How Keys unlocked the pop princess within
ALICIA KEYS: Alicia (RCA) Verdict: Pop-soul with subtle touches ★★★★✩ KEITH URBAN: The Speed Of Now Part 1 (Capitol) Verdict: Country-rock earworms ★★★✩✩
THERE are few spectacles in pop quite as mesmerising as Alicia Keys in full flow. A virtuoso pianist and shimmering showgirl, she is as comfortable playing a Beethoven sonata as she is duetting with Jay-Z.
Since making her bow with 2001’s soulful Songs In A Minor, she has become the consummate performer, even if her studio output hasn’t always lived up to her live brilliance.
It’s no wonder that Bob Dylan, who sang her praises on 2006’s Thunder On The Mountain, once said: ‘There’s nothing about that girl I don’t like.’ Her latest album, Alicia, finds her branching out, collaborating extensively with performers from around the world and embracing feel-good pop.
Not that the album, her first in four years and seventh overall, is brimming with froth. Inspired by her recent memoir More Myself: A Journey, it’s deep and autobiographical, rooted partly in her upbringing in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen but with half an eye on the outside world.
It was originally due in March. Put back to May because of lockdown, it was then removed from the calendar completely until today’s release was announced on Monday.
It opens with the prelude Truth Without Love — all strings, harp, heavenly harmonies and a half-spoken, half-sung Alicia lead vocal. From there, she moves towards high-octane pop. Time Machine is a happy-go-lucky funk number about the freedom that comes with letting go. Authors Of Forever is lush R&B.
HER sharp commercial instincts stay to the fore on Underdog. Co-written with an all-British cast of Ed Sheeran, Foy Vance, Amy Wadge and Snow Patrol’s Johnny McDaid, it’s a rhythmic piano piece given substance by handclaps, steel pans and a choir.
A hymn of praise to teachers, doctors, soldiers and taxi drivers, the song paints a vivid picture. ‘She’s riding in a taxi back to The Kitchen,’ sings Alicia in a nod to her childhood home.
The mood is more mellow on a string of subtle interludes that ebb and flow like the Keys of old. Londoner Sampha duets on 3 Hour Drive and there are further link-ups with American singers Miguel and Khalid, both the epitome of smooth soul.
A desire to connect with as wide an audience as possible drives Wasted Energy, a reggae tune sung with Tanzanian star Diamond Platnumz, and You Save Me, a piano piece featuring LA-based Swedish vocalist Snoh Aalegra.
There’s also a collaboration with OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder, producer and co-writer on the impassioned Love Looks Better, while Perfect Way To Die, despite being written before the events of 2020, is a lament for lives lost to police brutality.
At almost an hour, Alicia isn’t a brief return. But Keys has crammed an awful lot in here, while avoiding showboating to keep each song to around three or four minutes.
Once, when I asked her if she was worried about appearing too earnest, she told me that she’d ‘rather be seen as serious than sexy’. Here, that heft is balanced by some of the best tunes of her career, in an impressive statement of intent.
n KEITH URBAN’S live streams from the Nashville home he shares with actress wife Nicole Kidman were among the highlights of the early weeks of lockdown.
The New Zealand-born, Australiaraised country-rock superstar cut his teeth playing rough-andtumble dive bars in Queensland, but he took to the restrictions of quarantine like a natural.With
Kidman in a walk-on cameo, he also starred in Lady Gaga’s One World: Together At Home telethon, cloning himself digitally to produce a three-piece band of brothers in matching black T-shirts as he sang Steve Winwood’s Higher Love. Having a fully equipped studio in your basement clearly has its advantages.
BUT while Urban, 52, briefly satisfied his desire to get back on the road by playing a drive-in gig for 200 key medical workers in Tennessee, the events of the past six months — a destructive Nashville tornado followed by coronavirus — did disrupt plans for his new album.
Having used his spare time to tinker further, he is now happy with the results, and The Speed Of Now Part 1 reiterates his ability to mix country basics with soft rock, pop and even a touch of rap. The album — its title a comment on the pace of life — is far from groundbreaking, but Urban is a born entertainer who knows his way around a good tune.
The upbeat Out The Cage, with Nile Rodgers on guitar, features a cameo from Atlanta-based country-rapper Breland.
Better Than I Am, written by Urban and UK hit-maker Eg White, is a slick pop number.
Urban’s ability to embrace a raft of allAmerican clichés suggests he is fully at ease in his adopted homeland.
Superman finds him on South Daytona Beach, and Forever sings the praises of Marlboro Lights, Johnny Cash and Jeep Wranglers.
On Tumbleweed, a woman ‘hotter than a two-dollar shot of whiskey’ is stealing a cowboy’s heart.
But he’s not out of touch with the modern world. He credits Kidman with helping him overcome a drug problem, and Ain’t It Like A Woman is a blue-eyed country-soul ballad that acknowledges his wife’s support. The Ed Sheeran-like Polaroid is a wry dismissal of shallow party people.
He also shines on some potent ballads, collaborating with Pink on One Too Many and reverting to more traditional styles on God Whispered Your Name. His country credentials are emphasised further on the bonus number We Were, a nostalgic ballad performed twice — once by Urban solo and again as a duet with Nashville stalwart Eric Church, who co-wrote the track.