Keys had been a highlight on Men In Black: The Album along with Jermaine Dupri’s 12 Soulful Nights Of Christmas compilation, but label executives wanted the singer to alter her sound and image to become more “radio-friendly.” With a culmination of skill and focus, Keys retreated to the recording studio, soon faced with uncertainty from the team that signed her.
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Skilled as a pianist and vocalist, she inked a deal with Columbia Records at 15.Īfter graduating high school as an honors student, 16-year-old Keys was accepted to Columbia University on a full scholarship, but left just four weeks into the first semester. Keys was also fond of Thelonius Monk, Billie Holiday, and Miles Davis, and she worshipped Marvin Gaye’s 1971 orchestral masterpiece What’s Going On, which introduced the budding artist to soul music. A multiracial teenager, Keys had an appreciation for Romantic composer Frédéric Chopin as well as attending freestyle rap battles in Washington Square Park during the early ’90s.
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Well into the prime of her career by that point, Keys was an old soul who had influenced the next generation of multi-instrumentalists, starting with an album she wrote and recorded as a teenager as well: her gripping 2001 breakout Songs In A Minor, which turns 20 this week.Ī Hell’s Kitchen-raised beatnik, Keys (born Alicia Augello Cook) began studying classical piano at age 7, enrolled at Manhattan’s Professional Performing Arts School at 12, and by 14 had become an avid student of jazz. Fifteen years ago a 10-year-old Wilson - now known as R&B singer-guitarist H.E.R., a Grammy darling herself - performed “If I Ain’t Got You” by Alicia Keys on The Today Show. So it went for former child prodigy Gabi Wilson. The ascension for both Lacy and Eilish was a gradual climb throughout their childhoods. Teen pop phenom Billie Eilish and older brother Finneas O’Connell teamed up on Eilish’s 2019 debut album When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go, which soundtracked the Gen-Z “e-girl” movement and dominated the following year’s Grammys ceremony. Alt-R&B polymath and the Internet bandmate Steve Lacy gave a TED Talk on self-producing and received his first solo Grammy nomination in 2020 for his debut album Apollo XXI just as he reached legal drinking age. In the current era where songs are viral today and dissolve into a mere hum tomorrow, disciplined musicianship in young acts is a rare find.