Three chords. A piano in a Harlem apartment. A nineteen-year-old who'd been rejected by every label in the city before Clive Davis heard her demo and told the executives to scrap the album they'd been working on. Fallin' is about the thing that happens when love becomes indistinguishable from collapse. Alicia Keys wrote it, produced it. Number one for six weeks.

She wasn't asking for permission. She was announcing her arrival.