The 2000s File Feature
Try Sleeping With A Broken Heart
The Making and Chart History of "Try Sleeping With a Broken Heart" by Alicia Keys "Try Sleeping With a Broken Heart" is an RB ballad by Alicia Keys, released…
01 The Story
The Making and Chart History of "Try Sleeping With a Broken Heart" by Alicia Keys
"Try Sleeping With a Broken Heart" is an R&B ballad by Alicia Keys, released in late 2009 as the second single from her fourth studio album, The Element of Freedom. The album was released in December 2009 by J Records and RCA Music Group, and it represented a thoughtful expansion of Keys's musical palette, incorporating influences from electronic pop, soul, and more experimental sound design alongside the piano-driven R&B that had defined her earlier work. The album debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 and was certified platinum in the United States, confirming Keys's continued commercial strength in the competitive late-2000s R&B landscape.
Alicia Keys co-wrote "Try Sleeping With a Broken Heart" with Jeff Bhasker, a producer and collaborator who would go on to become one of the most decorated figures in contemporary pop and R&B production, earning Grammy Awards for his work with Kanye West, Jay-Z, Fun., and others. Bhasker also co-produced the track alongside Keys, and the two developed a sonic approach that diverged from the acoustic piano textures of Keys's earlier recordings. The production features synthesized bass, layered electronic textures, and a restrained drum programming aesthetic that gives the track a cooler, more atmospheric quality than much of her previous work.
The recording process for The Element of Freedom took place over an extended period, with Keys drawing on a range of collaborators while maintaining a central role in the compositional and production decision-making. "Try Sleeping With a Broken Heart" was developed as a track that would showcase emotional vulnerability within a musically sophisticated context, and the production choices were made with the goal of creating an immersive sonic environment that amplified rather than undercut the lyrical content. Keys's vocal performance on the track is notably restrained compared to some of her more demonstrative recordings, with the emotional weight carried through subtle phrasing choices rather than overt vocal acrobatics.
The song was released to radio and digital platforms in late November 2009 ahead of the album's December 1 release date. It debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 on December 5, 2009, entering at number 58. The single climbed to its peak of number 42 on the chart dated December 12, 2009, before beginning a gradual descent over subsequent weeks, ultimately spending four weeks on the chart in total. The relatively brief Hot 100 run reflected the competitive nature of the late-year singles market, when many high-profile artists are simultaneously releasing material ahead of the holiday sales period.
On format-specific charts, "Try Sleeping With a Broken Heart" performed more robustly. It received substantial rotation on Urban Adult Contemporary radio stations, where Keys had long been a dominant presence, and it appeared on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart where it climbed further than its mainstream pop chart position. The urban adult contemporary format, with its emphasis on sophisticated, melody-driven R&B for adult listeners, was the natural home for a recording with this level of emotional and musical complexity.
The music video for the track was directed with a dreamlike aesthetic that complemented the song's introspective lyrical content. It received rotation on BET and other R&B-focused video channels, extending the song's promotional reach beyond radio into the visual media space.
"Try Sleeping With a Broken Heart" was subsequently nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance at the 2011 Grammy Awards, which honored recordings from the 2009 to 2010 eligibility period. The nomination recognized the recording's vocal and compositional quality and affirmed its standing as one of the more artistically distinguished tracks from the Element of Freedom album cycle. Keys's collaboration with Bhasker on this track is also notable in retrospect as an early marker of his emergence as a major production force in American popular music.
02 Song Meaning
Themes and Meaning of "Try Sleeping With a Broken Heart"
"Try Sleeping With a Broken Heart" addresses one of the most immediate and physically felt dimensions of heartbreak: the inability to sleep when pain and longing occupy the mind and body. The song's central premise is that the end of a relationship or the persistent absence of a loved one transforms the most ordinary and unavoidable of human activities into an ordeal. The relentless quality of nighttime grief is captured with precision: the hours when distraction is unavailable, when the mind turns inevitably toward what has been lost, when the body that should be at rest becomes instead a site of emotional torment.
Alicia Keys approaches this theme with a controlled emotional palette that suits the production's atmospheric restraint. The narrator is not in the acute phase of devastation but in the grinding, ongoing phase that follows it: the period during which a person must continue to function, to go through the motions of daily life, while carrying a wound that has not yet healed. This particular register of emotional experience, less dramatic than initial shock but more sustained and in some ways harder to endure, is rendered with genuine fidelity to its specific texture.
The song also engages with the theme of physical proximity and absence. Sleep is inherently intimate, a state in which we are most vulnerable and most in need of security. The invocation of sleep in the context of heartbreak is not arbitrary but precisely chosen, because it is at that threshold between waking and sleep that the mind's usual defenses are most compromised and the sense of another person's absence is most acutely felt. The song captures this specific phenomenology of grief with unusual attentiveness.
Within the context of Keys's artistic career, the track represents an exploration of vulnerability that extends the emotional range she had established on earlier recordings. Her willingness to occupy a position of acknowledged pain rather than resolved or triumphant feeling gives the song an authenticity that resonates with listeners who have experienced the described situation. The collaborative authorship with Jeff Bhasker brought a production sensibility that matched the thematic content, creating a sonic environment that is itself somewhat cold and restless, reinforcing the lyrical premise through aesthetic means.
Culturally, the song was received as a sophisticated and emotionally honest addition to the tradition of R&B ballads about heartbreak, a genre with a rich history and a demanding set of artistic standards. The track distinguishes itself within that tradition through its specific focus on the nocturnal, bodily experience of grief rather than more generalized expressions of sorrow, giving it a concreteness and immediacy that contributed to its resonance with listeners and its recognition from the Recording Academy.
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