Very few artists get to have long, successful careers in the music industry. But after 20 years, Alicia Keys is still on fire.
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The 42-year-old Grammy award-winning artist, entrepreneur, wife and mom is now adding “Broadway composer” to her long list of accomplishments. Keys’ new musical, “Hell’s Kitchen,” is based on her teen years growing up in the eponymous, gritty section of Manhattan in the 1990s.
In a new interview with The Cut, the multi-hyphenate star, who has grown up in the spotlight for over two decades, opens up about the lessons she’s learned along the way.
For Keys, part of that growth is acceptance. In 2016, the singer made a public decision to go makeup-free, a choice she said was borne out of a need to resist what others in the industry wanted her to be.
“I went through my own experience of really feeling rebellious about what people were telling me, what the world, society was telling me, what I was supposed to look like because I fell into that, I subscribed to it,” she told InStyle in a June 2023 interview.
But these days, Keys is more comfortable in her skin and loves feeling free enough to decide how she wants to present herself.
“I’ve been able to just recognize that we are perfect as we are, and that doesn’t mean you don’t have days that you want to be different ways,” she told The Cut. “Some days I’m totally in my sweats, I don’t care. I’m putting my sneakers on. It’s perfect. I love it. I feel great. Some days, I’m like, You know what? This is a day I’m ready to just turn up in every way. And some days, you’re somewhere in the middle, and it’s cool.”
And while it’s easy to spend one’s 40s obsessing about grey hairs and slower metabolism, Keys is reveling in the enlightenment and sophistication that has come with age.
“I think you get more beautiful as you get older, too,” she said. “Your heart opens more. You have a quality about you that is so much stronger in a way. I really know that you become more beautiful as you recognize these things about yourself, as you become wiser, as you become older, as you become more yourself, who you actually are.”
While she’s growing older with no regrets, Keys said if given the choice, she’d love to relive her twenties – with the wisdom she’s acquired in her forties, of course.
“If I were to do it over, I would do it over with that in mind, to know that I didn’t have to shoulder everything by myself,” she said. “I could ask for more help and that would be okay. I could be okay knowing I just don’t know it all, I wouldn’t have to feel like I had to carry everything on my back because I was supposed to.”
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