Tears for Water: Poetry & Lyrics

Never-before-published poems and lyrics from Alicia Keys' journal and lyrics form her multiplatinum Grammy Award-winning albums, Songs in A Minor and The Diary of Alicia Keys.

"When Keys' debut album (Songs in A Minor) arrived in 2001, it was clear that this New Yorker was in immense talent; a singer-songwriter with an artistry and taste far beyond the reach of all her young female pop and R&B rivals." - Los Angeles Times

Her two albums, Songs in A Minor and The Diary of Alicia Keys, have earned countless awards, sold nearly 14 million copies to date, and brought Alicia Keys recognition as one of the most talented and unique artists in today's music. She is that special musician - a singer, a songwriter, and extraordinary pianist, and a producer - who has a genius for mixing styles from jazz to hip-hop to classic seventies soul, to create a contemporary sound and mood that is completely her own. But it's the wisdom and emotional power of her poems and lyrics that reveal the warmth and dignity of her compositions. In her music and writing, she reaches for new and fresh ways to express what she believes is real in a world that often isn't so real - the assurance that loyalty, honesty, and love are the things that last.

Tears for Water is an intimate look at a remarkable young woman - self-confident, sensuous, searching, and inspiring.

Publishers Weekly

No doubt Keys has a fascinating story to tell-raised by a single mother, she's a classically trained, New York born-and-bred neo-soulster with two multiplatinum albums and five Grammys to her name-but she merely hints at it in this gathering of poems and lyrics. With their themes of loneliness, confusion, wonder and desire, most of Keys's free-verse poems could be the cris de coeur of any American 20-something: "Sometimes I feel/ like I don't belong anywhere/ And it's going to take so long/ for me to get somewhere/ Sometimes I feel so heavy-hearted/ but I can't explain/ cause I'm so guarded." But other poems hint at her world travels, her budding sense of social justice and her concerns about stardom ("When gone is the glory/ When gone is the shine/ Is gone the whole/ Of your fortune and pride?"). Nearly half of the book consists of lyrics from her two albums, Songs in A Minor and The Diary of Alicia Keys; while they make a nice complement to the poems, the words feel a bit flat without the blaxploitation beat of "Heartburn," say, or the impassioned vocal delivery of "Fallin.' " For the Keys completist, however, this will be a compelling book of rock ephemera. Agent, David Vigliano. (Nov.) FYI: Putnam plans to release another volume of Keys's writings in fall 2005. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.