Song Exploder

Very good.

I love the fact that you never know how a song is gonna come together.

I love the anxiety that you feel when you're like,

"There's a pretty likely chance that this isn't even--

I'm not going to find the right words.

I'm not going to find the right melody."

Um, what is it?

And then there's another chance this might be the day that you write…

that thing that you never knew you had in you.

Alicia Keys is a singer, songwriter, and pianist.

She's sold over 40 million albums and won 15 Grammys.

Time magazine named her one of the most influential people of the year

twice.

For the song "3 Hour Drive," Alicia worked with two collaborators:

Oscar- and Grammy-winning songwriter, Jimmy Napes,

and Sampha, an artist whose own debut album won the UK's Mercury prize.

Together, the three of them found a way to tell one story

from two very different perspectives.

I'm Hrishikesh Hirway.

This is Song Exploder.

Everybody good to go?

How's everybody doing technically?

Take two and marker.

What's your sign?

Aquarius.

-Hello. Exactly. Go. - You too?

Does that mean something? I don't know what it means.

-I don't know. A little bit. -Okay. I was wondering if we could start,

actually, like, the day before…

you started working on this song.

My son, my youngest son, was very young, like, really young still.

When you have a new baby, you know, it's pretty difficult to go away.

But it's also easier to focus

when you can take yourself and go into another location.

I had been writing with Jimmy Napes.

We thought it'd be a good idea to go to London,

and just switch up the energy.

And I was really excited to be with Jimmy, 'cause we have such a great chemistry.

Alicia Keys is one of those people

you just want to spend time with and be around.

It didn't feel like I'm just a songwriter that's drafted in.

Writing songs feels very effortless for us,

and there's a lot of trust there

just because of a friendship to begin with.

I think what made that particular session different

was Sampha being there.

I was really hoping to connect with Sampha.

Sampha is an amazing jazz musician,

and he hears melodies that are very, very unique.

You know, he creates his own world, and so, I love connecting with people

that create their own world just like me.

No one loves collaborating with somebody they never met before.

-It's just awkward. - Yeah.

But I think we both had faith.

And what was it about Sampha that would make you wanna have that faith?

I knew that we were kindred spirits in a musical sense, you know.

You can prepare as much as you like to meet people,

but it's always a little bit strange.

You're gonna have this really quite intense…

intimate experience with someone while making music.

And it's always a bit weird 'cause I've obviously seen this person

on my TV screen…and listened to albums.

It's super flattering when someone you've looked up to

gets in contact with you.

It's always weird 'cause it's like, "Oh, they're a real person!"

So he came in and it was good vibes.

He was pretty almost maybe melancholy…

and definitely shy.

I'm not very good at small talk if I'm honest.

So sometimes I can be, like, really awkward and shy.

So we were talking a bit, and…

he shared with me that he had just lost his mother.

And I was like, "Wow." Being that, you know, I am a mother

and I had just had a son.

So it was kinda like this crazy 360-perspective right before us

that was just circling the space

that I don't even think we exactly recognized at the time.

Even being in a place that's so emotional

and then have to, like, not know these people.

You know, it's so risky.

But maybe sometimes it's better when you don't know people.

You ever have that happen?

Like, if you are on the verge of tears and someone you love so deeply hugs you

you cannot contain the tears.

It's almost sometimes strangely better when you don't know the person.

So I already knew he was in a delicate space

and I was honored that he would come.

And then at some point we decided to go into the room and um…

write…

or whatever.

Feel, play, vibe.

Yes, I can.

You can't man. You're Alicia Keys. You gotta sing "can."

I did a "thee." I never say thee.

So the footage of us in the studio… Did you see--

-Did they send the whole thing-- - They sent that to me.

I think it was Jimmy who kinda came up with the initial chords.

Then I started to come up with melodies.

That's kind of the process of how we started to build it.

These are the chords that you're talking about.

Don't you love a stem?

I do. That's what the whole show is.

I think it was actually the piano.

Yeah, it's strange because I think…

making music is like a language.

It's just kinda my way of communicating with people.

I definitely go into this kind of stream-of-consciousness sort of world.

Sometimes it feels like I was in an alternate reality.

It was such a beautiful melody and almost so dreamy.

That was hypnotic.

There's, like, a bit of sweetness to it and sort of, like, a longing.

For me, it has this kind of hazy feeling of memory drifting away.

Something that you're sorta chasing, but you can't quite reach.

Just by the chords alone, you felt something so powerful,

but to give it word was what the journey was about.

So now we're kind of looking for the line.

We had these beautiful chords and beautiful melody, but no…concept,

even though the feeling was there,

and that's how songs come together sometimes.

So I started to sing the cadence that I heard…

and then words would jump out, like "traveling by."

So then Sampha's like, "Oh, traveling by!"

"You keep traveling by. It's more than I can take."

There's a longingness,

-like, to connect, but you tr-- - Traveling by…

We need to think about what we're saying.

Jimmy was like, "We need to figure out what we're writing about."

He's very practical.

I like to visualize it in my mind, the situation,

-so I can get in-- -Yeah, so you can get in more.

We knew we liked this "three-hour drive."

We liked that 'cause that was, like, "What does that mean? A three-hour drive.

Where we going?"

The idea of a three-hour drive, yeah, I guess you just have this feeling of…

someone working through something, you know?

There is something super reflective about it and cathartic.

I think it's "no you, no me."

There's no you. There's no me. You know, that's like…

The-- Right.

You give me life.

When we landed on "you give me life,"

that was, like, a celebration 'cause you felt it.

You're like, "That's it. That's the thing."

That's it.

And it's so simple, but it means so much.

"You give me life" means everything.

Earlier in your career, you were not interested in collaborating.

What do you think changed?

So much of my life, I was too scared to open myself up.

After you have kids, I remember immediately realizing…

I was like, "I don't-- None of this matters."

I'm done?

That's it.

Alicia started the beat on the MPC. There are, like, 16 pads.

Basically you hit them and each one makes a different sound.

So she's there, just like jamming, making this beat.

And I remember just thinking, "Oh my gosh. Is there anything that she can't do?

It's so loud and ridiculous.

It's good. It needs it.

It's so pretty that I wanted it to feel more like rough.

I think you're going…

Doo doo by the kick.

And then it changes and it gets…

-even more spacious. - Right.

You know, there's not hi-hats in there. There's not, like, swells in there,

and you think that you have to fill things in

with the pieces that would be logical to put in there.

And actually, I find that hi-hats are restricting.

In fact, live drummers too, I'll ask them, "Don't play the hat.

Make it like it's the smallest set you ever had."

I just love that there's something about the space.

When you add less, it feels bigger.

There's, like, a element of just sound design. Like this.

Right.

Yes, but it fits so well

and there's such a hypnotic, kind of fluid thing that I love.

Just sounds that you feel, but don't hear.

That's nice. That's you?

That's nice!

-That's dope. - Is that original sound?

We didn't think that Sampha was gonna sing.