Throughout her career, Keys has won numerous awards including 14 Grammy awards and has sold over 75 million records worldwide. Billboard magazine named her the top R&B artist of the 2000–2009 decade, establishing herself as one of the best-selling artists of her time. In 2010, VH1 included Keys on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.
Keys released her first studio album, Songs in A Minor, in June 2001. It debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and sold 236,000 copies in its first week. The album sold over 6.2 million copies in the United States, where it was certified six times Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It went on to sell over 13 million copies worldwide, establishing Keys' popularity both inside and outside the United States, where she became the best-selling new artist and best-selling R&B artist of 2001. The album's lead single, Fallin', spent six weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100. The album's second single, A Woman's Worth, peaked at number three on the same chart. The following year, the album was reissued as Remixed & Unplugged in A Minor, which included eight remixes and seven unplugged versions of the songs from the original.
Songs in A Minor led Keys to win five awards at the 2002 Grammy Awards: Song of the Year, Best Female R&B Vocal Performance, and Best R&B Song for Fallin', Best New Artist, and Best R&B Album; Fallin' was also nominated for Record of the Year. Keys became the second female solo artist to win five Grammy Awards in a single night, following Lauryn Hill at the 41st Grammy Awards. That same year, she collaborated with Christina Aguilera for the latter's upcoming album Stripped on a song entitled Impossible, which Keys wrote, co-produced, and provided with background vocals. During the early 2000s, Keys also made small cameos in television series Charmed and American Dreams.
Keys followed up her debut with The Diary of Alicia Keys, which was released in December 2003. The album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, selling over 618,000 copies its first week of release, becoming the largest first-week sales for a female artist in 2003. It sold 4.4 million copies in the United States and was certified four times Platinum by the RIAA. It sold nine million copies worldwide, becoming the sixth biggest-selling album by a female artist and the second biggest-selling album by a female R&B artist. The singles You Don't Know My Name and If I Ain't Got You both reached the top five of the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and the third single, Diary, entered the top ten. The fourth single, Karma, was less successful on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at number 20. If I Ain't Got You became the first single by a female artist to remain on the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart for over a year.
Keys won Best R&B Video for If I Ain't Got You at the 2004 MTV Video Music Awards; she performed the song and Higher Ground with Lenny Kravitz and Stevie Wonder. Later that year, Keys released her novel Tears for Water: Songbook of Poems and Lyrics, a collection of unreleased poems from her journals and lyrics. The title derived from one of her poems, "Love and Chains" from the line: "I don't mind drinking my tears for water." She said the title is the foundation of her writing because "everything I have ever written has stemmed from my tears of joy, of pain, of sorrow, of depression, even of question". The book sold over US$500,000 and Keys made The New York Times bestseller list in 2005. The following year, she won a second consecutive award for Best R&B Video at the MTV Video Music Awards for the video Karma. Keys performed If I Ain't Got You and then joined Jamie Foxx and Quincy Jones in a rendition of Georgia on My Mind, the Hoagy Carmichael song made famous by Ray Charles in 1960 at the 2005 Grammy Awards. That evening, she won four Grammy Awards: Best Female R&B Vocal Performance for If I Ain't Got You, Best R&B Song for You Don't Know My Name, Best R&B Album for The Diary of Alicia Keys, and Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals" for My Boo with Usher.
Keys performed and taped her installment of the MTV Unplugged series in July 2005 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. During this session, Keys added new arrangements to her original songs and performed a few choice covers. The session was released on CD and DVD in October 2005. Simply titled Unplugged, the album debuted at number one on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart with 196,000 units sold in its first week of release. The album sold one million copies in the United States, where it was certified Platinum by the RIAA, and two million copies worldwide. The debut of Keys' Unplugged was the highest for an MTV Unplugged album since Nirvana's 1994 MTV Unplugged in New York and the first Unplugged by a female artist to debut at number one. The album's first single, Unbreakable, peaked at number 34 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number four on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs. It remained at number one on the Billboard Hot Adult R&B Airplay for 11 weeks.
