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Earlier this year, Alicia Keys joined Usher for a surprise performance during the Super Bowl halftime show, performing two songs, one of which was her hit "If I Ain't Got You." Sitting down at the piano to perform the song, she wore a gorgeous red outfit with flowing train that perfectly moved with the wind ... except it wasn't the wind!
During an appearance on "On Purpose with Jay Shetty," Keys said of her Super Bowl experience, "Oh man, it was crazy. It was totally insane. I found it so fascinating, because it had to be built. The whole thing had to be built, and they had to time it in under three minutes. It could be built, and then we had to have our performance in the amount and it had to be ... and so and it was live. So it's crazy to see a live thing have to operate in that level of finite detail. I was in awe. And then obviously the place and the people, and the vibe and the energy, and it was just really fun."
She added that underneath her dress were actually puppeteers to make it look like it was perfectly flowing in the wind. She told Shetty, "Underneath the dress was the world's best puppeteers So there were actually puppeteers underneath the just to make it fly like that. That was fantastic."
Admittedly a "control freak," she assured Jay that they had practiced enough times, recalling, "We had practiced so distinctly that I knew everything that was going to happen and it was perfect. And I just kind of, you know, control freak until you can't. And as an artist, at a certain point when you're flowing and creating and writing and singing you do just have to like be in the moment. So the control freak part comes when I'm designing creating the thing, but once I'm in the thing, you have to just go."
Listen to Alicia Keys on "On Purpose with Jay Shetty" on iHeartRadio.