Alicia Keys once felt she was "not good enough for the world to see".
Alicia Keys
The 'No One' hitmaker admits she battled with the public's perception of herself at times and felt very "insecure".
She said: "I was really starting to feel like that - that, as I am, I was not good enough for the world to see. This started manifesting on many levels, and it was not healthy.
"Every time I left the house, I would be worried if I didn't put on makeup: What if someone wanted a picture?? What if they POSTED it??? These were the insecure, superficial, but honest thoughts I was thinking. And all of it, one way or another, was based too much on what other people thought of me. (sic)"
The 35-year-old singer also revealed she was shocked when she realised she was constantly singing about hiding who she is and from there discovered "how much she censored herself".
Writing in the new edition of Lenny Letter, she shared: "Before I started my new album, I wrote a list of all the things that I was sick of. And one was how much women are brainwashed into feeling like we have to be skinny, or sexy, or desirable, or perfect. One of the many things I was tired of was the constant judgment of women. The constant stereotyping through every medium that makes us feel like being a normal size is not normal, and heaven forbid if you're plus-size. Or the constant message that being sexy means being naked.
"All of it is so frustrating and so freakin' impossible. I realised that during this process, I wrote a lot of songs about masks filled with metaphors about hiding. I needed these songs because I was really feeling those insecurities. I was finally uncovering just how much I censored myself, and it scared me. Who was I anyway? Did I even know HOW to be brutally honest anymore? Who I wanted to be? I didn't know the answers exactly, but I desperately wanted to. (sic)"
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