Alicia Keys

AKIE BERMISS: When I say Alicia Key’s new The Element Of Freedom album is un-listenable, I am NOT exaggerating.  The album is an unmitigated disaster of musical mediocrity. Its not that the songs themselves are horrible, per se.  Each one is a nice, bland, soft-rock-pop single on its own.  Each could be the end-credits music for an early-90s action-romance (read: Speed).  But put them all back-to-back and they amount to some of the most uninteresting, soporific music I have heard all year.

If anything else, the album is probably a cure of high blood-pressure.

For someone who is supposed to be this fantastic piano player, she plays some of the most inanely simple piano parts I have every heard.  Even the sonic profile of the piano seems to be deliberately non-robust.  It really is a shame — you can do so much with a piano.  Its a mini-orchestra in a box. Listen to Elton John, Billy Joel, Joni Mitchell, or Roberta Flack — you’ll hear piano play five way to Sunday.  And yet the best Keys can seem to come up with is a light rock piano-strumming peppered with occasional (and pointlessly flowery) arpeggios.  That is the first problem.

The second problem is the construction of the songs themselves.  They. Are. Horrible.  I mean, every song is practically the same basic chord progression.  I’m honestly not sure how anyone can put these songs together and thing they something reflective of a complete artist statement.  To me is sounds more like she kept trying to write the same song over and over  — and kept failing at it.  I would point out particular highs and lows… if there were any.  But this album maintains a steady cruising altitude just below satisfaction.

Incidentally, there’s no way in hell we can call the music on this album R&B.  Almost every tune is at the same tempo, in the same register, and in the same meter.  There’s hardly any emphasis on “rhythm” at all.  Most of the songs are a wash of reverb, delay, and semi-romantic string orchestrations.  And, while many of the songs may be sad songs about pain and loss and love — there ain’t nothing of the blues in there.  There’s nothing genuine or beautiful on the album.  Its all cosmetic surface tension.  Easy to interpret (because you don’t have to interpret anything at all) and easy to listen to (because there are no surprises, no challenges, no broken rules).  And, thus, easy to ignore.

And finally, the problem I have with every Alicia Keys album is that somewhere along the way you realize, “She’s really having trouble singing these songs.”  She’s pitchy, as always, and some of the notes she doesn’t get there at all.  As my mother used to say: she couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket.  Now, ok, its not as bad all that.  But this is supposed to be a finished product, right?  So why am I listening to her slowly go flat on almost all of her long notes?  Its not like she has BAD voice.  Its just that no one seems to be able to give her the critiques she needs to hear.  She needs more breath control.  She needs to cover her notes better.  Work on some of those difficult vowel sounds like “Eee” and “Aye.” Cause right now it just seems like she hopes to get lucky and pop out the notes on pure adrenaline.  It doesn’t sound good.  It hurts my ears to hear how her throat is hurting.

I know its difficult to play piano and sing at the same time, but that’s no excuse for professional.  I also wonder if it isn’t some pressure for her to sing in those higher (more “feminine”) registers.  She’s got a fabulous voice down in her lower range — but she practically NEVER sings anything down there. For that reason, she sounds like she is perpetually shouting her way through her songs.  She’s got to get her Miles Davis on and start singing where her ears are really hearing her voice.

Regardless of all my criticisms, I expect one or two songs will go on to be successful singles or videos.  Taken alone, in small doses, this music is very easy on the ears.  Don’t listen to closely or you’ll find out there is very little substance behind the pleasantness.  I would love to see Keys really begin to understand the elements of Freedom and compose some songs what will move people other than her die-hard fans.

I’m a casual Keys listener, if at all. Perhaps a little more casual now, after hearing this record.  And I’m not sure how much longer I’m willing to wait to hear Keys live up to all the hype and potential of her first album, Songs In A Minor.  I’ll go back and check those tracks out any time.

You can keep the new stuff.  I don’t want it.  It pretend to be soul music.  It pretends to make you feel good.  But really it just makes you feel nothing — and I can’t get next to that.  Music should feed the soul, not numb it.

STEPHON JOHNSON: Akie makes a great point about Alicia Keys’ voice. When she sings in her lower range, she sounds pretty good. The problem is that she doesn’t do it much. As witnessed on the smash hit Empire State of Mind, her collaboration with rapper Jay-Z, when Keys attempts to go higher, she sounds like she’s screaming more than singing (although you can retort with George Carlin’s view that singing is just carefully-constructed, socially-acceptable screaming).

Keys gets credit just for playing an instrument and not for being good at it.  I’m not saying that she’s a bad piano player, it’s just that the talent she has isn’t displayed on her albums. Steven G. Fulwood nailed it perfectly in his critique of Keys on the R&B blog Soulbounce.com a few weeks ago:

“So few pop musicians play traditional instruments and even fewer Black folks (at least that’s what we see in the popular media) and Hip-Hop (with exception of The Roots) killed the DJ in favor of the MC, and it’s known more for its craftmanship, sampling and whatnot, than musicianship. And frankly, it’s easy to impress people who haven’t seen a musician do her/his thing on the regular.”

And with the state of mainstream music, we’ll continue to see artists who easily impress the masses. Sometimes they even impress those who aren’t usually gullible. Allmusic.com compared her new album The Element of Freedom to Prince’s work with the New Power Generation. While NPG doesn’t hold a candle to The Revolution, Keys could never even match Prince’s lesser group of still great musicians. Keys new album floats by with mid-tempo ballads that seem designed to grab the least amount of attention possible, but just enough to earn a spot on 98.7 Kiss FM’s playlist. It’s a bore that passes for elegance, but really passes as elevator music.

While “Try Sleeping With a Broken Heart” is a pretty good track, “Love is My Disease” and “That’s How Strong My Love Is” put me to sleep and not in the good way. It’s passable, but it doesn’t dig into your soul like most pop music when it’s good.

Unfortunately, in these days and times, most people don’t want music that feeds the soul. They want music that numbs the soul. While that’s all well and good once in a while, there’s no balance. I once read somewhere that because the music industry fractured into millions of niche markets, the only way for an artist to stay in the mainstream’s eyes (and avoid “cult” status) is to create music that’s very conservative and thus, very dull. While some may not like what Akie and I have written (including my lovely, wonderful girlfriend), Alicia Keys’ music is soulful R&B for those who don’t really listen to soulful R&B.

Tags: 98.7 KISS FM, Album Review, Alicia Keys, All Music, George Carlin, Jay-Z, R&B, The Element of Freedom, The Roots

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 17th, 2009 at 1:00 am and is filed under Arts & Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.