Send "Alicia Keys " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Ew |
 The reigning diva-glitz aesthetic — campy, prurient, pantsless — has served the Gagas, Fergies, and Katy Perrys of the world very well in 2009. Alicia Keys, however, has never really been that outré girl, bombastic Jay-Z duets and the occasional Lycra jumpsuit aside.Instead, over four albums she's established herself as an increasingly rare thing in pop music: the class act. It's made her a consistently gratifying album artist, if not always an immediately dazzling one. The Element of Freedom's first single, the pensive love-is-the-drug ballad ''Doesn't Mean Anything,'' seemed to get lost among its more aggressive chart peers when it was released in late September. The second, ''Try Sleeping With a Broken Heart,'' doesn't deserve the same fate. It's insidiously, almost obscenely hooky: a slithering riff on early-'80s Prince with a monster synth line. What Keys' often-banal lyrics lack, her quicksilver voice carries: bluesy and subterranean on the atmospheric opener, ''Love Is Blind''; pure honeyed uplift on ''Wait 'Til You See My Smile'' and ''That's How Strong My Love Is''; ragged with longing on ''Love Is My Disease,'' a stirring semisequel to her '07 smash ''No One.'' ''Put It in a Love Song,'' a saucy duet with Beyoncé, is fun, though not entirely in sync with the record's lush, midtempo vibe. Keys' material is ultimately about the slow reveal, not the instant blitz. If Element asks for patience, it also earns it. A...full text |
| Leisureblogs |
| On Keys’ remake, the singer retains the soaring vocal hook that helped make the song one of the year’s most indelible anthems, a celebration of New York City and its multitude of contradictions and possibilities. But without Jay-Z, the track loses its swagger. Whereas Jay-Z owns the song (and quite possibly New York), Keys sounds like she’s just passing through. The rest of the singer-pianist’s album is packed with carefully calibrated statements that rarely break free from formula – despite what the album title promises. “The Element of Freedom” is less about breaking free than holding it together, a series of songs about perseverance in the face of personal travail. Keys takes few chances and rarely lets her guard down. But what she does, she does better than just about anyone: combining classic songcraft with hip-hop crunch. And – unlike her previous three studio albums -- “Freedom” rarely sounds forced or gimmicky. It’s her most consistent album and also her most low-key. Though she’s sold 30 million albums worldwide and won 12 Grammy Awards, Keys has been erratic, sometimes allowing pop currency to trump soul-baring artistry. She aims to go deeper on “Freedom,” adopting a more measured, mid-tempo approach and a more introspective tone. Keys has said the album is about overcoming depression, presumably after a bad break-up. But the lyrics are so trite it’s difficult to buy into the album as a personal statement: “Like a ship through a storm we can risk it all”; “If I can touch the sky, I’d risk the fall, to know what it feels like to fly”; “Love is like the sea, leaves you on your knees… then it takes you under.”...full text |
| Latimesblogs |
| On her fourth studio outing, the pop-R&B diva digs deep into the multitude of implications of independence, discovering that for just about anybody other than a Superwoman, it can bring up issues of loneliness and insecurity as well as the potential for strength through self-sufficiency. In "Try Sleeping With a Broken Heart," she's crafted an intriguing refrain: "I'm gonna find a way to make it without you . . .," admitting she's still searching for a full-fledged sense of security in whatever newfound freedom she's come into. But then she extends the thought with the kicker word ". . . tonight." Is she taking the one-day-at-a-time approach of a 12-step program for romantic addiction? Is it merely the application of an emotional band-aid? Or might she be asserting that the path to true independence always begins right here, right now? It's never entirely clear, and the ambiguity makes the song that much richer. She's said in interviews that the album's title also connotes her shift for this work from the professional recording studios she's previously used to a home setup she's assembled. Sonically she and the album's main co-producers -- Jeff Bhasker, Kerry "Krucial" Brothers and Swizz Beatz -- paint with broad strokes, in some cases freely slathering on colors and textures in contrast to the comparatively simpler approach on earlier tracks such as her 2007 hit "No One." In some of cases, one wishes she'd exercised a little less of the freedom she has to add anything and everything that's at her disposal....full text |
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