Keys opened a recording studio in Long Island, New York, called The Oven Studios, which she co-owns with her production and songwriting partner Kerry "Krucial" Brothers. The studio was designed by renowned studio architect John Storyk of WSDG, designer of Jimi Hendrix' Electric Lady Studios. Keys and Brothers are the co-founders of KrucialKeys Enterprises, a production and songwriting team who assisted Keys in creating her albums as well as create music for other artists.
In 2006, Keys won three NAACP Image Awards, including Outstanding Female Artist and Outstanding Song for Unbreakable. She also received the Starlight Award by the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In October 2006, she played the voice of Mommy Martian in the "Mission to Mars" episode of the children's television series The Backyardigans, in which she sang an original song, Almost Everything Is Boinga Here. That same year, Keys nearly suffered a mental breakdown. Her grandmother had died and her family was heavily dependent on her. She felt she needed to "escape" and went to Egypt for three weeks. She explained: "That trip was definitely the most crucial thing I've ever done for myself in my life to date. It was a very difficult time that I was dealing with, and it just came to the point where I really needed to—basically, I just needed to run away, honestly. And I needed to get as far away as possible."
Keys released her third studio album, As I Am, in November 2007; it debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, selling 742,000 copies in its first week. It gained Keys her largest first week sales of her career and became her fourth consecutive number one album, tying her with Britney Spears for the most consecutive number-one debuts on the Billboard 200 by a female artist. The week became the second largest sales week of 2007 and the largest sales week for a female solo artist since singer Norah Jones' album Feels like Home in 2004. The album has sold nearly four million copies in the United States and has been certified three times Platinum by the RIAA. It has sold nearly six million copies worldwide. Keys received five nominations for As I Am at the 2008 American Music Award and ultimately won two. The album's lead single, No One, peaked at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, becoming Keys' third and fifth number-one single on each chart, respectively. The album's second single, Like You'll Never See Me Again, was released in late 2007 and peaked at number 12 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number one on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs. The album's third single, Teenage Love Affair, peaked at number three on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. She released the fourth single, Superwoman, which peaked at number 82 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 12 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs.
No One earned Keys the awards for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance and Best R&B Song at the 2008 Grammy Awards. Keys opened the ceremony singing Frank Sinatra's 1950s song Learnin' the Blues as a "duet" with archival footage of Sinatra in video and No One with John Mayer later in the show. Keys also won Best Female R&B Artist during the show. Keys, along with The White Stripes' guitarist and lead vocalist Jack White, recorded the theme song to Quantum of Solace, the first duet in Bond soundtrack history. In 2008, Keys was ranked in at number 80 the Billboard Hot 100 All-Time Top Artists. She also received three nominations at the 2009 Grammy Awards and won Best Female R&B Vocal Performance for Superwoman.
In an interview with Blender magazine, Keys allegedly said "'Gangsta rap' was a ploy to convince black people to kill each other, 'gangsta rap' didn't exist" and went on to say that it was created by "the government". The magazine also claimed she said that Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G. were "essentially assassinated, their beefs stoked by the government and the media, to stop another great black leader from existing". Keys later wrote a statement clarifying the issues and saying her words were misinterpreted. Later that year, Keys was criticized by anti-smoking campaigners after billboard posters for her forthcoming concerts in Indonesia featured a logo for the A Mild cigarette brand sponsored by tobacco firm Philip Morris. She apologized after discovering that the concert was sponsored by the firm and asked for "corrective actions". In response, the company withdrew its sponsorship.
Keys collaborated with record producer Swizz Beatz to write and produce Million Dollar Bill for Whitney Houston's seventh studio album, I Look to You. Keys had approached Clive Davis for permission to submit a song for the album. Keys also collaborated with recording artist Jay-Z on the song Empire State of Mind from his 2009 album, The Blueprint 3. The song topped the Billboard Hot 100 and became her fourth number-one single on that chart.
