All right.
All right!
Hi!
How's it going?
I'm good, I'm good.
You did such a great job hosting the Grammys.
That was a very--
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
Thank you so much.
Look, hosting is hard anyway and you did--
you're always so present.
That's what I love about you is that you are--
you always look like you're in the moment, whatever
you're doing.
But that was an especially hard night to do anything,
and you handled it so well.
You must have been freaking out having to host that.
Well, I mean, we were all freaking out
because obviously hearing the news about Kobe
and his daughter was so tragic.
And none of us can still believe it right now to this day.
So I think that it was definitely
a crazy feeling, because literally minutes
before we were going to do something else,
and we had to really figure out how could we properly honor him
in his house on this night.
And everybody who adores him and loves him so much
has been inspired by him.
And it felt so devastated in that moment.
We couldn't-- we had to properly do that.
So I think that I was literally backstage,
I put on my meditation music.
I just was thinking, and I called
some of my closest people that helped me really
find the truth in the moment.
And it just so happened Boyz II Men was there
already that night and we wanted to do something special,
create just something that felt like it was the right thing.
And we pulled it together.
And it was just beautiful.
It was like that magic that happens when it's necessary.
And so, out-- whoa, whoa, like, whoa--
it was so much.
But I was very honored to be able to share
that moment with all of us-- with the entire world--
that we together could go through something
that hurt so bad, together.
And I feel really honored to have been able to be there
with you in that time.
Yeah.
You handled it really-- you did a great job.
Thank you.
So it was your birthday Saturday.
It was my birthday Sunday.
And so you had to go to bed early because of the show
the next day.
Did you make up for it Sunday night?
Oh, yes I did.
You did.
I partied on your birthday real hard.
Yeah?
You stayed out late?
Real late.
Late, late, late.
I got home, I was like, oh no, 4:30!
Oh, wow!
It felt good.
I was like, woo!
Been a little sec since it's been 4:30.
It was great.
And Happy Birthday to you, too.
And yes, I was definitely asleep by, like, 11:00 PM
on Saturday on my birthday.
I was like, I got to go to bed.
I got to go to bed and get myself together.
That's late for me.
Right.
[LAUGHTER]
So you have a new album.
It's called Alicia.
How did you come up with that name?
[LAUGHTER]
It was really hard.
I mean, I couldn't think of anything, obviously.
And so I just went with that.
You know, truly, I've realized that I've never
been more fully myself.
And I've never been more fully Alicia
than I am in this moment.
And I'm really enjoying getting to know myself in a way
that I haven't maybe been brave enough to before,
or haven't just really understood the nuances of what
makes us all who we are.
And so this music really reflects all of me.
And I felt like this is the first time I could actually
call this album Alicia because I'm finally
so much closer to who I am.
That's fantastic.
When does it come out?
(SINGS) March 20th.
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
And the song that you're going to perform for us--
that you performed at the Grammys--
such a beautiful song.
Wow, thank you.
Such a beautiful song.
"Underdog."
I love this song so much.
It's like sometimes songs have a thing about them
and they come at the right time.
So this song means so much, I think, in this current climate,
where we are in a world, just really remembering
that we're here to defy the odds and there's
nothing that can stop us.
It is a beautiful song.
And you're here on a good day, because she
is going to perform that song for us when we come back.
We'll be back.