Alicia Keys: Playing by her own rules

Alicia Keys arrives for our interview in London only days after performing at President Obama's second inauguration ball. Seated at a piano, playing her recent hit Girl On Fire, she had laughed as she threw in mischievous improvised lines such as "Obama's on fire!" and "Everyone knows Michelle is his girl / Together they run the world!". In stark contrast with Beyonce's controversial rendition of the national anthem on the same day, there was never any doubt that Keys was singing live.

"That's my style and that's what I love," she says, carefully avoiding criticism of her contemporary. "Even when I'm singing on record there's a lot of times when I'll fight for a bit of imperfection. I might not have quite hit the note to the perfect pitch but there was a soul in there and feeling that, to me, delivers the emotion of that moment. For me, doing a show, the excitement of singing live, and the possibility that you're not gonna be perfect - that's the thrill of it."

There is a deeper issue for Keys, and one that she, as a pop star and public figure, feels keenly. "The problem is that we live in a world where everybody feels they have to be too damn perfect. You're supposed to look perfect, sound perfect, act perfect, do everything perfect or God forbid. I don't know where that kind of mentality has begun to leave all of us."

It has to be said that Keys herself embodies a kind of ideal of perfection. She practically glides into the room, dressed in high-heeled boots and an elegant dress, her hair cut into an asymmetrical bob. She is a woman who has always given an impression of control and assuredness, only ever hinting at self-doubt or insecurity in the lyrics to her songs. She laughs when I point this out, confessing that she deliberately cultivated a strong image, and has had cause to regret it.

"When I first started getting into the business, a young woman in a music game that was mostly men, I did feel inadequate," she says. "How much could I possibly know? It was an experience that was so new and wildly different, it was frightening."

Now, of course, Keys is a huge star, one of the great talents of contemporary music: she has achieved global hit singles and sold tens of millions of albums without ever pandering to the lowest common denominator. She's a virtuoso pianist, a sensitive singer-songwriter and a soulful, emotional vocalist; like a cross between Carole King and Aretha Franklin with a dash of hip-hop bravado thrown in. She attended the Professional Performing Arts School in New York, and was, in some ways, hot-housed for stardom, after coming under the tutelage of record industry mogul Clive Davis while still a teenager. Her debut album, Songs in A Minor, released in 2001, won five Grammy awards and sold 12?million copies worldwide. Her career seems to have progressed so smoothly in the years since that it is a surprise to hear her talk about it in terms of struggle.

"I had a vision for myself and felt I wasn't allowed to express it, because people always want to tell you, 'Do it like this, don't do that, you should do this, you can't do that'. So I did feel like I had to control it. I had to claim my space," she says. "It was about demanding respect, saying 'Here's what I want', and pushing people as opposed to being pushed around. I found that if you acted like you knew what you were doing, people would believe you knew what you were doing."

Her professional success came at a personal cost which, she says, it took her years to recover from. "I moved at such a speed I tended to feel like I was on a hamster wheel and I was just running in circles. I felt a little bit encaged. I was really not happy but I didn't understand why, because here's this big dream and I'm living it, so what's wrong with me?" She talks about the pressure she was under to create, perform and promote, with the subtle, bullying implication that if she didn't do certain things, she was putting her career at risk, "So everything was kind of based on fear".

Keys has never allowed herself to be marketed with the sexual salaciousness still common to most young female artists in the music business. "That was a huge battle," she says. "As a young girl coming into this thing, I felt huge pressure. You don't know how to navigate it because everyone's going 'Oh that's beautiful, that's nice, why don't you unbutton the shirt a little lower, pull the skirt a little higher, it's really nice'. And you're just trying to figure out how to not look like an idiot. I trusted people and then I would see things back and feel embarrassed and uncomfortable. That kind of set me on my path to be stronger about not letting people tell me anything, only trusting my own instincts, but that's tricky too."

