Alicia Keys - Fallin'

Sunday, May 29, 2011

Alicia Augello Cook (born January 25, 1981), better known by her stage name Alicia Keys, is an American recording artist, musician and actress. She was raised by a single mother in the Hell's Kitchen area of Manhattan in New York City. At age seven, Keys began to play classical music on the piano. She attended Professional Performing Arts School and graduated at 16 as valedictorian. She later attended Columbia University before dropping out to pursue her music career. Keys released her debut album with J Records, having had previous record deals first with Columbia and then Arista Records.

Keys' debut album, Songs in A Minor, was a commercial success, selling over 12 million copies worldwide. She became the best-selling new artist and best-selling R&B artist of 2001. The album earned Keys five Grammy Awards in 2002, including Best New Artist and Song of the Year for "Fallin'". Her second studio album, The Diary of Alicia Keys, was released in 2003 and was also another success worldwide, selling eight million copies. The album garnered her an additional four Grammy Awards in 2005. Later that year, she released her first live album, Unplugged, which debuted at number one in the United States. She became the first female to have an MTV Unplugged album to debut at number one and the highest since Nirvana in 1994.

Her third studio album, As I Am, was released in the same year and sold six million copies worldwide, earning Keys an additional three Grammy Awards. She released her fourth album, The Element of Freedom, in December 2009, which became Keys' first chart-topping album in the United Kingdom. Throughout her career, Keys has won numerous awards and has sold over 30 million albums worldwide. Billboard magazine named her the top R&B artist of the 2000–2009 decade, establishing herself as one of the best-selling artists of her time. In 2010, VH1 included Keys on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.

"Fallin'" is a song recorded, written, and produced by American recording artist Alicia Keys for her debut album, Songs in A Minor. Released to radio and music video outlets in 2001, it is generally considered her signature song."Fallin'" became Keys' first number-one single in the United States and her first top five hit in several countries. It is also Keys' second biggest single to date after 2007's "No One". In 2009 the single was named the 29th most successful song of the 2000s, on the Billboard Hot 100 Songs of the Decade.

Rolling Stone ranked it number sixty-two on their Top 100 Songs of the 2000s decade. The song charted at 413 in Blender magazine's 500 Greatest Songs Since You Were Born. "Fallin'" won three Grammy Awards in 2002, including Song of the Year, Best R&B Song, and Best Female R&B Vocal Performance, and was also nominated for Record of the Year. The single stopped for 10 years to record music with the largest cumulative audience in the history of pop radio with 93 million, but was broken by pop singer Katy Perry, with a single E.T. in 2011.