Also, they do a nice little key change at the end of every chorus that turns it from a country-rock song into an R&B song, pretty canny there.
You wouldn’t think this would work at all, but it does, pretty handily, because Levine has soul and Keys lets hers show. But I actually love the version of the Rolling Stones’ “Wild Horses” that Keys does with Maroon 5’s Adam Levine. We all know that she loves to cover Prince’s “How Come You Don’t Call Me Anymore”, which is done exactly the way you’ve heard it before, except with some audience-fluffing conversation that sounds like she’s reading it off a cue card. She covers a couple of interesting tunes here. Plus, as long as we’re name-dropping, don’t you think you’d NOT want to be praising the parenting strategies of the Jackson family? Or throw around the names of broken-up couples in a song that claims “Our love is unbreakable”? She does a couple of new songs, and they’re okay, although I really kind of hate “Unbreakable” and I don’t know why, other than that it’s a hooky pop piece but a poorly constructed song, condescending in its name-droppage (“We could fight like Ike and Tina / Or give back like Bill and Camille” ), and completely uninspired. She does those singles, and they sound fine. Suddenly, after “If I Ain’t Got You” and “Karma”, and after the adulation of my nine-year-old daughter, I was on the Keys train. I was much more impressed with The Diary of Alicia Keys, because I thought the singles were better, and because she was much more about the soul than the neo. She was happy and lucky, and came off like someone who felt like she deserved and expected all the accolades she was getting. What I hated was her Grammy acceptance speeches, where she kept saying how “humbled” she was to get all these awards, when it was clear that she was not humbled at all. But I didn’t hate it either, just kind of “eh”. I didn’t like Songs in A Minor very much, past the pretty competent singles she seemed like a nothingburger to me, a construct, a neo-soul kiddie decked out in Lauryn Hill’s clothes (even copped a Grammy, just like Lauryn), stealing some thunder by semi-paraphrasing a Stevie Wonder album title. Like the career of Alicia Keys, this record is right down the middle. But there’s nothing wonderfully magical about it either. The arrangements are nice and tight, the band is great, the guest appearances are good, and not especially plentiful. Honestly, there’s nothing wrong with this CD of Alicia Keys’ appearance on the revival of MTV’s Unplugged series. One comes away knowing nothing more than that.
It sounds exactly the way you think it does: pleasant and soulful, but formulaic and calculated. But this is the least insightful live album ever. I think they are usually fascinating and worthwhile, as they provide an insight into an artist even if that artist stinks. Some music writers hate live albums, but not me.
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