Alicia's mostly low-tempo and subtly performed music is rooted in the R&B and soul styles of Keys' earlier work. Throughout, individual songs incorporate sounds from a wide range of other genres, including orchestral pop, funk, neo soul, dance-pop, country, and Caribbean music. The singer's lyrics explore sociopolitical concerns, the multifaceted nature of identity, and forms of love with ideas shared in her memoir, More Myself (2020), written in the same period as Alicia's recording. Keys has called the project therapeutic and a reflection of greater introspection in herself.
The album was originally scheduled to be released on March 20, 2020, then May 15, before being delayed further in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Seven singles were released from Alicia prior to its release, including the Miguel duet "Show Me Love", "Time Machine", "Underdog", "Good Job", and "So Done", featuring Khalid. In its first week of release, the album debuted at number four on the Billboard 200 and became Keys' eighth top-10 record in the US, while charting in the top 10 in several other countries. However, it fell off the US chart a few weeks later.
A critical success, Alicia received praise for Keys' nuanced vocal performances and the music's accessibility, while her thematic messages were considered balanced, healing, and timely given the pandemic. In further support of the album, the singer will perform in concert from June to September 2021 on Alicia – The World Tour, which was postponed from the previous year due to the pandemic.
After the release of her sixth studio album, Here (2016), Alicia Keys took a break from recording music and served as a coach on the singing competition series The Voice.[1] It was later reported that she returned to Oven Studios, her personal studio in New York City, to record Alicia.[2] However, several other studios were also credited for its recording, including NYC's Jungle City Studios, where recording for 14 of the album's 15 tracks took place.[3]Alicia was produced primarily by Keys, with alternating contributions from an assorted group of record producers and songwriters,[4] including her husband Swizz Beatz, Ludwig Göransson, Ed Sheeran, Tory Lanez, and The-Dream.[5] By May 2017, the album had been "halfway" finished, according to the singer.[1]
While Alicia was being completed in May 2019, Keys wrote her memoir, More Myself: A Journey (2020).[6] She said that working on both projects served as "the best therapy" ever for her.[7]
Musical style
Musically, Alicia departs from the loose experimentation of Keys' previous album Here (2016). Instead, the music revisits the styles of her earlier work, including her distinctive piano-based ballads and bass drum-driven R&B songs, albeit with less emphatic hooks.[8] The music throughout has largely downtempo and subtle dynamics,[9] except for "Love Looks Better", which is produced in a loftier pop-soul style.[10] According to The New York Times chief pop critic Jon Pareles, the music "often hollows itself out around her, opening deep bass chasms or surrounding sparse instrumentation with echoey voids".[4]
The album's direction, which Keys describes as "genreless", is oriented toward evoking a particular mood rather than conforming to a singular sound.[10] In the process, individual songs incorporate elements of particular styles, including downtempo R&B ("Show Me Love"), old-fashioned funk ("Time Machine"), folk-influenced soul ("Gramercy Park"),[10]dance-pop ("Authors of Forever"),[12]dub ("Wasted Energy"), Caribbean music ("Underdog"),[8] and country ("Gramercy Park").[4] Keys has said that "Time Machine" was influenced specifically by the funk rock band Funkadelic.[13] A section of Alicia's middle tracks substitute Keys' piano for acoustic guitar within a more free-form style of neo soul.[8]
Altogether, Alicia is described by The Line of Best Fit writer Udit Mahalingam as a collection of "orchestral pop, acoustic soul, and jittery contemporary R&B".[14] In comparison to Here, Shakeena Johnson of Clash says it is "less pop and more R&B".[15] Although deeming it often a work of contemporary R&B, Helen Brown of The Independent believes the album conveys traditional soul melodies "through some stranger—and certainly more eclectic—sounds than she's tried before".[16]
Lyrics and themes
We all have many sides to us, and I think in a lot of ways we get used to only showing a particular side ... What I really love about this song is, it goes on to talk about how we're "builders" and we're "breakers," and we're "givers" and we're "takers." I think that at one point in my life I was like, well, why do there have to be any takers – why can't it just be builders? Why does it have to be any breakers – why can't it just be givers? And I realized that you have to have all these sides. You can't have one without the other.
— Alicia Keys on "Authors of Forever", a song she cites as representative of the album's themes[17]
Alicia continues in the socially-conscious thematic vein of Here,[10] featuring personal narratives that make sociopolitical connections between the singer's view of herself and the world around her.[8] Keys says the album reflects different dimensions of her relationship to people as a whole and that writing it encouraged greater introspection. "I never realized how much I relied on only one side", she explains. "How much I had hidden away the parts that expressed anger, rage, sensuality, or vulnerability."[18] Much like More Myself, Alicia explores and conceptualizes "identity, and what makes us up to be who we are, and the expectations that are put upon us mostly from outside sources – societally or from your family, or from those people that you love, or yourself."[19] In Pareles' observations, the singer advocates equanimity "but it's often tinged with ambivalence", reflecting "misgivings, recriminations and regrets" shared in her memoir.[4]
Keys (center right) at the 2017 Women's March. Alicia reflects on sociopolitical concerns and the singer's relationship to the world around her.
