Alicia Keys Calls Out Music Industry’s “Old Boy Network”
The Grammy winner co-founded She Is The Music to help mentor female songwriters, producers and engineers in music.
Alicia Keys during the first night of the 76th Sanremo Italian Song Festival at the Ariston theatre, in Sanremo, Italy.
Marco Ravagli
Alicia Keys explained why female songwriters and producers have a harder time breaking through, as compared to their male counterparts. In a recent interview with The Times of London, Keys spoke about the inequality she’s witnessed as a woman who can write, produce and sing.
“The music world becomes a good old boy network, and all the incredible women working as engineers and producers are not given an open door,” she explained. “Women make up 2% of the entire business. I’m a producer, and here we are, doing a bunch of work, killing it, so it’s shocking that the number is so small.”
Keys co-founded She Is the Music, a nonprofit that puts together songwriting sessions, mentorships and educational opportunities for women in music. The Grammy Award-winning superstar says that it’s important that young female artists are armed with information.
“No one tells you these things,” Keys continued in the interview. “You deal with all these executives and lawyers who love to take their percentages and overcharge you, but they never say, ‘How can we ensure you’re here to stay?’”
“Rather than just being pissed off about that,” she added, “it was time to create opportunities.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Keys said that her reputation for feminist messaging in her songs wasn’t indicative of an explicit agenda — but it came from her own needs and perspectives.
“I didn’t aim to come up with feminist message songs, and most of them were written because I wasn’t feeling that strong so I had to give myself a pep talk to keep going, but it is a thread through my work,” she said.
She also revealed to The Times that she’s got new music coming.
“The music is very close to being cooked, and I’m excited,” she said. “There is a craft, an ability to write songs that mean something to people, which has given me longevity and you’ll hear that in the new album.”
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