The following month, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers honored Keys with the Golden Note Award, an award given to artists "who have achieved extraordinary career milestones". She collaborated with Spanish recording artist Alejandro Sanz for Looking for Paradise, which topped the Hot Latin Songs chart. Keys released her fourth studio album, The Element of Freedom, in December 2009. It debuted at number two on the Billboard 200, selling 417,000 copies in its first week. As part of the promotional drive for the album, she performed at the Cayman Island Jazz Festival on December 5, the final night of the three day festival which will be broadcast on Black Entertainment Television (BET). The album's lead single, Doesn't Mean Anything, has peaked at number 60 on the Billboard Hot 100. Keys was ranked as the top R&B recording artist of the 2000–2009 decade by Billboard magazine and ranked at number five as artist of the decade, while her song, No One, was ranked at number six on the magazine's songs of the decade. In the United Kingdom, The Element of Freedom became Keys' first album to top the UK Albums Chart.
According to Songfacts, Keys said regarding the title of her fifth studio album, Girl On Fire. "Before making this record, in some ways I felt like a lion locked in a cage. I felt like a girl misunderstood that no one really knew, I felt like it was time to stop making excuses for any part of my life that I wanted to change. Once I made that choice I became a Girl on Fire, the lion broke free!!" The title track will be made available on iTunes and radio on September 4, 2012.
In May 2009, Swizz Beatz announced that he and Keys were romantically involved, and in May 2010, a representative for Keys and Swizz Beatz confirmed that they were engaged and expecting a child together. During the time of the 2010 FIFA World Cup, the couple took part of a union and had the unborn child blessed in a Zulu ceremony, which took place in the Illovo suburb of South Africa. Keys and Swizz Beatz were married on the French island of Corsica on July 31, 2010. On October 14, 2010, Keys gave birth to a son, Egypt Daoud Ibarr Dean, in New York City.
1997
Holy War
Alicia Keys Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
We've got it twisted in this lucid dream
Baptized in boundaries, schooled in sin
Divided by difference, sexuality and skin
Oh, so we can hate each other and fear each other
We can build these walls between each other
Baby, blow by blow and brick by brick
Yeah, we can hate each other and fear each other
We can build these walls between each other
Baby, blow by blow and brick by brick
Keep yourself locked in, yourself locked
Oh, maybe we should love somebody
Oh, maybe we could care a little more
So maybe we should love somebody
Instead of polishing the bombs of holy war
What if sex was holy and war was obscene
And it wasn't twisted, what a wonderful dream
Living for love, unafraid of the end
Forgiveness is the only real revenge
Oh, so we can heal each other and fill each other
We can break these walls between each other
Baby, blow by blow and brick by brick
Keep yourself open, yourself open
Yeah, we can heal each other and fill each other
We can break these walls between each other
Baby, blow by blow and brick by brick
Keep yourself open, you're open
So maybe we should love somebody
Maybe we could care a little more
So maybe we should love somebody
Instead of polishing the bombs of holy war
What if love is holy and hate obscene
We should give life to this beautiful dream
'Cause peace and love ain't so far
If we nurse our wounds before they scar
Nurse our wounds before they scar
In "Holy War," Alicia Keys explores the juxtaposition of love and hate, and how society often glorifies war while labeling natural aspects of human existence, such as sex, as obscene. She questions the twisted perception that war is considered holy, while something as beautiful and natural as sex is seen as dirty and shameful. The song suggests that these conventions need to be challenged and reversed.
Keys highlights the divisions that exist in society, whether they be based on boundaries, sin, race, or sexuality. She points out how this separation breeds hatred and fear, leading to the construction of walls that keep people locked within themselves. However, she posits that instead of perpetuating these divisions, individuals have the power to break down these walls and connect with one another.
