TRACK REVIEW: Alicia Keys - Love Looks Better

TRACK REVIEW:

Alicia Keys

PHOTO CREDIT: Milan Zrnic

Love Looks Better

9.3/10

The track, Love Looks Better, is available from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDAGzzOEHFo

The album, ALICIA, is available via:

https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/alicia-keys/alicia

RELEASE DATE:

18th September, 2020

GENRE:

R&B

ORIGIN:

New York, U.S.A.

PRODUCERS:

Jonny Coffer/Ludwig Göransson/Alicia Keys/Rob Knox/Sebastian Kole/Delano "Sean C" Matthews/Morgan Matthews/Johnny McDaid/Jimmy Napes/P2J/Rance/Sampha/Christopher "Tricky" Stewart/Swizz Beatz/Khirye Taylor/Ryan Tedder/Noel Zancanella

LABEL:

RCA

TRACKLIST:

Truth Without Love

Time Machine

Authors of Forever

Wasted Energy (ft. Diamond Platnumz)

Underdog

3 Hour Drive (ft. Sampha)

Me x 7 (ft. Tierra Whack)

Show Me Love (ft. Miguel)

So Done (ft. Khalid)

Gramercy Park

Love Looks Better

You Save Me (ft. Snoh Aalegra)

Jill Scott (ft. Jill Scott)

Perfect Way to Die

Good Job

__________

THIS week…

I am reviewing an artist who I have been listening to since her debut album came out in 2001. Songs in A Minor is a fantastic introduction, and, through the years, Alicia Keys has put out some truly incredible albums. Her new album, ALICIA, has just come out, and I think it ranks alongside her very best. The album has a nice balance of hope and a feeling of lost. It is one of Keys’ broadest and most satisfying albums, and there is edginess and political themes mingling among the more personal. Before brining things up to date and discussing themes relating to ALICIA, I want to bring in a few interviews relating to Keys’ start and that incredible debut album. Like I have said on previous reviews: we do not really think about an artist’s early life and start when listening to their music. There are some who will say that there is no link between childhood/youth and the music they will go onto make, but I think there is. When it comes to Alicia Keys, it was obvious and evident that she had a talent from a very young age. In this interview from The Times from earlier this year, we learn more about her teenage years and how Songs in A Minor started life in high school:

“Keys was something of a teenage phenomenon. Growing up in Hell’s Kitchen, New York, she was an only child and a classically trained pianist. She started composing songs at 12 and was spotted, aged 13, by her longtime manager, Jeff Robinson, who saw her performing with her three-girl band in Harlem. At 17, she signed a contract with the music legend Clive Davis, who signed and launched Whitney Houston. Much of her debut album, Songs in A Minor, was written while she was still in high school and recorded in her bedroom. It went straight to No 1 and rave reviews poured in; Rolling Stone compared her, aged just 20, to Aretha Franklin”.

Every artist looks forward to releasing their debut album, and there is that excitement and sense of self-assessment. Every artist works hard towards that debut, and they put a lot of themselves into it. There was a certain amount of buzz surrounding Keys before Songs in A Minor came out, so when the album arrived, there was a degree of inevitability that it would be a huge hit. When she spoke with Stereogum recently, Keys talked about the success and awards Songs in A Minor achieved:

“STEREOGUM: You have so many on your shelf, but you first swept the Grammys in 2002 with Songs In A Minor. Take me back to that moment when you were at the show and getting five wins in one night”.

KEYS: I actually have chills. It just brought a sensation back to me that’s so vivid. I never expected the response to be what it was going to be for Songs In A Minor. I had been working so long to try to make it come to life and it felt like it would never happen, you know?

I remember I was just fresh off my first tour, I guess it might’ve been North America at that time. We hadn’t gotten to Europe yet. I was exhausted because I was just trying to pretend that I could do everything that everyone thought I could do. But I didn’t know what the hell I was doing! I woke up that morning and was sick. I couldn’t even sing on that big night. I had a huge performance for “Fallin’” with a little piece of “A Woman’s Worth.” And I did like a flamenco version with this dancer Joaquin Cortés. I took a vitamin B12 shot to open my voice up so I could sing again. But it was like a damn dream. I felt like I had entered outer space and all these people who I only knew from television were like “Alicia!”

