Alicia Keys Pushes the Limits of Her Voice and Imagination on ‘Alicia’: Album Review

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Alicia Keys spent the first five albums of her career as a sleekly sophisticated singer-songwriter and pianist, crafting anthemic R&B that was often bold but just as often bland. After releasin…

spent the first five albums of her career as a sleekly sophisticated singer-songwriter and pianist, crafting anthemic R&B that was often bold but just as often bland. After releasing 2012’s “Girl on Fire,” she grew tired of such perfection, stopped wearing make-up and released “Here,” a raw, unrefined album filled with nervous jazz-R&B-hop and lyrics that looked into the topicality of the environment, poverty and addiction.

On the opener, “Truth Without Love,” a twilight string arrangement opens to Keys rushing her conversation until her chatter becomes slurry and slushy. “What if I wasn’t Alicia/ Would it please ya?,” she rhymes, giving her the song’s tail end a Badu-esque finale. The swipe-and-swoosh soul of “Time Machine” finds Keys’ reverb-dripping voice pushed to the back, then given multilayered harmonies, before reaching a synth-bass-filled chorus.

While guitars are featured often on the album — particularly on the Ed Sheeran-co-write “Underdog” and the country blues of “Gramercy Park” — Keys is still a soul pianist at heart, with an open, honest voice go with it. And “Alicia” is still a singer and pianist’s album. — only now she’s shifting the 88s into new shapes.

 

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aliciakeys Oh boy that headline is so shady, all I read was her voice is limited and she pushin it

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