Alicia (album)

Alicia is the seventh studio album by American singer-songwriter Alicia Keys. It was primarily recorded at Oven Studios and Jungle City Studios, both in New York, during 2017 to 2019 and released by RCA Records on September 18, 2020. Written and produced largely by Keys, the album also features songwriting and production contributions from Swizz Beatz, Ludwig Göransson, Rob Knox, Ed Sheeran, and The-Dream, among others. Keys collaborated with more artists on the recording than in her previous albums, enlisting vocalists such as Sampha, Tierra Whack, Diamond Platnumz, Snoh Aalegra, and Jill Scott for certain tracks.
"Alicia"s mostly low-tempo and subtly melodic music reconciles the experimental direction of Keys' previous album "Here" (2016) with her earlier work's bass drum-driven R&B and piano-based balladry. Throughout, individual songs incorporate sounds from a wide range of other genres, including orchestral pop, progressive soul, funk, ambient, country, and Caribbean music. Thematically, they explore identity as a multifaceted concept, sociopolitical concerns, and forms of love within the framework of impressionistic lyrics and personal narratives. The album has been described by Keys as therapeutic and reflective of greater introspection in herself, expressing ideas and feelings of hope, frustration, despair, ambivalence, and equanimity shared in her memoir "More Myself" (2020), which was written during "Alicia"s recording.
The album was originally scheduled to be released on March 20, 2020, then May 15, before being delayed indefinitely in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was marketed with an extended traditional rollout campaign that featured various media appearances by Keys and the release of seven singles, including the Miguel duet "Show Me Love", "Time Machine", "Underdog", and "So Done" (with Khalid). After a surprise announcement of its impending release in September, "Alicia" debuted at number four on the "Billboard" 200 in its first week 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 against the backdrop of unfolding world events. The singles "Good Job" and "Perfect Way to Die" resonated especially with the importance of essential workers during the pandemic and with the 2020–2021 racial unrest over police brutality in the US, respectively. In further support of the album, Keys will perform in concert from June to September 2022 on Alicia – The World Tour, which was postponed from 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic.
Background.
In 2016, Alicia Keys released her sixth studio album "Here", a raw departure from the more sophisticated and anthemic R&B music of her first five albums. Sung with tougher vocals and against edgy sounds from hip hop, funk, and jazz, Keys' topical lyrics for the album explored themes beyond unfixed romances, such as sexuality, addiction, poverty, and environmental degradation. In the spirit of "Here"s unrefined aesthetic, the singer stopped wearing makeup that year. After its release, she took a break from recording music and served as a coach on the singing competition series "The Voice" for three seasons. She took a leave of absence from the show's 2017 season to focus on making "Alicia".
Recording and production.
Keys reportedly returned to Oven Studios, her personal studio in New York City, to record "Alicia". However, several other studios were later credited for its recording, including NYC's Jungle City Studios, where recording for 14 of the album's 15 tracks took place. "Alicia" was produced primarily by Keys, with alternating contributions from an assorted group of record producers and songwriters, including her husband Swizz Beatz, Ludwig Göransson, Ed Sheeran, Tory Lanez, and The-Dream. For certain songs, Keys collaborated with guest vocalists such as Tierra Whack, Jill Scott, Miguel, Sampha, and Khalid. By May 2017, the album had been "halfway" finished, according to Keys.
During "Alicia"s recording, Keys wrote her memoir "More Myself: A Journey" (2020), reflecting on her life and career up to that point. In its final chapter, she explained how the album's creative process encouraged more collaborations than in her earlier recordings, when she preferred to work alone from fear of being misunderstood, controlled, and vulnerable as an artist. She continued writing the memoir into May 2019, by which time the album was being completed. The singer said that working on both projects served as "the best therapy" ever for her, lending her a greater sense of artistic freedom and desire to collaborate with others.
Musical style.
Musically, "Alicia" continues in the experimental manner of "Here" while revisiting the distinctive piano-based balladry and bass drum-driven R&B of Keys' earlier work. However, it avoids emphatic hooks and motifs characteristic of her past music. Instead, the album's "subtly melodic soul" experiments are embellished with ambient, electro, and textured sounds from music sequencers, according to A. D. Amorosi of "Variety", who adds that "Alicia" is "still a singer and pianist's album" but one that renders Keys' instrument in new forms. The music throughout has largely subtle and downtempo dynamics, except for "Love Looks Better", which is produced in a loftier pop-soul style. 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".
