and my own destiny, there was a certain amount of just strength that came from her. And now as a mom, know, my son, I was telling my friend that, you know, we're all doing this homeschooling thing and I was telling my friend that my son, he says, I'm mean. And I'm like, I'm not mean. I I'm, just want you to do your best. I want you to do your best. I don't want you to just do sorta kinda enough with the time you were given. And now that the time is over, run away, like do complete it and make it great and be proud of it. You're bead, mom. So I'm getting a lot of I'm getting a lot of your beads.

[24:11]Alicia Keys: My my five year old son, we were doing this letter, like, what's your big idea? What do you really wanna change? And he's like, I need to get my mom to stop bossing me around so much. And I was like, I just asked you to come to lunch. Like and he's like, no. I need you know? I'm like, really? All I'm trying to do is help you. I'm trying to make you a better person. I'm trying to feed you and, like, get you on your silly Zoom call so you can learn about, like, the weather system. I don't know. I'm just I'm like, I've had enough to hear. Oh, I know. My son's popped too, and he was he was so mad at me yesterday because when I would see you know, if he was in the living room, I was like, hey, Jen. And then he was coming out of his bedroom and I was walking up the stairs and he was like, Oh, I was like, Hey, Jen. He's like, Mom, are you gonna say hi to me every time you see me? I was like, I can't just say hi to you when I see you? Like, no, mom. I really don't want you to say hi to me every time you see me. So I did it, man. I'm like, what the hell? Like, damn. Yeah. I love how five year old boys are are running our families at this point. Hey. I'm like, you you are such a slim. But they're so cute. Yes. Oh my gosh. The cutest. The cutest and the hardy. Yes. So true. So how do you I mean, everybody always asks, you know, how does everybody keep it all together when there's so many different things? But even in your book, you talk about how, you know, an artist's life is teeter totter, as you call it, and how you're holding your family tight as you navigate all the ups and downs and just the craziness of life and your life, I would think in particular, being such a public person and accomplishing so many things from all these albums and the book and all the rest. Like, how do you stay sane? How do you do it? Oh, man. How do I stay sane? How do we all stay sane is a really, really good question. I mean, there's a couple of different ways that I feel I stay sane, and suddenly now I feel like I have to relearn that how to stay sane in a whole new way. I don't know. For a while I wasn't doing very good with that, I wasn't really sure how to balance it all in the one space that we're all staying in, you know. But I really like to I'm a big I love to organize things. Tend to like things very organized. I like things very tied up in a bow, which I've also learned how to get a little looser on because sometimes it's not going to be a bow and you just need to let the bow go. And it's okay if the baby got frayed all over the floor and it's all right. The wrapping is like, you didn't put it away and it's okay. It's all right. So I'm learning that and I think that really helps me to stay sane. I like the organizing part. When I say organize, I like to create space or time. I like to calendar things, even just making sure that things are- you know, they have their space and that also means me having my own space. So, even in this circumstance, a lot of the times one of my sons is actually having to get up really early to start his school thing, and so I have about an hour and a half between when he starts and to when my other son starts. And I will take that hour and a half and I will do a meditation. I'll even do a workout. And it's early, it's like six a. M. Or from six to seven or 06:30 or 07:30. And sometimes I just don't want to do it at all, which is fine. That goes back to the bowl and the paper being on the floor. That's fine. Just honor that when you need it. But when I do do it, I find that I feel like I've given myself my own time. I've given myself time to just kind of think and be quiet before it gets all noisy and loud. And that really helps me stay safe. I found that I need quiet. Whereas my husband, like the first thing he does when he wakes up, he puts on music, everything gets really loud when he wakes up. Me, I need quiet. And so I figured that out and so I give myself that. And that helps me. And just that little thing, that one hour makes a difference. Then I feel more sane. So things like that help me stay sane and help me just kind of like make my way through it all. I'm definitely getting more comfortable with being uncomfortable. That's my latest realization, even with the current state of everything, you know, it's not comfortable. We don't exactly know what's going on. It feels like we're confused. You know, feel fearful, you feel worried, all these things. And I found that I've been wanting to just be comfortable being uncomfortable and just sit in that. And that's okay too. So that's some of the pieces that can help me stay sane. How about you? I mean, first of all, my husband and I are the same way. I like know when he wakes up because all of a sudden, like the house is blasting with music. And I was like, okay, he's up somewhere because now he's turned on the whole music system. Whereas the other day, you know, my five year old might this same guy, like, woke me up at 04:15 just to let me know he had to go to the bathroom, which is great. Then, of course, I couldn't fall back asleep. And I was like, you know what? I'm just gonna get up so I can sit in my house and have it be quiet. I don't care that it's four in the morning. I just want that moment to sit in my kitchen and not have anybody bother me. And so I did, and it was great. Yes. It's all about that. So I I under I understand what you're saying. But, yeah, I don't know. I I don't know if I do stay sane these days. But, yes. And by the way, I think what you said with letting the bow go, because I am a perfectionist also, and I just like everything to be perfect. And that is, like, such a great mantra. I feel like you should make a whole t shirt line, let the bow go. That's so that's so helpful. I feel you. I'm so with you on that. T shirt's coming. Let the bow go. Okay, great. Perfect. So now that you've written this book, you have a new album coming out. I mean, this is so exciting. What are you most excited about next, assuming we ever get out of our homes? Like, what is when you look forward, what are you just like, oh, I can't wait for this or this is getting me through this time? Well, I'm I'm really looking forward to a lot, some good hugs. Let's start there for two seconds. Like, you know, there's a lot of arms that I haven't been able to hug and a lot of people I haven't been able to hold. And I would- I'm really looking forward to just like holding them and hugging them, and I was just thinking about that the other day, like just that simple act is going to feel really good. So I'm looking forward to that for sure. I'm looking forward to- I of course, I'm looking forward to the music that I created coming out into the world, the album is called Alicia, and I actually, you know, I decided to hold it during this time just because we're all figuring out where we are and who we are and what's important and what's going on. And of course music plays such an amazing part of getting us through, so it would be on time anytime, but it just feels so I was going to put it out kind of in this timeframe and I decided to wait a little bit. I'm definitely looking forward to people hearing that music and continuing to hear more of what created with that. I'm also looking forward to maybe rethinking the over over busyness, you know, the way that somehow, you know, we feel like if we could just be busy, we're somehow achieving something. And I want to continue to think about that and how do I want to relate to that in the times when things will be a little bit more, at least hopefully not back to normal, because I hope that we are able to move forward and get better. So I feel like we don't want to go back, want to go forward, but obviously we'll be able to move around more and travel more and pick up business as usual a little bit more and I'm hoping I want to think about how I want to relate to that business. That's what I'm thinking about. That's what I'm thinking about. But I, that's some of the things I'm looking forward to and that I'm thinking about and wanting to do. So there's a lot to look forward to, but, you know, I'm looking forward to kind of rethinking

