Alicia Keys is a Grammy winner, but her son Genesis is more impressed by Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish.
“Genesis is really busy making friends, like Taylor Swift, and he kind of begged me to send a message to Billie Eilish,” Keys, 43, revealed during the Friday, March 23, episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
“He just asked me every single day, ‘Mom, can I please leave [Billie] a voice message?'” Keys told host Jimmy Fallon. “And I’m like, ‘I don’t know.’ Like, what kind of voice message are you gonna leave her?”
Keys went on to express the cute thing Genesis, 9, wanted to say to the “What Was I Made For?” singer. “He was like, ‘I’m just gonna say … I would like to be friends and I really like her music,” she explained to Fallon, 49. “And so he leaves her this whole message after harassing me for days and days on end. And then he continued to harass me [about] if she wrote him a message back.”
Keys shared that she continued to have that same conversation with her son (whom she shares with husband Swizz Beats) for days about whether or not Eilish, 22, had responded to him.
“And so every night I couldn’t go to sleep, he [woke] me up in the morning. In the nighttime, he [wouldn’t] go to sleep. ‘Did she write me? Did she write me? Did she write me? Did she leave me a message?’” she recalled.
After not being sure if Eilish would actually reply, Keys let Fallon know the story had a happy ending.
“She left him a message. Can you believe it? It was so sweet,” the R&B artist disclosed.
While on the talk show, Keys also spoke about how Genesis was enchanted by Swift, 34, who he first met years ago when he was at the 2019 iHeartRadio Music Awards, and happened to be seated next to the musician.
Fallon then proceeded to pull up an adorable video of Genesis at that event waving at Swift while his mom was on stage giving a speech.
“He was flirting. … I was pouring my heart out about all my thank yous, and he’s [waving at Swift],” Keys joked about the clip.
Then, Genesis got to hang out with Swift during her Eras Tour stop at SoFi Stadium in August 2023.
“They met up again recently and he was like, ‘Is she going to remember me?’ And it was a whole thing. He was like, ‘Cause she knew me since I was 3, right, Mom?’”
Last year, after the mother son duo got to see Swift backstage at her show, Keys posted a carousel to her Instagram that features photos and a video of a handwritten note Swift wrote Genesis.
“Gen, Hi my friend!!” Swift’s card read. “I was so excited when I heard you were coming tonight!! I hope you have so much fun at the show. I’ll be waving at you. Love, Taylor.”
Keys made sure to give both Swift and Eilish a shoutout during her Tonight Show interview for them being so kind to her son. “Big love to Billie and Taylor!” she gushed.
Keys and Swizz Beats, who married in 2010, also share son 13-year-old son Egypt.