Alicia opens with "Truth Without Love", which puts forth the idea that truth in society has become "elusive". The next song, "Time Machine", addresses fears of introspection and advocates the pursuit of free thought, rather than longing for the past, as a means to achieve peace of mind.[8] "Underdog" is an ode to "young teachers", "student doctors", and "single mothers waiting on a check to come".[10] Songs such as "Authors of Forever" convey more positive pleas for hope and change, as well as an understanding of the multifaceted nature in individuals;[8][17] that particular song promotes the idea that "we're here to make meanin' for as long we're breathin' / and it's alright / whoever you are / it's alright".[20] A more desperate sense of hope features in the album's closing series of unadorned piano-and-vocal performances, "Perfect Way to Die" and "Good Job", which thematize police brutality and essential work, respectively.[8] The former is written from the perspective of a mother in grief over her son, who was shot to death by the police, while the latter is written in tribute to "the mothers, the fathers, the teachers that reach us", and other people simply trying to get through an ordinary day.[10]
Among Alicia's love songs, "3 Hour Drive" is a duet between Keys and Sampha, who both lament a lover's separation over a descending chord progression. "Show Me Love" and "Love Looks Better" express more confident relations between lovers. Both the waltz-like "Gramercy Park" and the Khalid duet "So Done" feature Keys trying to make peace with having struggled to appease the expectations of other people, with the latter expressing a departure from "fighting myself, going to hell" in favor of "living the way that I want".[4]
On September 17, 2019, Keys debuted the album's lead single, "Show Me Love", and its accompanying music video at Dolby Soho in New York City.[21] The first live performance of the track took place that weekend as part of her set at the 2019 iHeartRadio Music Festival.[22] In November, Keys was joined by Miguel, Pedro Capó, and Farruko at the 20th Annual Latin Grammy Awards for a medley of a Spanish version of the song and "Calma" (2018).[23] On November 20, "Time Machine" was released as the next single.[24] Keys revealed the album's title in a December interview with Billboard[7] and formally announced Alicia the following month by posting a release date of March 20, 2020, and the cover art to her Instagram account.[25]
In January 2020, Keys returned as host for the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards, where she was joined by Brittany Howard in a performance of "Underdog"[26] (released as Alicia's third single on January 9).[27] The single was also featured in a TV ad for Amazon Music[28] and performed by Keys on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.[29] The singer held a private show for the radio station NRJ in Paris on February 4[30] and a concert at Bush Hall in London on February 7, the latter in front of an approximately 400-person crowd in a venue atypically small for her. At Bush Hall, she was joined by a four-person backing band and two vocalists while playing an upright piano (rather than her customary grand piano) and a Moog synthesizer, used specifically for a psychedelic funk rendition of "Time Machine" and "Try Sleeping with a Broken Heart" (2009). Other songs played were "Unbreakable" (2005), a piano-based cover of Billie Eilish's "Everything I Wanted" (2019), "Show Me Love", the acoustic "Underdog", and more vocally virtuosic renditions of "Girl on Fire" (2012) and "Empire State of Mind Part II" (2010) that closed the show in rousing fashion. However, for much of the musically ambitious concert, "she stood at the upright [piano], bashing out melodies and singing with versatility", as Financial Times critic Ludovic Hunter-Tilney reported.[13] In the UK, Keys also appeared on The Graham Norton Show (in February)[31] and the Live Lounge segment on BBC Radio 1 (in March), where she performed "Time Machine" and "Underdog".[32]
On March 9, 2020, Alicia's release was reported to have been delayed as streaming services were listing its release date as May 15.[18] Due to the COVID-19 pandemic (declared later in March), the release was officially postponed for September 18.[33] At the iHeart Living Room Concert for America (staged in response to the COVID-19 pandemic) on March 29, Keys performed an acoustic rendition of "Underdog".[34] Prior to the pandemic's declaration, the song had moved up on the record charts and become Keys' most successful single since 2012's "Girl on Fire".[10] The next two singles, "Good Job" (released on April 23)[35] and "Perfect Way to Die" (June 19),[36] were performed by Keys for CNN[37] and the BET Awards 2020, respectively.[38] In June, Keys premiered "Gramercy Park" during her first-ever appearance on NPR's Tiny Desk Concerts, alongside "Underdog", "Show Me Love", and her 2001 song "Fallin'".[39] On August 11, both "Show Me Love" and "Underdog" were certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), denoting sales of at least 500,000 units for each single.[40] Two more singles were then released, "So Done" on August 14[41] and "Love Looks Better" on September 10,[42] with the latter being debuted by Keys that same day at the NFL Network 2020 Kickoff concert. During the telecast, she also performed a cover of "Lift Every Voice and Sing" to critical acclaim.[43][44]
