Alicia, Alicia Keys

All albums are reviewed on a scale from one to ten, with ten being the highest possible score.

Please Note: All views expressed here are the author’s own.

Alicia: a “genreless” album with an enriching blend of empathy, positivity and self-knowledge

Alicia Keys’ engaging seventh album, Alicia, plays to the singer’s strengths, exuding warmth and cautious optimism while emphasizing her masterful balladry. Released on September 18, 2020, Alicia is an enriching blend of empathy, positivity and self-knowledge with some fine collaborations that enliven the soul singer’s most personal set thus far. 

Keys has described the album as “genreless,” and while that’s not technically true, I definitely see where she’s coming from. Alicia moves easily between moods and styles, from the disco throwback “Time Machine,” to the moody R&B ache with Tierra Whack on “Me X 7,” to the slinky reggae of “Wasted Energy” with Tanzanian singer Diamond Platinumz. As Alicia glides from throwback funk to dewy reggae and languid R&B to folky soul there’s a sense that Keys cares more about creating a mood here than maintaining any one particular sound. This amounts to a largely enjoyable set that finds the silken-voice singer deftly blending genres, both classic and contemporary. 

This is an album that shimmers with passion and sincerity from start to finish. “We’re all in this boat forever, and we’re sailing towards the future and it’s alright,” Keys sings on “Authors Of Forever,” a balmy gem with a hint of 1980’s Lionel Richie to it. Combined with a lack of uptempo cuts, this consistent mood gives the album an impressive sense of cohesion. Only “Love Looks Better,” a bombastic pop-soul ballad produced by Adele and Beyoncé collaborator Ryan Tedder, comes close to sticking out. 

Keys showed a more socially conscious side on her last album, 2016’s Here, and she continues to engage politically on Alicia. Co-written with Ed Sheeran, “Underdog” contains an unpretentious and affecting shout-out to young teachers and student doctors as well as “single mothers waiting on a check to come.” More powerful still is “Perfect Way To Die,” a timely ballad written from the perspective of a grieving mother whose son has been gunned down by cops. When Keys sings, “just another one gone / And they tell her to move on,” it’s a casually damning condemnation of America’s inadequate response to racism and police brutality.  

Rather than pull all the air out of the album’s close, and sound big and empowered, Keys is humbler and humbled with “Good Job.” The album ends earnestly with a piano ballad dedicated to parents, teachers and other ordinary people merely trying to get through the day. It could have come off trite and condescending from a woman who sold 16 million copies of her debut album Songs In A Minor when she was just 20-years-old, but somehow it doesn’t. Like most of Alicia, it’s warm, well-meaning and primed to provide some much-needed musical healing. 

Alicia goes further, freakier, funkier, quieter and jazzier down that gritty path, with experiments in melodic soul and impressionistic lyrics whose emotions go beyond unsettled romance. Rather than rely on her past musical tropes, Keys lets her nuanced, versatile voice do the talking like never before. 

WORDS BY REBECCA PERLA, WEBMASTER