Alicia Keys' "As I Am"

Alicia Keys, As I Am (J Records) GRADE: A-

Prodigious R&B star Alicia Keys opens her new album with a baroque piano flurry, a fastest-fingers contest blending classical pomp with funky stomp. The album and the instrumental are both called As I Am, which turns out to be both a mission statement and a stubborn promise. Although she’s pretty enough to be a pinup and clever enough to chart with easy-bake hits, the only game she’s playing is her own.

So what we have here is another solid, safe, at times spectacular Alicia Keys album, one she describes rather boastfully as "Janis Joplin meets Aretha Franklin." The ballads (both the breakups and the back-togethers) burn with that seamless soul-kissed voice, the upbeat tracks get a good grind going and the go-girl messages are in all the right places. It’s a fine album, one of the year’s most pleasing, and it’s going bag Grammys and sell in bunches.

So why am I still a little disappointed with As I Am, her first studio disc since 2003’s The Diary of Alicia Keys?

Unfair expectations, no doubt. The 26-year-old is the rare modern pop star who’s better in concert than she is on album. She’s capable of playing anything, singing anything, a consummate go-go-go showwoman in a curvy 5-foot-5 frame. In a live setting, everything is given extra oomph, piano-playing as a contact sport. Ask anyone who’s been lucky enough to get a ticket to her show, and they’ll rave in agreement. In this day and age of one-and-done pop stars, Keys is someone will be cheering for 20 years down the road.

Ever since I saw her on a double-bill with John Legend— and then met Keys face-to-face at the MTV VMAs in Miami, where I was rendered mute and drooly — I’ve been a major Keys fan. Album after album, show after show, she keeps getting better. So I honestly expected As I Am to be her masterpiece, her Songs in the Key of Life, her Dusty in Memphis. It was the one album I had circled on my calendar at the beginning of the year. Is that fair? Maybe not. But it’s the truth.

a My favorite songs here are the ones that take her slightly out of her comfort zone, force her tackle things in a different way. When Keys feels as if she has to something to prove, look out.

So yes, sure, fine, the slow-building power anthem Superwoman, cowritten by Pink pal Linda Perry, is destined for smashhood ("Even when I’m a mess / I still put on a vest / With an S on my chest"). But I much prefer the take-no-prisoners uprising of No One, a blend of Brahms and Bon Marley that features her hardest beats but softest piano line. It’s a pop marvel, an instant classic, and unlike the stuff she can write in her sleep, it sounds fierce and inspired.

The ballad Like You’ll Never See Me Again, with its toy-piano hook and synthy grandeur, is scheduled to be the next single, and you better believe it’s going to have staying power, especially as an unfortunate karaoke choice. I’d put it right up there with Whitney Houston’s I Will Always Love You for showoff heat.

But for all of that song’s bigness, I like the small, bittersweet Lesson Learned as an even better achievement. It’s a subtly catchy duet with John Mayer, a brush-stroked breakup song that doesn’t coddle but tells it like it is.

The end of the album gets so lush and lovely — Keys on cruise control — I kept returning to the stomping rock menace of Go Ahead, Keys’ first great "driving" song, and the ’70s soul of Wreckless Love, which crescendoes with strings, horns and an acidic snare-drum snap.

Fair or not, Keys is now judged on a different scale from her peers. It’s a blessing and a curse. So if she honestly wants to be Aretha Franklin (or even Janis Joplin), she can’t simply shoot for who she is now. Next time, she needs to show us how good she really can be.

Comments

[DG]

That Alicia Keys show with John Legend was something, wasn't it? I went to it expecting a Norah Jones vibe (and I like Norah) and this woman just erupted on the stage.

[Sean Daly]

I saw the Legend-Keys show at Constitution Hall in D.C. He was pretty damn good -- another act we'll be cheering decades from now. But she was absolutely spellbinding, every song killed. She wasn't afraid to charm it up Vegas style and respect her fans as folks who paid a ton of money. At a young age, she fully understood the concept of putting on a show.

[charles]

Well, she's no Britney Spears, but she's ok.

Alicia Keys = me asleep