Alicia Keys’s résumé is extensive and ever-growing. The multiple-award-winning singer, songwriter, musician, and producer is also a best-selling author; actress; film/television/Broadway producer; skincare brand co-founder; entrepreneur; and longtime activist. And the multi-hyphenate powerhouse is now adding “musical theater composer and lyricist” to the list.
Conceptualized by and featuring music and lyrics written by Keys, her new musical “Hell’s Kitchen,” which has been in previews at New York’s Public Theater and officially opened November 19, has been extended twice and now runs through January 7, 2024. Directed by Tony nominee Michael Greif (“Rent”), with book by Pulitzer Prize-finalist Kristoffer Diaz and choreography by the prolific Tony-nominated Camille A. Brown, “Hell’s Kitchen” is loosely based on Keys’s life growing up in the NYC neighborhood of the same name, and features both newly created music and many songs from her beloved catalog.
The show’s press materials describe the musical’s coming-of-age story: “In a cramped apartment hanging off the side of Times Square, 17-year-old Ali is desperate to get her piece of the New York dream. Ali’s mother is just as determined to protect her daughter from the same mistakes she made. When Ali falls for a talented young drummer, both mother and daughter must face hard truths about race, defiance, and growing up. Ali feels trapped, until the sound of a neighbor playing piano opens the door to an unexpected friendship and a radically different future.”
“It’s not [autobiographical]! People will be like ‘Whoa, did you really…at [age] 17?!’ And I’m like ‘Nooo!’ Keys said, laughing, during a recent phone interview with the AmNews. While she did grow up the daughter of a single mom in the storied neighborhood, navigating situations and life events similar to those of the show’s protagonist, she stresses that audiences should not expect it to be a “word-for-word, thing-for-thing” adaptation of her life story. “‘Loosely based on’ really surrounds the elements of the spirit, the experiences, of growing up in the city … that [are] just very unique to growing up in the way that I grew up.”
The production, a product of over a decade of work and preparation, is only one of many achievements Keys is currently celebrating. Along with presenting “Hell’s Kitchen,” she’s also marking the 20th anniversary of her second album, the multi-platinum, Grammy-winning “The Diary of Alicia Keys” with the digital release of “The Diary of Alicia Keys 20” on December 1. This year also saw the addition of an Alicia Keys-themed display in the “Legends of Rock” exhibit at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, which includes clothing and artifacts from her blockbuster “As I Am” tour.
The AmNews was lucky to catch a few minutes with Keys by phone, where she shared some thoughts about her songwriting process, collaborating on the musical, and more.
AmNews: I’d love to start with a few questions about your writing process, and whether writing a song for yourself—that you would sing to express yourself—feels different from writing a song for someone else to sing. Is it a different feeling? Is the process different?
AK: That’s a great question. If I’m writing with somebody else, then I am thinking about what they’re feeling and what they’re going through with the situation, and with what their emotion is. And in a way, that’s similar, because I do write from an emotional place all the time. Whether it’s me or somebody else, it is coming from that place of, just, feeling, so in that way, it’s similar. But it’s different because the topic may be different, the way I approach it might be different, or the style that I’m putting it in is going to be a little bit different. So I think fundamentally, from an emotional standpoint, it’s the same. But from a point of view? It’s different. And that, I think, is actually what’s fun about it, too.
AmNews: I love that there’s fun involved! That’s beautiful.
AK: It really is! It’s actually really fun. I really enjoy the writing process, and I think what I like the most about the writing process is how unpredictable it is. You don’t know what you’re gonna get. You never know what you’re gonna get! Never, never, never; I don’t care what. I’ve written the songs I’ve written and I still don’t know what I’m gonna get. There’s something really amazing about that and I think it’s kind of humbling, too.
Some people look at music like a formula, but I don’t. And so sometimes you hit it—sometimes there really is this emotional capturing of a moment, a feeling, a flutter, an anger, whatever it is. And sometimes you nail it and you get it, and it’s perfect and effortless. And sometimes you just have to work so hard for it, and sometimes that’s just as rewarding. But sometimes you’ve worked so hard for and it adds up to nothing. But eventually it will add up to something, somewhere, somehow. So I don’t think any of this is ever in vain, but I think the mystery of it is what makes it [really exciting].
AmNews: While listening to you describe that, I thought about your background. You’re a classically trained pianist, so that means a lot of diligence, practice, structure, and adhering to a discipline. But it sounds like, once you have that, that it then frees you up to go for the unpredictability of creating and writing. You have your tools in place so you don’t have to worry about that part of it. You can just be open and free to see what comes.
AK: That’s so interesting, because when I was…well, not in the beginning, but at certain parts of my life, I used to feel so, so structured, and it felt like I had to have this in place so that this would be ready, and I had to be ready for this so that I could do this And I would go into these sessions and I’d bring all my material and all the chords, I would have them all ready, because I knew that people didn’t really know what I could do at that point, and I [felt] I had to show them and prove [to] them, like “I’m going to show it and I’m going to be ready for it,” with specific instruction and everything, and it wasn’t until later that I learned how to let go of that and just allow things to happen.
It took quite a long time for me to get to that place where I could allow things to happen, but when I did, I really discovered another part of the process that was really, really special. Maybe it was like the letting go of the attachment to the outcome. I think that was me getting more mature, to find my way to that ability, because I wasn’t always good at that. At all.
AmNews: Do you hear any of your songs differently now, after hearing them performed in this production? Do any of them now sound new to you, hearing them from someone else?
