Great Expectations

For someone who seems to have worked as hard as she has, I tell her there hasn’t been a moment when she looked like she was about to lose the plot. “I was focused,” she agrees. “But I’m also one of the greatest pretenders you’ll ever meet. That’s [a skill] I know very well; all too well. But I’m actually learning to undo that. It’s not healthy.”

We all pretend at work to some degree, but when one’s job is so relentless – six world tours, countless promotional trips – I imagine things can get pretty fraught.

“I used to do things because it’s not [anyone else’s] fault I’m stressed or sad. And it’s true, it’s not. You shouldn’t be like, ‘I feel like f*cking sh*t, don’t bother me.’ That’s not right. And that’s professionalism. But I had gone so long hiding behind that mask that finally when it started to break down I was like, ‘What’s going on?’”

Alicia is quick to point out that nothing dramatic made her start standing up for herself. But with age came the confidence to be honest about her workload and how much she was willing to do.

“I had to start to honour the way I felt because when you keep covering it up, there’s a certain sadness it can give you. For a while, I wouldn’t even know where time went. If you asked me what I did for my birthday, I didn’t know because it was between this and that. I lost so many moments like that.”

For someone who has always been in control of her career, it seems the person Alicia had to push back against most was herself.

Born Alicia Cook in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen district, Alicia’s paralegal/ actress mother and her flight attendant father split when she was too young to remember. A childhood highlight was appearing on The Cosby Show as one of Rudy’s friends at a sleepover. If not a prodigy, Alicia was certainly a high achiever. She began piano lessons at seven, enrolled in a performing arts school at 12, began writing songs at 14, and graduated in just four years as valedictorian at the age of 16.

How does someone like that measure success? Do you keep on setting the bar higher for yourself?

“My husband was the first person who really said to me, ‘You’re not going to dinner after that big awards show? Why?’ It wasn’t even a part of my thinking to be like, ‘Wow, this is awesome. Look what we did.’ “That wasn’t the culture I was brought up in. I was working really hard and I don’t know if I expected anything. It was more like, ‘How much sleep can I get?’ Then when I began to know my husband, it would be little fun things he would do for me, or his friends. I never knew how he could know so many people. “He has a carefree spirit of how to take a moment and make it really fun and special. He opened my eyes to that. It started making my life so much more fun, enjoyable and… even.”

The husband she is so dearly crediting with changing her life is Kasseem Dean, aka hip-hop mega producer Swizz Beatz, whom she married in Corsica in July 2010.

Alicia Keys: Girl in Charge