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Cover of the new album by Alicia Keys
Alicia Keys - "Alicia"
Let's talk about missed opportunities and bad timing: at the end of January, it was ages ago, at the beginning of the Grammy Awards, which she hosted, Alicia Keys sat down at the piano and within two minutes explained why she is a world star.
"It's a new decade! It's time for newness!", She shouted animatedly into the audience and postulated: "We refuse the negativity. Feel me on that".
Andreas Borcholte's playlist
Photo:
Christian O. Bruch / laif
Lafawndah: Don't Despair
Deradoorian: Mask of Yesterday
Kitty Solaris: Cold Blood
Ela Minus: Megapunk
Future Islands: Moonlight
AG Cook: Beautiful Superstar
Maxïmo Park: Child of the Flatlands
Lambchop: Reservations
Dissy: September
Vatican Shadow: Taxi Journey Through the Teeming Slums of Tehran
Go to Spotify playlist Right arrow Go to Apple Music playlist Right arrow
The encouraging energy that emanated from the US singer on the day after her 39th birthday could really be felt by everyone at this moment.
So much optimism, belief, hope - it still brings tears to your eyes today when you watch the clip.
It was her moment.
Then came Corona and the lockdown, illness, fear and death.
Then George Floyd was killed and protests against racism exploded on the streets of America.
New York, often celebrated as Alicia Keys' hometown and part of her musical DNA, suffered the worst.
There has long been no talk of "newness" or the dawn of a new decade.
2020?
Fuhgeddaboudit!
"Alicia", Alicia Keys' seventh album, should have been released in March, parallel to her biography "More Myself", which was published by Oprah Winfrey.
Book, album, world tour, that's the triple calculation.
But it didn't work because of the pandemic.
Half a year later, the late release of "Alicia" now seems strangely arbitrary.
Why now?
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Alicia Keys
ALICIA
Label: RCA RECORDS LABEL
Release date: 09/18/2020
Medium: audio CD
Label: RCA RECORDS LABEL
Release date: 09/18/2020
Medium: audio CD
approx € 14.59
Price query time
18.09.2020 7 p.m.
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Songs like the obsessive-pop "Underdog" (co-written by Ed Sheeran) and "Good Job", an ode to the quiet, systemic elements of everyday life, were comforting months ago.
"Perfect Way To Die", a touching piano ballad with a Billy Joel touch about the victims of police violence, was also released in June, at the height of the Black Lives Matter protests.
Seven of 15 songs are already known, including the inedible bombastic power ballad "Love Looks Better" (Beyoncé and Taylor Swift can do that better) and the Funkadelic-based disco track "Time Machine".
The rest is, well, dignified - but doesn't have the enthusiasm for experimentation and
grittiness of
the previous
album
"Here" from 2016, which was released at exactly the right time.
"3 Hour Drive" (with Sampha) knows how to bewitch with its "In The Air Tonight" ambience, "Me x 7" tries in vain to force the celebrated indie rapper Tierra Whack into a "Royals" -like pop song.
And the confidence of "Authors of Forever" in the fall of this crisis year with its "It's all right" evocations seems pretty stale - especially since you want to hum Lionel Richie's "All Night Long" to the Caribbean clinking and waves (!) Of the Schunkelsong.
It remains a mystery why "Wasted Energy" also had reggae on the album.
The song title seems program.
Heard on the radio
On Wednesdays at 11 p.m. on the Hamburg web radio byteFM there is a taped mixtape with many songs from the records discussed and highlights from Andreas Borcholte's personal playlist.
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Don't get the grumbling wrong: Alicia Keys is not only a great singer, but also a politically relevant artist and (together with numerous supporters) good songwriter, who on this self-therapeutic album her own history - poverty in Hell's Kitchen, single mother, Rise from social marginalization to successful pop star - placed in a larger, sociocultural context.
Nevertheless, one wishes Keys had simply published "Alicia" digitally at the time, she would have cope with the financial losses - and then sat down at the piano to get a few raw, immediate, not like that out of the daily corona and turmoil in her city Well-polished new songs written.
Much like last Friday when she sang the secret national anthem of Afro America to open the NFL season.
Another Keys moment that outshines this album.
(7.0)
Listened briefly
AG Cook - "Apple"
The apple association makes it clear: Charli XCX producer, PC music label boss and pop accelerationist is in the tradition of tech and music innovators.
One month after his monstrous solo debut "7G", he chases his absolutely gorgeous hooks and melodies through the particle and noise accelerator in a far less disturbing way.
Emocore for futurists.
(7.5)
Ava Max - "Heaven & Hell"
The celebrity magazines and reality shows on RTL always need a lot of affected music to cover the misery on the TV screen.
With the debut of Ava Max they find what they are looking for: The most radical thing about the crazy successful US singer ("Sweet but Psycho") is her haircut and a crazy rip-off from "Major Tom" in the song "Born to the Night".
Does she know that Lady Gaga already exists?
(1.5)
Kitty Solaris - "Sunglasses"
Oops, the guitar is gone!
Kitty Solaris has been a heroine of the Berlin DIY and indie pop scene for over ten years, and now she is releasing her best album to date: Electronic beats and eighties waves make the always sparkling pop hooks of her songs shine all the brighter.
But you need the "sunglasses" just because of the great Corey Hart cover.
(8.0)
Deradoorian - "Find The Sun"
Is that still psychedelic or just esoteric?
No matter.
Angel Deradoorian, former singer and bassist of the experimental rock band Dirty Projectors, uses her penchant for Vedic astrology and the depths of her solitude to channel another heady solo album that sounds like Jefferson Airplane once met Can for a jam session .
(8.2)