AK: Everything! Ev-er-y-thing is new! This is the craziest part of the whole thing with “Hell’s Kitchen” that I’m really grateful for and that’s kind of fascinating, because I’ve obviously spent a lot of time with this [project]. I’ve been developing this, we’ve been developing this pretty much for 13 years. And I realized that with many of these songs, not all of them, because there are a lot of new songs, there are a lot of songs that I think people might never have fully, truly known.
With a lot of the songs that maybe [they] do know, I would ask myself, “’Why didn’t I ever think to perform the song like this before? And what made me not do this before?” And I don’t know why. I don’t know why I never thought of it.
I guess that it was meant to be for this. And because of that, it really, really becomes new. And I think that it’s enough new so that it’s unique, [but also] enough of what you’re needing so that it doesn’t feel uncomfortable. I really love that about it.
AmNews: The score includes original songs of yours that you reworked or revised for the production, as well as completely new material. What was the re-working process like?
AK: It’s very natural, and I think that’s the thing about this process, because it’s been going on for quite a while—we got to know [the story] and it has its own personality, and it has its own thing that it wants to describe and make you feel.
I think the music naturally evolved, and was reworked to enhance that in the best way possible, as opposed to it being like a hard thing that doesn’t feel right or that you have to struggle with. You really get it, because it makes sense.
For example, this moment [in the story] is describing this relationship between these two people, and to make that really, really come off, they have to share these words. How do these words, when they share them, feed us into what we just saw, and into where we’re going? And should they be relating to these words to do that?
Then you can kind of quickly see how that happens, and then the organic nature of the talent in the room takes it to the level [where] it needs to be. And then boom, you’re like, “This is perfect! This is what I never even knew it should be,” because I was just following what it needed and what it wanted.
AmNews: Did you know which parts of the story would contain new material, and which parts would contain already-existing songs?
AK: There would be parts of it that we know for sure. Before we even wrote, before Kris Diaz even wrote one word, we knew that, “This song, this song, this song, and this song, definitely [are going to be in it]. This one represented the city; this one represented the love between mother and daughter; this one represented the grit, and…boom.” So we knew those were in, and anything else had to be explored.
I have to say that it’s been a really incredible process, between the book writer Kris Diaz and the director Michael Greif, really understanding the nuances of how to put the story together. That also suggested songs that even I sometimes wasn’t thinking about. There would be times where Michael might say, “You know, I really think we should do this,” and I’d be like, “Nah, I don’t like it.” But then we would try it, and I’d be like, “Damn, you’re right. We should do it!” [Laughs.]
It’s really cool to be sparked by different people. The beautiful thing about “Hell’s Kitchen” is everybody’s in their element and everybody is a pro in their element, and it’s so wonderful to be inspired by what they bring to it. So I think that, in those ways, there were parts that we knew would exist, and there were parts that we discovered along the way. And then there were even things we tried, and then we realized, “No, that’s not doing what we need it to do…we need a new song, we need something that doesn’t exist, whatever that might be.”
Then it would be the process of me creating that song.
That’s kind of how it flowed, in that way.
And it evolves over time. You might think it works, and over time…we’d find that it might not land in the way we need it to, so then we’d adjust.
AmNews: How did you and Kristopher Diaz come to work together?
AK: Oh, my gosh, he’s been with me in this process the longest. At the very beginning, I was really looking for different writers that could fulfill this concept, this energy of the city, this truth of this timeframe of the ’90s. The feeling of, what did that culture really feel like? You really have to have experienced it to know it—you can’t pretend it. You have to really have lived it.
Different people I spoke with and was meeting with, they were good, but it didn’t just quite land. And when I met Kris, it was as if we were just there. Like, “Oh, you know about this?”
He had the same or similar experiences that I had. It was just a beautiful, super-amazing connection, and I knew right there, okay, he was going to be able to get it. And he really has. I mean gosh, he’s so good.
AmNews: We’re told that “Hell’s Kitchen” is very loosely based on your life. Can you share whether there are ways in which the character of Ali [played by Maleah Joi Moon] is very much like you, and if there are ways in which you and she are very different?
AK: You know, the “loosely based on” really surrounds the elements of the spirit, the experiences, of growing up in the city—the vibe of the people, the look, the feel, their backstories, so that they really, really come to life…I think that what I’m most proud of, is the way that you can really find yourself in this piece; no matter where you are or who you are, you find yourself because there’s so much truth in the origin of the people that are expressed here.
In that way, we’re very much the same, in the truth of the city, the grit of the city, and the way that that gives you a certain independence—a certain experience that was just very unique to growing up in the way that I grew up, and so in those ways we’re similar.
[Even] the character of the building, which is called Manhattan Plaza, is a part of the spirit of how you get introduced to this community. Those things are similar. But Ali is actually a lot more naive than I was, and she’s actually a lot more innocent, even. I think she grows and she arrives to where she’s getting, for sure, which is so beautiful about her art, but I think I was probably… in those ways, we are quite different. I was a lot more, like, street, naturally, in the way that I was experiencing, and where I was going and how I was doing things, than she would be in this story.
Many people, naturally, are going to kind of think about the specifics. It’s very important that it’s clear that it’s not autobiographical. It’s not! People will be like, “Whoa, did you really…at [age] 17?!” And I’m like, “Nooo!” [Laughs.]
It’s not like a word-for-word, thing-for-thing, but it’s more the experience that can be infused in it, to give it the reality that you can really [connect with].
For more info about “Hell’s Kitchen” and for tickets, visit www.publictheater.org.
This interview was transcribed using Otter.ai and has been edited for length and clarity.