Alicia Keys' breakdown

One New York morning, I was on the phone with Alicia Keys as she was dropping her eldest son Egypt off at school. On the speakerphone in the car, it was the window of time she had to do a cover interview for Time Out New York. For a cover it was a remarkably short period of time. I think I got something like 24 minutes. But with a star like Keys it was beyond enough. Also, I was coming off having been to one the most astounding live performances I’d ever seen. At the Troubadour in LA in 2016. No phones were allowed. There is no memory of it, other than in the eyes of those who imbibed it like liquid gold. Keys, with a live band. She played two pianos, at the same time, pivoting on her feet, throwing her hair back. It seemed like she had eight arms and 100 fingers. She was promoting a new album, Here.

I used to tell a story during my speaking engagements, whenever asked how Jewish the household I grew up in was - my enduring grudge that I was not allowed to go to the Alicia Keys concert in Glasgow on a Friday night when I was 16. I was of legal age. That’s the level of Jewish the house I grew up in was. When I was a teenager, and Keys released the pretentiously titled Songs In A Minor, Keys embodied an old school music schooling that was long relegated to the Rat Packs of the past. She was reared on Thelonius Monk, Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald. A classically trained pianist, signed by Clive Davis, fusing hip-hop with neo-soul with R&B.

The ballad “Falling” catapulted her into global overnight stardom, and she’d perform it while interpolating Beethoven’s “Fur Elise”. The song alone earned her three Grammys. Her follow-up singles such as “Girlfriend” and cover of Prince’s “How Come You Don’t Call Me” secured her crown as the new young Queen of soul. She was sired as some kind of spiritual heir to Marvin Gaye. She was never a teen star. She was a fully-formed legacy artist. Nina Simone, the millennial.

Fast-forward 15 years and she was priming her sixth album at the tender age of 35. Two weeks before that aforementioned gig at the Troubadour, Alton Sterling and Philando Castille were shot dead by police, galvanizing the already rising Black Lives Matter movement. She took to the stage and performed this instant masterpiece of a song.

“And so it persists, like a bottomless kiss
An illusion of bliss, an illusion of bliss.”

The track she performed was the as-yet-untitled “Illusion of Bliss”. With her huge curls towered atop her head, and sweat beading down her face, she played her piano upright like she was throwing down punches at the keys. I remember she finished the song, turned to the crowd and said: “The world has lost its motherfucking mind.” I had goosebumps, and that was before I realized Pharrell Williams was standing over my shoulder. All the socio-political commentary of the time aside, what really caught me off guard about “Illusion Of Bliss” was how much it contrasted with the polished, undeniable but so pristine quality of Keys’ entire catalogue up until this point.

This was not that at all. It was human and terrifying. It wasn’t singing. It was confession. Keys rasped and slurred on the song like she was crawling out from under her skin, shrying for the truth to be dragged into the daylight. She was no longer running lyrics like a trained performer, she was delivering gospel and screaming the poison out. “Illusion of Bliss” is not pretty or polished. It’s a vessel for pain. Her voice cracks and it’s stunning. Child prodigy out, woman roaring in.

We spoke about her performance style days later on the call: “I’ve decided I don’t want to sit at a piano any more! It’s constricting, you know? You have to stand to play this type of music.” But I wanted to know more about “Illusion Of Bliss”…

“It’s about addiction. Some of us are addicted to attention. Some of us are addicted to drugs. Some of us are addicted to sex. Some of us are addicted to drama. The song is nuts. It sends me out the window every time I sing it. Which isn’t that often. Yet.”

The relentless raw New York energy of “Illusion of Bliss” isn't just about addiction, though. It's about the ways we all perform sanity, perfection, and control when we’re crumbling inside. It’s the sound of the demands Keys faced during a lifetime locked into a commercial music system as a Black woman (“live in a prison of blood and flesh”) shattering under the piano chords. Picture a woman trying to hold the world together with costume tape and projection, hoping the spotlight will silence the screams beneath. “I used to live in a world of illusion, where every tear that fell was hidden by a smile,” could be written about any woman forced to carry someone else’s goals onstage. Sometimes you want to disappear. And yet here Keys returned again, braver and trembling. Maybe she felt strong – or maybe hiding had started to feel more dangerous than being seen.

Weeks after the interview, two dozen white roses arrived at my doorstep. With a note:

“I’ve never read an article that understood me better. Thank you. Love Alicia.”

There’s this break in the song. It’s maybe my favorite switch-up in a track second to Frank Ocean’s “Self-Control” (in that track the melody clears like the sky cracking open). On “Illusion Of Bliss” it isn’t light that comes through but the sorrowful hope of being trapped in the dark tunnel, peering for a ray of sun. The illusion of bliss. The lies we tell ourselves to survive. The mask of happiness when something inside is shattering. The chasing of pleasure to avoid truth. The numbing of pain to replace speaking up. The staying with the person who hurts you, because it’s less frightening than being alone. The art of pretending that’s easier than change, than need, than facing the fire. Can we break down to break through?

“Don’t say I’m gone, gone
I don’t wanna be a fallen angel
Don’t say I’m lost, lost
I don’t wanna be a fallen angel.”

The thing about illusions is - they crack. So there’s no need to be small, obedient, or “perfect”. Be a mess. Be everything at once. You’re not a fallen angel.

You’re a phoenix rising, baby.