The album's direction, which Keys describes as "genreless", is oriented toward evoking a particular mood rather than conforming to a singular sound. In the process, individual songs incorporate elements of particular styles, including progressive soul ("Truth Without Love"), old-fashioned funk ("Time Machine"), dance-pop ("Authors of Forever"), Caribbean folk music ("Underdog"), dub ("Wasted Energy"), hip hop ("Me x 7"), downtempo R&B ("Show Me Love"), folk and country ("Gramercy Park"), and chamber music ("Perfect Way to Die"). Keys says that "Time Machine" is influenced specifically by the funk rock band Funkadelic. "Me x 7" has upbeat, sparsely produced rhythms in the manner of its guest mumble rapper Tierra Whack's solo work. A section of "Alicia"s middle tracks substitute Keys' piano for acoustic guitar within a more free-form style of neo soul. On "Jill Scott" (titled after its guest vocalist), Keys sings in a high register vocal similar to the characteristic style of Scott, who provides a brief spoken word interlude.
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". In comparison to "Here", Shakeena Johnson of "Clash" says it is "less pop and more R&B". 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".
Lyrics and themes.
"Alicia" has been described by Keys as "a musical exploration of identity – both my own and ours collectively". Continuing in the socially-conscious thematic vein of "Here", her impressionistic lyrics and personal narratives throughout the album make sociopolitical connections between the singer's view of herself and the world around her. "Alicia" explores and conceptualizes identity similarly to "More Myself", reflecting different dimensions of her relationship to people as a whole; as Keys explains, "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".
For Keys, writing "Alicia" encouraged greater introspection and acceptance of her dichotomous identity, the calm and rational side of which she had largely shown up to that point. "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." Reflecting on this theme in "More Myself", she calls herself "strong and fierce and brave,
no doubt", before qualifying that, "I'm also someone who has found myself on the bathroom floor, boo-hooing and feeling vulnerable. I'm also the woman who doesn't always know how to rise to my feet and take the next step." In Pareles' observations, the singer advocates equanimity throughout the album, "but it's often tinged with ambivalence", reflecting "misgivings, recriminations and regrets" shared in her memoir. Similarly, "musicOMH" journalist Nick Smith observes feelings of "hope, despair, frustration and even ambivalence" in her narratives.
"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. "Underdog" is an ode to "young teachers", "student doctors", and "single mothers waiting on a check to come". Subsequent tracks advocate more positive pleas for hope and change, such as "Authors of Forever". The lyrics to that song promote unity and an understanding of the multifaceted nature in individuals, with Keys reasoning in the lyrics that, "We're here to make meanin' for as long we're breathin' / And it's alright / Whoever you are / It's alright". She regards the track as representative of the album's themes, citing the refrain in particular.
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. 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.
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".
Marketing.
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. The first live performance of the track took place that weekend as part of her set at the 2019 iHeartRadio Music Festival. 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). On November 20, "Time Machine" was released as the next single. Keys revealed the album's title in a December interview with "Billboard" and formally announced "Alicia" the following month by posting a release date of March 20, 2020, and the cover art to her Instagram account. In January, Keys also returned as host for the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards, where she was joined by Brittany Howard in a performance of "Underdog" (released as "Alicia"s third single on January 9). The single was featured in a TV ad for Amazon Music and performed by Keys on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show".
Keys also made promotional appearances in Europe. She held a private show for the radio station NRJ in Paris on February 4 and a concert at Bush Hall in London on February 7. The latter was an atypically small venue for the singer (with an approximately 400-person crowd that day). 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 the more vocally virtuosic "Girl on Fire" (2012) and "Empire State of Mind Part II" (2010), which closed the show in rousing fashion. For much of the concert, however, "she stood at the upright [piano], bashing out melodies and singing with versatility", as reported by "Financial Times" critic Ludovic Hunter-Tilney.
In the UK, Keys also appeared on "The Graham Norton Show" (in February 2020) and the Live Lounge segment on BBC Radio 1 (in March), where she performed "Time Machine" and "Underdog".
Pandemic delays.