The lyrics propose that love should be revered as holy and hate should be seen as obscene. Keys advocates for a world where people prioritize empathy, forgiveness, and understanding. She suggests that by nurturing love and embracing one another, we can create a beautiful reality where peace is attainable.
Overall, "Holy War" is a call to action, urging listeners to challenge societal norms and embrace love as a means to overcome the destructive nature of war and hate.
Line by Line Meaning
If war is holy and sex is obscene
If we consider war to be sacred and sex to be indecent
We've got it twisted in this lucid dream
We have misunderstood the true nature of reality
Baptized in boundaries, schooled in sin
Conditioned by limitations and taught to view certain actions as sinful
Divided by difference, sexuality and skin
Separated by our distinctions, including sexuality and race
Oh, so we can hate each other and fear each other
So that we can harbor hatred and fear towards one another
We can build these walls between each other
We can create barriers and divisions that separate us
Baby, blow by blow and brick by brick
Gradually and methodically, through both physical and emotional actions
Keep yourself locked in, yourself locked in
Keep yourself imprisoned and isolated
Oh, maybe we should love somebody
Perhaps we should show love and compassion towards others
Oh, maybe we could care a little more
Perhaps we could show more concern and empathy
So maybe we should love somebody
So perhaps it's time to embrace love for others
Instead of polishing the bombs of holy war
Rather than supporting and preparing for destructive conflicts
What if sex was holy and war was obscene
Consider the possibility of viewing sex as sacred and war as morally repulsive
And it wasn't twisted, what a wonderful dream
Imagining a world where things are not distorted but are in their true state
Living for love, unafraid of the end
Choosing to exist with a focus on love, without fear of the ultimate outcome
Forgiveness is the only real revenge
Recognizing that true retaliation comes through forgiveness and letting go of anger
So we can heal each other and fill each other
So that we can support and nurture one another
We can break these walls between each other
We have the power to dismantle the barriers that separate us
Keep yourself open, yourself open
Remain receptive and vulnerable
Yeah, we can heal each other and fill each other
Yes, we have the ability to provide healing and emotional fulfillment for one another
Maybe we should love somebody
Perhaps it's time to show love and compassion towards others
Maybe we could care a little more
Maybe we should increase our level of concern and empathy
Instead of polishing the bombs of holy war
Rather than supporting and preparing for destructive conflicts
What if love is holy and hate obscene
Imagine considering love to be sacred and hate morally repulsive
We should give life to this beautiful dream
We should actively bring this wonderful vision into existence
'Cause peace and love ain't so far
Because peace and love are within reach
If we nurse our wounds before they scar
If we attend to our emotional injuries before they become permanent
Nurse our wounds before they scar
Take care of our hurts and emotional pain before they leave lasting effects
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Written by: Carlo Montagnese, Alicia Augello-Cook, Billy Walsh
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind
Alison
a beautiful, timeless song~ i can't believe i'm only hearing it for the first time! i'll definitely return to listen again ❤
Poetic Empress
This song is so real. The message well needed, the words touching, it is just so pure and conscious....and we all know this is all a product of the pure soul who wrote and sang this with her amazing voice. Thank you Alicia.
bryce mcguire
I'm just happy she took the time and used her exposure/influence to address the world climate by playing this song on the voice. Beautifully done, lets spread the love, this world is in need of some more love
Ally Jay
I didn't know this was an original song of hers, I was wondering who sang it, it's so beautiful and I love it so much! Thank you for giving your voice to peace, this world needs more people who believe in love instead of war.
Ally Jay
Also, I think the voice live performance was much better than this audio and that is as a compliment.
Tatiana Sanchez
Me encanta esta mujer
Su voz es lo máximo
Alesha Walker
This song is so relevant right now. I listen to it all the time and it always reminds me of the work that must be done.
kelvin
This is honestly her best written song , I can hear the pain in her voice , I'm proud of her , definitely buying this album
Kelvin Deng
Second best✌️
salome 5
she's one of the only singers who continues to make songs with meaningful lyrics