Alicia Keys announces her involvement in music initiative ‘She Is The Music’

Keys shared the news on Wednesday, June 13th during her acceptance speech for the Songwriter Icon Award at the National Music Publishers Association’s annual meeting in New York. It was announced back in May that Keys would be the recipient of this year’s award.

Keys, who did not share many specifics about the project, revealed: “I’ve joined forces with a group of really powerful female executives, songwriters, artists, engineers, producers and publishers to help reshape the industry that we all love by creating real opportunities and a pipeline of talent for other women.” The singer went on to say: “We deserve the utmost respect, and so many of these women across industries are telling our culture that time is up on double standards, and it is it’s over for pay inequity and colleagues who are at best disrespectful and at the worst unsafe — so it’s over for that.” With this nod to the Time’s Up movement, Keys continued to urge women to get involved in the music industry.

In her ten-minute speech, the R&B singer-songwriter drew her audience’s attention to some worrying statistics which were backed by a University of Southern California's Annenberg Inclusion Initiative study released earlier this year. “Of almost 3,000 pop songwriters credited last year only 12% were female, only 3% of the engineers were female, and one of them is Ann [Mincieli, long-time recording engineer and collaborator with Keys]. Only 2% of producers are female and one of them is me! Our world is 50-50, and it’s time for our industry to reflect that.”

Just finished this sick women’s writing camp!! I love supporting these amazing female writers, producers, engineers and creative minds! And there are so many more incredible ones!! Isn’t it time for our industry to reflect that? #sheisthemusic

Tag the incredible women you know!! pic.twitter.com/HtKjzmwXhe

— Alicia Keys (@aliciakeys) June 14, 2018