Whilst awards and recognition would have been important to Keys – and she would have been happy her debut album was so well-received -, the sort of recognition and popularity she gained at a young age was also pretty daunting and new. Nothing would have really prepared her for that sudden rise! I think this aspect is important to highlight when we discuss Keys’ subsequent albums and how her career has developed. She could have been overwhelmed by the success and degree of pressure, but she has put two or three years between albums, and every one of them has been different to the last – rather than copying the template and sound of Songs in A Minor. Whilst she has endured and is one of the most influential artists around, those early days of stardom were quite intense. In an interview with NPR, Keys reflected on how she felt when she was known and heard everywhere:

“It's definitely very confusing. I know that I felt deeply conflicted and very confused about how to adjust to a new way of existing. But for me, being so young and having to adjust to becoming well-known was a trip, a super trip. I put up a lot of walls and I put up a lot of barriers, so the face that I outwardly presented was a mask — of trying to preserve sanity. I was so excited and thrilled that people were getting to know the music and excited about what I was working on. And it was such a blessing.

PHOTO CREDIT: David Luraschi

But at the same time, I had to kind of keep myself together, because if you can imagine, I didn't know what to do, how to act, what to say, what not to say. I didn't know that people were manipulative or would want you to say things that would then spark controversy. I didn't know that people tried to lead you into places that you would then not realize that you got led there and have to figure out. It was a totally a new experience. And because of that, I started to build up a wall of claiming my personal space, but in a way that wasn't direct and honest, as I am now.

Now I can easily claim my personal space. I can say, you know, "It is not a good time for me right now," or I can say "I'm not comfortable doing that." And it's fine. Everybody will be fine with it. And I could have done that then, but I didn't know how to. So I instead I'd put up a wall to kind of protect myself. And I started to mask my feelings; the mask was that everything was all right when it wasn't always all right. And I should have been OK with everything not being all right, but instead I felt like it always had to be perfect or look right or be OK”.

Alicia Keys’ work has always been defined by a sense of maturity, personal meaning, and original direction, so different to the way many of her peers are presented. It would have been easy, especially at the start, for Keys to be marketed as a typical commercial Pop artist, in the sense that there was a particular look and sound. This is a side of music that has been evident for decades, and there is an ugliness that is not really talked about.

It is down to Keys’ toughness and determination that she refused to go that way, and she proved that she could be a success by being herself. I wonder where Keys might have ended and how her music would have sounded if, instead, she had been pushed into an unwanted direction and gone down a bad road. When she spoke with The Times, Keys reflected on her instant success, and how she was able to navigate her own path:

“How does she look back, post-#MeToo, on such a charmed rise to fame? “I think what enabled me to navigate the disgusting, nasty, treacherous world [of the music industry] was that I had enough street knowledge and street experience to really have a certain wisdom and awareness,” she says. She resisted advice to lose weight and never generated the oversexualised imagery and tabloid headlines that felled contemporaries such as Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera. “My instinct is really strong. I’m a really hard worker. But it took time to figure out how not to fall on my face half the time. It was all literally a prayer. I was so focused on what there was to do that I didn’t have a lot of time to f*** around.” Today, she radiates positivity — her Instagram account (18 million followers) is filled with smiling selfies captioned with things like “Go create your world!”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Ryan James Caruthers

I am jumping ahead to the new album, her seventh studio album, as it sees Keys present some of her finest music, almost two decades after her debut was released. ALICIA is a fantastic record, and I think it is a more impactful and personal album that previous efforts, Here (2016), and Girl on Fire (2012). Both of those album were successful, but I think there was a certain degree of Keys being a bit guarded and distant regarding true personal revelation – especially on Girl on Fire -, whereas there was a certain lack of clarity and focus on Here. In an interview with CLASH, Keys discussed how motherhood affected her new album and, as you may have guessed from the title, it is very intimate and personal:

“This new need to start sharing more of herself can be heard all over ‘ALICIA’ as well as in the pages of ‘More Myself’, reflected in new and varied sounds, as well as subject matters. “There’s openness, more clarity. I’ve got a bigger perception of where I want to go,” she says. It could all sound a bit ‘LA’ if it wasn’t so clear that Keys has genuinely been on a profound personal journey over recent years. From famously swearing off make-up to founding her non-profit initiative She Is Music, promoting female advancement in the industry, this is an artist who’s finding herself.

