Alicia Keys on the highs and lows of writing her autobiography, ‘More Myself’

Alicia Keys found the process of chronicling her life both therapeutic and elevating while putting together her autobiography, “More Myself: A Journey.” The book, which upon release went immediately to No. 3 on the New York Times best seller list for hardcover nonfiction, takes a look at Keys’s life by time-hopping through different periods of her childhood, her early music career and her sudden rise to superstardom.

Video Transcript

ALICIA KEYS: There's something so therapeutic about writing a story, and to actually be able to revisit these moments in time that you wouldn't have ever thought about in the way you do now at the time. And to understand what it even was meant to lead to or what it ended up bringing you or teaching you is pretty crazy and incredible.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

ALICIA KEYS: I really felt like More Myself, my book, really led us to Alicia. The album is definitely a companion piece. My book is, it feels like it brings you up to now, and then Alisha, the album and the music takes you from now onward. Because we've been able to share in a way that goes levels deeper than even a song can take you.

ALICIA KEYS (VOICEOVER): Three things happened the year I turned 14. I started a friendship that would frame my world for more than a decade. I ended my relationship with Craig, and I stumbled my way onto the front porch of the music business, all before I was old enough to drive.

ALICIA KEYS: I decided to call it More Myself just because I realized that that's what we're all looking for, you know. We're all looking for ways to actually be more of who we actually are. It's definitely scary to think of like, wow, am I really wanted to give all these pieces, like, so clearly in black and white. Is that what I actually want to do?

I found myself in moments being so, remembering so vividly these emotions that I had so thought I was over. I was like, oh, I'm good here. This has been done for a minute. I'm good. And it would come up, and it would like, I would have a coughing fit, and I just could not stop coughing. I'm like, what the hell is going on? And it's so, it's so visceral and so interesting how even reading those things out loud, reading them out loud is another way of, you know, of therapy or of letting go of acceptance or recognition.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

OPRAH (VOICEOVER): Alicia came to see me at my home. Over lunch, she shared with me many things she was dealing with, and I saw in her some of the same frustrations I've lived through.

ALICIA KEYS: In the book, I also have other people's recollections, those who have been closest to me, start off the different chapters. With the audio book, you do get to hear, you know, Michelle Obama actually speak her chapter opening, Bono actually speak his chapter opening, Jay-Z do his.

JAY-Z (VOICEOVER): For the chorus, I thought, who embodies New York? Mary J Blige came to mind first, but there was something about the piano part that made me feel like it had to be Alicia.

ALICIA KEYS: And the coolest part, they all did it on their phone, like on the recording part of your phone, where you, like, do a voice memo, they read it. And that's what we used. And so I think that's, again, just a beautiful testament to the power of technology and how, you know, really nothing can stop us from being connected.

ALICIA KEYS (VOICEOVER): Music is life, captured in a bottle of sound, set free to be felt until the end of the song.

ALICIA KEYS: I would actually encourage everyone to write their story down, even if, you know, whatever, even if it sits in your dresser, your story is important. Just keep it.