Justin Bieber egged at Australia concert
Oksana Grigorieva wants to talk to Mel Gibson

Alicia Keys: 'I feel so open now'

By Ann Oldenburg, USA TODAY
Updated

Singer Alicia Keys is Essence mag's June cover girl and the new mom is glowing - inside and out.

Keys, 30, and her husband Swizz Beatz welcomed baby boy Egypt Dean in October. Some highlights from her interview:

On love: "Falling in love is such a force, but this is a whole other level of magic..."

On music, marriage and motherhood: "I was very closed for a long time. But I feel so open now. To feel open like this means you've found the center in yourself. You're not hiding; you're not worried about anything. Everything's going to be just fine."

On dedicating a song to her mom: "In the past, I've written mostly from my own perspective. But I just wrote a song for my next album that was inspired by a conversation I had with a man who was expressing how indebted he feels to God. He said, 'I owe God.' Now, what an interesting thought. And as much as I believe in God, for me that translated into how much I owe my mother for who I am. So I went home and I wrote I Owe You. It's dedicated to her…"

PREVIOUS
Justin Bieber egged at Australia concert
NEXT
Oksana Grigorieva wants to talk to Mel Gibson
To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor Brent Jones. For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to letters@usatoday.com. Include name, phone number, city and state for verification. To view our corrections, go to corrections.usatoday.com.