“It’s mostly just comfort level, getting to know yourself intimately,” Keys says, of this new-found mental space she’s worked towards. “Looking in the mirror more over the last couple of years, becoming a mother. Motherhood got rid of all that stuff, about making people happy. I had the baby and everything became more clear.” Mother to two young sons, Egypt and Genesis, with her husband and fellow New Yorker Swizz Beatz, she says the experience has allowed her to look at sides of herself she avoided for many years – the “angry Alicia” the “sad Alicia” – and talks about how things that seemed to be priorities before just melted away, about realising her workaholic tendencies and desire to please people were maybe coming from the wrong place”.

Before moving on to a review of a particular terrific track from ALICIA, I want to focus on a few more things. Forgive the length of the review and how there is a way to go until we get to the nub, but I think this context is very important, and I like to go deep when it comes to artists. One reason why I think Alicia Keys’ music connects to readily is that she is very compassionate and loves people. So many big artists are distant and can find it hard to bond with others, yet Keys has not lost any of that common touch. This will bring me to her recently-published autobiography but, when in that interview with CLASH, Keys talked about her connection with people (something that inspires even her more personal numbers):

“She also talks about the importance of seeing the world through other people’s eyes, acknowledging other people’s stories and struggles. “It [the song] talks about how rare it is to really connect, really communicate with another person, to really listen to another person’s story, really connect with their struggle, what they’ve come up from,” Keys explains. “We all stand with other people every day, on the train, on the bus, on the street – but we don’t know these people. It’s rare that you actually meet a new person, and connect with them, listen to them, because we’re always busy, always running, trying to keep it all together. We’re more ‘connected’ than ever – I can talk to someone right now in Istanbul – and yet, sometimes not. I think that’s another beautiful part of the underdog’s story. I love how it’s written from that storyteller perspective”.

That understanding and easy ability to bond with others is why Keys remains so popular and accessible. There is something about her music that gets to you and speaks directly. Rather than the songs being quite intangible and obscure, every listener can take something away from Keys’ music. Albums like Songs in A Minor were so popular because there was that blend of the personal, and songs which looked outward and were very much for other people. As she mentioned to Consequence of Sound early this year, she is a songwriter who writes for the people:

“I just feel so connected to people. I’ve always felt like I understand people. I can walk into a room and I can feel the energy of people so clearly. Even if I don’t know exactly what’s going on, their exact details, I know the energy and I can relate to that energy. It doesn’t matter where I am. I can be in Korea, I can be in Europe, I can be in Brooklyn, I can be anywhere. That’s something that really is part of who I am and part of who I’ve always wanted to be. I always wanted to have and create conversations that are real and genuine.

I’ve always considered myself an artist of the people. I don’t want to be on some pedestal that is unobtainable. That’s not even a real thing. I believe we can connect with each other, and it does something for you. I definitely love not only performing, but I love connecting with people on a real level. I love sitting down with people and just having a really honest conversation because I find that there are so many similarities that we’re all experiencing. We’re all going through this, trying to figure it all out”.

I want to briefly talk about womanhood because, on recent album, some people noted how this subject was sort of lacking. Not lacking, perhaps, but there was less about women’s place in the world, and motherhood definitely made a difference. Although her first son was born in 2010, I think ALICIA is an album where Keys’ truly soars and tackles womanhood and her own battles. I just want to bring in a great section from the interview in The Times, as we learn more about Keys’ early life and how her father left when she was very young:

“It was motherhood that started a shift in her thinking about women’s place in the world. Her first son, Egypt, was born in 2010. “You literally have a tiny being who could not even survive without you and something about that …” she trails off. “I remember waking up to habits that I had. I tied a lot of my value to the amount of things I could get done in a day,” she says. “I think that’s a very womanly thing to do, this idea of ‘how many people can I make happy?’”

Her father left when she was two years old, and she was raised by her mother, Teresa, a part-time actress and, says Keys, “a beautiful, amazing soul and an emotion-on-her-sleeves person”. In 2010, Keys married the Bronx-born Kasseem Dean, aka the DJ-producer-performer Swizz Beatz, who Kanye West once called the “best rap producer of all time”. They first met as teenagers; he is Muslim and she describes herself as “spiritual”, and talks often of “prayer” and “good energy”. They blessed their first child, Egypt, in a South African Zulu ceremony before his birth; Genesis’s name is taken from the Old Testament”.

If you have not got Alicia Keys’ book, More Myself, then you can buy it or get the audiobook. I would urge people to do so, as it gives us a lot of insight into a wonderful musician, and it will appeal to fans of Alicia Keys and those who are a bit new to her music. In the interview with NPR, Keys gave more details about More Myself:

“They are so similar in this exploration, in the concept, in the conversation about identity, and 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.

