Alicia Keys Explains How She Wrote Her New Single We Are Here

Posted on September 9, 2014

Alicia Keys is only 31 years old but she has already won multiple 14 Grammy Awards and sold millions of copies of her albums worldwide. She is also the co-founder of the charity, Keep a Child Alive, and has helped raise millions of dollars for AIDS research.. She was a guest on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon to perform the song. She recorded a video backstage explaining how she wrote her new single, "We Are Here."

Alicia said that the idea for the song came out of a conversation she was having with friends. One of them asked her something she'd never been asked before which is "why are you here?" She thought about it and when she went to the studio to work on her new album, she decided to ask each person she worked with the same question.

She says the answers ranged from funny to very deep. The funniest one was her friend (clearly a writer) who says he is here waiting for "the return of a particular font." Sadly, we do not know which font he's waiting for. Alicia says we all have a voice, the only question is how we use it. She wrote the song as an anthem for like minded people to focus on healing the world's violence and illness. She wrote the song to start a conversation and a dialogue about how to address the many problems, from Ebola spreading in Africa to the rise of ISIS. Take a look:

You can see Alicia perform the song in a new video she posted on her Facebook page.