Post by kaya on May 27, 2008 10:21:45 GMT -5
By Sean Piccoli | South Florida Sun-Sentinel pop music writer
1:04 PM EDT, May 26, 2008
MIAMI - Alicia Keys used to spend a lot of her stage time emphasizing how great it is to be Alicia Keys. While some songs were permitted to shine on their own and just be enjoyed, most were deployed as further proof of Keys' specialness.
But Keys, 27, may be learning how to make her ego serve the performance.
A Sunday night set at AmericanAirlines Arena was a breakthrough of sorts for this indisputably gifted and telegenic pop/r&b singer, pianist and songwriter. The concert felt like a concert, for a change, and less like the talent and skills portion of a beauty pageant.
Keys preened, but with a degree of self-awareness and humor that really flattered her. The best example of this clever showboating was How Come You Don't Call Me, from her 2001 debut album. Keys used the song as set piece to discuss herself -- "I like to talk," she noted -- and after some timely scatting and chit-chat over vampy piano chords, she stepped back and let the band carry the tune.
She continued to speak, only no one in the crowd of 10,000 could hear a thing: She stood there mouthing words, like someone who's been tuned out. So here was Keys' self-deprecating answer to the question posed by the song's title: Because you never stop!
Keys wouldn't be silenced for long, of course. Her latest album, As I Am, is loaded with self-affirmation, and a more attractive version of it than she managed on 2001's Songs in A Minor and 2003's The Diary of Alicia Keys. The recent single Like You'll Never See Me Again was absorbing and beautiful, built on a repeating piano figure that resembled the dreamy outro to Prince's Purple Rain.
Keys had to reach for high notes on Sure Looks Good to Me, a rolling, rock-gospel number, and the effort pushed her slightly off key, but it gave a pleasing rawness to the top end of her range.
Some of the newer material felt over-populated, with volume and blare used to project emotion and intensity of feeling. But that was partly a function of Keys' irrepressible energy, which she applied to an impressive variety of songs.
On Ghetto Story Chapter 2, Keys handled all of the sporty rhymes spun by dancehall-reggae warbler Cham on their studio collaboration. By opening Sunday's concert with Ghetto Story -- after the inevitable, pseudo-classical piano prelude -- Keys wasn't just throwing a stylistic curve. She was tipping her hat to the party going on up the street: a massive reggae concert at Bicentennial Park.
Towards the end, she played a reworked, rhythmically playful version of her very first hit single, Fallin', and dropped in a passage from James Brown's It's a Man's World. When she sang Brown's kicker, "But it wouldn't be nothing without a woman," it sounded like she was talking about all women, and not just one in particular named Keys.
SOURCE: South Florida Sun-Sentinel
1:04 PM EDT, May 26, 2008
MIAMI - Alicia Keys used to spend a lot of her stage time emphasizing how great it is to be Alicia Keys. While some songs were permitted to shine on their own and just be enjoyed, most were deployed as further proof of Keys' specialness.
But Keys, 27, may be learning how to make her ego serve the performance.
A Sunday night set at AmericanAirlines Arena was a breakthrough of sorts for this indisputably gifted and telegenic pop/r&b singer, pianist and songwriter. The concert felt like a concert, for a change, and less like the talent and skills portion of a beauty pageant.
Keys preened, but with a degree of self-awareness and humor that really flattered her. The best example of this clever showboating was How Come You Don't Call Me, from her 2001 debut album. Keys used the song as set piece to discuss herself -- "I like to talk," she noted -- and after some timely scatting and chit-chat over vampy piano chords, she stepped back and let the band carry the tune.
She continued to speak, only no one in the crowd of 10,000 could hear a thing: She stood there mouthing words, like someone who's been tuned out. So here was Keys' self-deprecating answer to the question posed by the song's title: Because you never stop!
Keys wouldn't be silenced for long, of course. Her latest album, As I Am, is loaded with self-affirmation, and a more attractive version of it than she managed on 2001's Songs in A Minor and 2003's The Diary of Alicia Keys. The recent single Like You'll Never See Me Again was absorbing and beautiful, built on a repeating piano figure that resembled the dreamy outro to Prince's Purple Rain.
Keys had to reach for high notes on Sure Looks Good to Me, a rolling, rock-gospel number, and the effort pushed her slightly off key, but it gave a pleasing rawness to the top end of her range.
Some of the newer material felt over-populated, with volume and blare used to project emotion and intensity of feeling. But that was partly a function of Keys' irrepressible energy, which she applied to an impressive variety of songs.
On Ghetto Story Chapter 2, Keys handled all of the sporty rhymes spun by dancehall-reggae warbler Cham on their studio collaboration. By opening Sunday's concert with Ghetto Story -- after the inevitable, pseudo-classical piano prelude -- Keys wasn't just throwing a stylistic curve. She was tipping her hat to the party going on up the street: a massive reggae concert at Bicentennial Park.
Towards the end, she played a reworked, rhythmically playful version of her very first hit single, Fallin', and dropped in a passage from James Brown's It's a Man's World. When she sang Brown's kicker, "But it wouldn't be nothing without a woman," it sounded like she was talking about all women, and not just one in particular named Keys.
SOURCE: South Florida Sun-Sentinel