I've been thinking so much about who I am, and what makes me that way, and how can I stay connected to the truth of that even in a really, really noisy world ... And so I guess there is these parallel themes about identity, these parallel themes about liberation, about how does one liberate themselves from the messages and the things that have been constantly pumped in our minds so that we start to believe in them [when] they're not necessarily true. So to find your own truth, I think is one of the most powerful practices”.

Tying into what I said before about these ideas of womanhood and a woman’s place in the modern world, Keys has been reacting to the way the world is changing and the political disaster in America. On More Myself, and ALICIA, Keys is more open about womanhood and her own story and upbringing. As we learn from the CLASH interview, this year marks a real change and evolution for Keys:

“She sees this as being something deeply female, and that now is the time to acknowledge it: “I’m excited about the conversations we can have, they’re really powerful, really relevant and at this time in the world we’re really seeing how important the feminine energy is. It’s so important for balance, it’s so important for everything. And it’s definitely happening – that’s why we have to go through all this bullshit. It’s time for drastic change, drastic. I mean if a woman was running the country, would this shit be going on??”

Keys sees her new book as being a part of this conversation – which she says she was ready to write because “I’m ready to be more open” – tracing her own personal story as well as the wider theme of womanhood. “In so many ways the book brings us through the journey so far and explores these themes and places that we’re all going through [as women] and how to really become our authentic selves,” she says. “How do you become more of who you actually are? Wherever you turn, is there anyone encouraging anyone else to be unique, or different, or do something new? No! That’s the first person that’ll be made fun of, nobody is being encouraged to be more themselves – more like everyone else, that’s what we’re encouraged to be. That’s the message we get from the minute we come into the world, so how do I, how do we, do that? That’s what the stories share, as far as I’ve seen it – I have so much more to learn by the way, but I’ve definitely learnt enough to show me”.

Alicia Keys has performed Love Looks Better on Good Morning America, and the NFL Kickoff Concert, and it is the seventh single/release from ALICIA. I wonder whether there will be an official video for the song, as I can imagine something evocative and stunning! The song’s introduction brings in a firm and funky piano note that has a darkness to it that is mixed with a vocal shout. It is a man’s voice, and it is a wordless cry that fuses brilliantly with that piano. One is caught and interested from the very off, and Keys comes in and delivers one of her most effecting and memorable vocals from the album. The first verse is delivered with a real determination and sense of focus that brings the words to life: “All I, all I ever wanted/Was a dollar and a chance/Find, find what I'm made of, alright/Coming, coming from the bottom/Better learn how to dance/Find, find what you're made of, alright”. I get the feeling that Keys is talking about her earliest years and her experiences in the industry before and after her debut came out, but I also think this is a more general message for people who have had to fight and find their way. Whilst the delivery makes the words sound personal and true to her, one can also read them as a message from those who have fought and struggled and are shouting out. In modern America, I can imagine there are more people than ever who feel disenfranchised and lost; desperately looking for some source of stability and reliability!

I brought in interview segments regarding Keys’ connection to people, as Love Looks Better seems, to me, to be a song for and about the people around her. From the sharper and moodier tone of the first verse, the piano accelerates, and Keys’ vocal is more soulful than before – there was more of a Hip-Hop/Rap delivery at the start. Again, the lyrics have meaning to Keys and her plight, but one can also look beyond that to the wider world: “Feel like my love is wasting/Every day, yeah/Get so damn tired of chasing/Every day, yeah/And now it's you I'm missing/Every day, yeah/Every day, yeah/Every day”. It is clear that Keys has been throwing out love and that is either not being reciprocated or, in the modern world, so many people have taken her for granted. I also feel like this is the songwriter is also putting her heart out there to someone who has been missing for a while; maybe a sweetheart that has left her or they are separated at the moment. There is a real drive and energy as the song continues. Keys’ vocal is both open and vulnerable, as she puts herself out there is a very real way. “So can we talk for a minute?/Stop for a minute/All I wanna do is you/Oh can we touch for a second?/Be us for a second/Don't matter what I give it to”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Ryan James Caruthers