On March 9, 2020, "Alicia"s release was reported to have been delayed as streaming services were listing a new release date of May 15. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic (declared later in March), Keys became among the many high-profile recording acts and adherents of traditional rollout campaigns to delay their albums, joining Lady Gaga, Willie Nelson, and Sam Smith. The pandemic's closure of physical retailers and distribution systems impacted veteran recording artists especially, as their fans tended to be older and more likely to still purchase CDs and vinyl records. On March 29, Keys performed an acoustic rendition of "Underdog" at the iHeart Living Room Concert for America (staged in response to the COVID-19 pandemic). Prior to the pandemic's declaration, the song had ascended on the record charts and become Keys' most successful single since "Girl on Fire" (2012). In April, the singer appeared on the "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" via video call, where she discussed the album's extended delay and her memoir, which had been published the previous month. She also performed a cover of the Flo Rida song "My House" (2015), with lyrics altered to reflect the collective feelings of listeners living under the COVID-19 lockdowns.
"Alicia"s next single was "Good Job", released on April 23, 2020. It was accompanied with a press release written by Keys, dedicating the song to essential workers and other ordinary people dealing with the pandemic. "Whether you're on the front lines at the hospitals, balancing work, family, and homeschool teaching, delivering mail, packages, or food, or facing other personal difficulties because of COVID-19 ... You are seen, loved, and deeply appreciated", she wrote. "Rolling Stone" magazine's Jon Blistein found the song's message especially resonant against the backdrop of the pandemic. "Perfect Way to Die" was released as the next single on June 19, coinciding with Juneteenth and amid weeks of civil unrest across the US in response to police brutality against African Americans. While posting the single on her Twitter account, Keys commented on its relevancy and condemned "the destructive culture of police violence" as senseless as the song's titular phrase. "Sometimes I don't have the words and music is the only thing that can speak", she went on to say.⁣ "I hope this speaks to you." She performed "Good Job" and "Perfect Way to Die" for CNN and the BET Awards 2020, respectively.
In June 2020, 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'". On August 11, "Show Me Love" and "Underdog" were both certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), denoting sales of at least 500,000 units for each single. Two more singles were then released: "So Done" on August 14 and "Love Looks Better" on September 10. The latter was debuted by Keys that same day at the NFL Network 2020 Kickoff concert, where she also performed a cover of "Lift Every Voice and Sing", often referred to as the "Black national anthem".
Release.
On September 14, 2020, Keys announced on Twitter that "Alicia" would be released in four days; Nick Smith of "musicOMH" later compared the manner of its release to that of a surprise album. During its first week of release, she made appearances at "Good Morning America" and the iHeartRadio Music Festival. She also headlined a virtual concert in partnership with American Express to coincide with the album's worldwide release on September 18. The London-based marketing firm Diabolical was also hired by Sony Music (the owner of Keys' record label RCA) to design and put up posters promoting the release at various points in the city's eight boroughs. Echoing "Alicia"s front cover, the design posed a seemingly nude and barefaced Keys against a pale red backdrop with the album title rendered in simple font. Further promotional appearances by the singer included a week-long engagement on the "The Late Late Show with James Corden" from September 21 to 24, and a performance at the 2020 Billboard Awards on October 14.
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". In the UK, "Alicia" became her eighth album to chart within the top 40, debuting at number 12 on the Official Albums Chart, while in Canada, it debuted at number two and was her highest-charting release since "As I Am" reached the same position in 2007. In its second week on the "Billboard" 200, "Alicia" registered a drop of one-hundred-and-four places, falling to number 108. Altogether, the album spent three weeks on the chart.
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. She has been scheduled to embark on Alicia – The World Tour, which was originally scheduled for the previous year but delayed into 2021 due to the pandemic. The tour itinerary begins in the UK and continues through Europe into mid July, followed by a US leg that spans through late September. On May 17, 2021, Keys announced on Twitter that the tour had been postponed again for 2022.
Critical reception.
"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. AnyDecentMusic? assigned it a score of 7.2 out of 10, based on the site's assessment of the critical consensus.
Reviewing for "The Times", chief music critic Will Hodgkinson hailed "Alicia" as "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). Nick Levine, writing for "NME", 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. "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". 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." Expanding on Levine and Dolan's points, "Atwood Magazine"s Josh Weiner said that the repeated delays had not dated the record's musical qualities while recent events in the world had "rendered it an especially powerful and timely release", especially in the case of the last two songs. "Great art sure does have a way of gaining even more meaning and impact as time goes on", he concluded.
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". "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". 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". "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.
For the 2021 NAACP Image Awards, "Alicia" was nominated in the category of Outstanding Album.
Track listing.
Notes
Personnel and credits.
Information is taken from the album's liner notes.