If I Ain't Got You

In 2023, Alicia Keys recorded a classical version of "If I Ain't Got You" with Kris Bowers for the Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story Soundtrack, performing it with a 70-piece orchestra made up entirely of women of color. The reworking arrived two decades after the original had been written, and it gave the song a fresh setting while keeping its central idea intact. Keys has said the track remains one of her favorite songs.

She wrote it in August 2001, shortly after the singer Aaliyah died in the Marsh Harbour plane crash. Keys composed it during a flight, and being airborne under those circumstances gave her what she described as a sentiment of being present in the moment. The song became a meditation on how material things don't feed the soul, and its themes of loss took on further meaning after the September 11 attacks. At one point Christina Aguilera asked Keys to write for her album Stripped, and Keys considered giving her the song, but J Records executive Peter Edge persuaded her to keep it. She wrote "Impossible" for Aguilera instead.

Producing the track proved harder than writing it. Keys struggled to settle on an arrangement before adding drums from Steve Jordan and guitar from Hugh McCracken against her piano, while Kerry Brothers Jr. blended live drums with programming to preserve a hip-hop edge. Recording at Kampo Studios in New York was interrupted by the August 2003 Northeast blackout, and Manny Marroquin mixed the song that November at Plus XXX in Paris during Keys' promotional tour.