[32:18]Zibby Owens: certain things and making sure to not forget. That's great. I hear you on the hugs.

[32:24]Alicia Keys: Really looking forward to that too. I don't want to take too much of your time, but I was just wondering as the sort of consummate songwriter and now author of More Myself, what advice would you have to other artists who are trying to create works in whatever format, be it song or film or book? What what advice would you have? Man, I think, you know, it kinda was how we started. And and and my advice would be to be unafraid of the insecurity and to be, okay, maybe you can't be unafraid of it because shoot, it's hard and the insecurity is real the doubt and all these things that come into our heads that make us try to, you know, feel like we are unable to achieve something. But acknowledge that everybody feels that and everybody goes through that and no one really knows what they're doing. Everybody is just kind of trying to figure it out. And so I would say to have the will to try, to try your idea, to try to put it out there, to put it into words, put it into song, to put it into action and know that what you're going to learn from it, what's going to come back from it is going to surprise you in the most amazing way. And it's going to get you to the next place that you're meant to go. And that's what I would share. I love that. Thank you so much. Thank you for sharing all this time with me and all my listeners and your amazing book and your amazing songs. Even the Kobe Bryant. I mean, the Grammys were just like, oh my gosh, you've just been like a real leader in authenticity and I just have so much respect for you. So thank you so much. Oh, I love that. I love those words so much. Thank you as well. Thank you for shining and being so yourself and allowing us to remember to be ourselves and that imperfection is perfect. And I'm so glad that we could connect and I'm so blessed to be a part of your show. So thank you for having me. Oh my gosh. My pleasure. Thank you so much. Yay. You Yay. Did Alright. Thank you. It's so And and we'll talk soon. You too. Okay. That sounds great. Bye bye. Okay. Bye bye. Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram Zibby Owens and momsdonthavetimetoreadbooks. Also sign up for my newsletter at zibbyowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the sound editing, and thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music.