During Alicia's first week of release in mid September of 2020, Keys made appearances at Good Morning America[45] and the iHeartRadio Music Festival.[46] She also headlined a virtual concert in partnership with American Express to coincide with the album's worldwide release on September 18.[47] Further promotional appearances included a week-long engagement on the The Late Late Show with James Corden from September 21 to 24,[48] and a performance at the 2020 Billboard Awards on October 14.[49]
In the week of September 27, 2020, Alicia entered the US Billboard 200 chart at the number-four position on the basis of 62,000 album-equivalent units. The recorded units included 51,000 traditional album sales, 10,000 streaming-equivalent units (or 13.6 million in on-demand streams of album tracks), and 1,000 track-equivalent units (sales of individual tracks). It was Keys' eighth album to reach the top 10 of the chart and, according to Billboard, received a sales boost from "a concert ticket/album sale redemption offer with her upcoming US tour".[50] In the UK, Alicia became her eighth album to chart within the top 40, debuting at number 12 on the Official Albums Chart,[51] while in Canada, it debuted at number two and was her highest-charting release since As I Am reached the same position in 2007.[52] In its second week on the Billboard 200, Alicia registered a drop of one-hundred-and-four places, falling to number 108.[53] Altogether, the album spent three weeks on the chart.[54]
Since then, Keys has performed the televised concert special Alicia Keys Rocks New Year's Eve, pre-recorded in Los Angeles and broadcast by BBC One on December 31, 2020.[55] In June 2021, she will embark on Alicia – The World Tour, which was originally scheduled for the previous year but delayed due to the pandemic. The tour will begin in the UK and continue through Europe into mid July. On July 27, she will begin a US leg of the tour that spans through late September.[56]
Alicia was met with generally positive reviews. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from professional publications, the album received an average score of 77, based on 12 reviews.[58]AnyDecentMusic? assigned it a score of 7.2 out of 10, based on the site's assessment of the critical consensus.[57]
Reviewing for NME, Nick Levine was impressed by the cohesive musical feel throughout and the skill behind Keys' ballads, which he said emanate well-intentioned positive energy and empathic political engagement. He also believed that the album's postponed release amid the pandemic made the subject matter more timely and therapeutic for listeners.[10]Slant Magazine's Sal Cinquemani also applauded the content and compared it to "the most effective political pop", saying Keys "strikes a careful balance between hope and despair". While highlighting the more radically styled collaborations in "Wasted Energy" and "Me x 7", he concluded that Alicia is "at once her most accessible and forward-minded album in years".[8] In Rolling Stone, Jon Dolan regarded it as among Keys' "most musically engaging" records and cited her strong suit to be coping ballads such as "Perfect Way to Die" and "Good Job". "Generosity tempered with humility is a rare and welcome look", he wrote of her performance. "It takes knowledge of self, care for others, truth through a lens of love, to get it right."[62]Will Hodgkinson, in a review for The Times, declared Alicia "songs in the key of modern life from R&B royalty" and welcomed Keys' return to the sophisticated sounds of her first album, Songs in A Minor (2001).[63]
Several reviewers highlighted Keys' singing on Alicia. In The Sunday Times, Dan Cairns said the compositions are on-par with the "classic" songwriting of her earliest albums and that they accentuate her vocals, which he described as "soaring, swooping, scatting, richly nuanced, deploying full-throated passion and pin-drop restraint".[64]The Arts Desk journalist Joe Muggs singled out Keys' performances on "Perfect Way to Die", "Wasted Energy", and "Time Machine", where her "multi-octave range is put to fantastic use harmonizing with herself". While observing a few instances of flashy singing techniques elsewhere, he speculated whether the album as a whole hints at "a Keys album where she drops the showbiz and kicks out the jams the whole way through".[9]AllMusic reviewer Andy Kellman found Alicia to be performed "with some of her most nuanced vocals", but was less impressed by the material, the best of which he felt had already been released as singles. Ultimately, he deemed it "Keys' most moderate work, seemingly hedged with an objective to appeal to as many listeners as possible".[59]Mojo magazine's James McNair griped about Keys' altruistic politics being "at times a tad cloyingly expressed" on an album otherwise impressive for her "exquisitely malleable voice, slickly inventine production tics, and winning vocal support" from artists such as Sampha and Diamond Platnumz.[60]
^ abJohnson, Shakeena (September 18, 2020). "Alicia Keys – ALICIA". Clash. Archived from the original on September 19, 2020. Retrieved September 19, 2020.
^"Czech Albums – Top 100". ČNS IFPI. Note: On the chart page, select 39.Týden 2020 on the field besides the words "CZ – ALBUMS – TOP 100" to retrieve the correct chart. Retrieved September 29, 2020.