As the song goes on, I think the lyrics become more personal and specific. It is this sense of yearning and desire that burns through. I am not sure what has caused this separation and declaration, but there is a real rawness and urgency that comes from Keys. It is said that her love looks better on her lover, and one can feel that heat and meaning. “Hold up/All I, all I ever wanted/Was a city and some keys/Run, run through the street now, alright/And now it's you I'm missing/Every day, yeah/Every day, yeah/Every day” is Keys explaining how she wanted that sense of settlement and belonging, but it seems empty and almost meaningless if she is doing it on her own. Keys’ passion and determination never relents as Love Looks Better continues, and it is clear that there is this longing and real need for things to be as they were. When she sings “So can we talk for a minute?/Stop for a minute/All I wanna do is you/Oh, can we touch for a second?/Be us for a second/Don't matter what I give it to”, you can really hear the feeling in her voice, and one cannot question her truth and intent.! Love Looks Better is a terrific song from, in my view, one of Alicia Keys’ best albums. There are many more gems on ALICIA, but I wanted to review Love Looks Better as it is so impassioned and powerful! Keys’ voice remains one of the most stirring and reliable in modern music, and she has not lost that ability move and impact the listener. Let’s hope she continues to put out material of this calibre for many more years to come!

I have talked a lot about Love Looks Better, as it is my favourite song from ALICIA, and it is one of the songs that was not mentioned much by reviewers. I just briefly want to nod to an interview with The Guardian, where Keys looked at each song on ALICIA and gave a bit of background. Whilst all the tracks on the album are brilliant, Underdog is another song that has caught my ear. It is striking and moving how Keys explained that track:

“This single from new album Alicia, co-written by Ed Sheeran, goes back to those people dreaming of a better life: “The hustlers trading at the bus stop / Single mothers waiting on a cheque to come.”

“I am that person,” she says. “The one that wasn’t supposed to make it out of Hell’s Kitchen, who was supposed to end up being a prostitute, a young mother at 16 years old, or addicted to drugs. I am the one who was supposed to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and got injured or killed. And what the fuck is a dream? A dream is a luxury, if you have to pay all these bills and put food on the table for your kids. That is why I understand so much about what it means to have the strength to follow your own path. All the songs I’ve ever written that have been considered empowering or uplifting, I’ve written them at my lowest point. Because I needed to remind myself: don’t forget that”.

PHOTO CREDIT: David Luraschi

Before wrapping things up, I would say to people follow Alicia Keys on social media, as I am sure there are tour dates booked for later next year. Hopefully, she will be able to get out on the road at some point and take these new songs to the people. Ever since the start of her career, things have been so busy and chaotic. One wonders whether Keys has had a moment to rest and reflect, but I think she is taking more time out to take care of herself. Her autobiography and new albums has really made a difference to Keys when it comes to her mental-health and self-care, but she explained to Billboard what else she has been doing to take care of herself:

“You told us last year that working on your new album Alicia along with your autobiography was the best therapy for you. What forms of self care are you using right now to stay the best version of yourself?

One part of the self care [routine] I'm using 1000% is understanding my feelings and emotions, and being able to verbalize them immediately. You know when there's a thing and it hits you sideways, and you have to take a minute to be like, "Ooh, I didn't like that or that bothered me." In the past, I would have rattled off reasons as to why it was all right, and how it wasn't meant to be or whatever. Now, I've gotten much better at identifying, "OK -- that was a real emotion I had. What is it, and where did it come from?" Sometimes, it comes from a place where it doesn't have anything to do with that person that you're actually dealing with at the time.

Then, being able to verbalize it and say it right away. I find that being able to just honestly express [things] in a way where it's not lingering, or taking 20 more years because you held it in for so long, has given me truly a beautiful self-care mechanism. That's one thing. And definitely some time with hubby. That's a really important self-care moment because the kids are all around every second of every minute -- and I love it because I spend so much time away from them -- but also just reconnecting with those people that you love, especially your lover or your loved ones, makes you feel so good.

And of course, time for myself with my meditation and my journaling. I can get into my own mind and space without interruptions. Those are some of tools that I use to stay right”.

2020 is a very odd year, but the music world has delivered some of the best albums we have seen for a veery long time. ALICIA is an album that must have had a very different intent and energy when it was being written compared to now. What I mean is Keys couldn’t have foreseen what was ahead regarding the pandemic, and what world her album would be introduced to! Regardless, it is out and is receiving some of the best reviews Keys has received in many years. I think she has entered a new phase of her career and has created something both open and personal, but also there is the more political and intense. ALICIA sort of nods to her debut album, where vocals take central stage, and that voice is as strong and nuanced as ever! It is an album from a musician who truly is…