I have met Keys before and always found her warm and accommodating yet with a tough, demanding undercurrent. I recall being ushered into her dressing room some years ago for a short interview at a television show called Divas. I opened with a light-hearted question, "Do you consider yourself a diva?" Keys regarded me with a sceptical expression. "Come on," she said. "You're a smart guy. You can do better than that."

When I remind her, she laughs richly. "Ooh, feisty. I was a lot more grouchy then."

The thing is, she hadn't made me uncomfortable, because she was smiling as she dismissed my silly question, but it served as a warning that I should respect her intelligence, and raise my game. "I do know how to deliver a blow. In the most positive way," she laughs, but it becomes apparent there is another side to Keys's smiling persona. "I'm a very positive person but this whole concept of having to always be nice, always smiling, always happy, that's just not real. It was like I was wearing a mask. I was becoming this perfectly chiselled sculpture, and that was bad. That took a long time to understand. You have to be allowed to feel things and be who you are."

You can trace Keys's journey towards greater self-awareness and fulfilment through her albums like As I Am (2007) and The Element of Freedom (2009), which contained her blockbuster duet with Jay-Z and ode to her hometown, Empire State of Mind. "I was searching for myself, really recognising the things that were working in my life, stepping into my own womanhood," she says. "Then when I became a mother it took on a whole other level of importance."

Perched next to Keys for much of our encounter is a little bundle of energy in a lurid orange T-shirt and matching trouser ensemble. This is her son, Egypt Daoud Ibarr Dean, born in October 2010, to Keys and her husband Kasseem Dean, a leading hip-hop DJ and producer also known as Swizz Beats.

Keys, who is now 32, says she feels positively transformed by the experience of first-time motherhood. "It's what every parent knows, a stronger connection and commitment to the world. I've changed, for sure, I'm better." She's still smiling but there is nothing false about it. This doesn't mean she is no longer a demanding interview subject. She protests at some of my more circuitous questions, sternly demanding I "be more direct". There is a combative element to our conversation which she seems to enjoy.

Yet, Keys's default mode remains proper and polite. When Egypt loses interest in adult conversation and wants to race up and down the corridor, Keys pursues him before returning, apologising and thanking me for my patience. Our talk turns to parenthood and the demands of raising a child in completely different circumstances from her own upbringing. Keys was brought up by a working single mother in straitened circumstances in Hell's Kitchen, New York. Egypt, by contrast, is the privileged child of wealthy showbusiness stars.

"I'm always thinking about his well-being and understanding, how he processes important things," she says. "Things can be really empty in this world, and I don't just mean the music world. It can become a very meaningless place if you don't really understand: who am I? Why am I here? What am I doing? To feel fulfilment and have a deeper level of understanding, personally, that is the most important thing. But he's only two, and the world is a wonder to him. He's excited about the moon and aeroplanes and things that are beautiful and interesting. If I can teach him how to be grateful and in awe of the beauty of the world, that's my goal. But I'm not worried about it. I think you are who you are and your kids will see who you are. So you'd better be a good person, because they are going to see it, and that's going to shape them. They are going to become you."

Musically, Keys is revelling in her sense of new-found freedom. Her latest album, Girl On Fire (which came out last November) is sensitive and soulful, but it is also poppy, funky and playful. "I don't care so much anymore, to be honest. I don't want that to be taken wrongly - I'm very serious about my craft, I want to make the best music that people have ever heard. I want to make music that goes down from generation to generation and people never forget. But I'm not so precious anymore. I want to feel that excitement that comes with something that you have no idea how it's going to turn out.

"I enjoy performing in a way that breaks with people's expectations," she continues. "That's not to say I want to perform with fireworks and 30,000 backing dancers. I'm not going to take off every layer of clothing and say, 'bet you didn't expect me to do that!' But I do want to try new things, sing new things, express myself in new ways. I want to break free!"

Keys is still smiling as our interview comes to an end. Scooping up her son and making for the door, she shouts back, "I choose happiness. I want you to know that!" and leaves, her laughter echoing down the corridor as she goes.

Girl on Fire is out now. Alicia Keys will be touring the UK in May. For details and tickets, see: aeglive.co.uk