The amount of times she labels a song one of her “favorites”–or, alternatively, “all-time favorite”–renders the word practically meaningless. Her positivity may be genuine, but in the written word her stoic enthusiasm comes off trite and insincere. This is especially evident in the section where Keys breaks down each song on both discs. It’s all pomp and circumstance but very little in the way of actual substance.
Songs in a minor alicia keys album cover full#
There’s no getting around the fact this new booklet is pretty nice to look at, but its contents wouldn’t be of much use to non-superfans as it’s full of Behind the Music-esque insider tales. It features all of the original photography from the standard edition, re-appropriated into the new design. It mostly just sounds like a bit of a mess, if a well-intentioned one.Īs for the packaging and DVD, the cardboard sleeve containing the liner notes and discs is pretty elegant. The disc closes out with three live tracks: “I Got a Little Something”, Keys’ token city-shoutout number on her first tour, a brief medley of classical melodies that feels about as superfluous and showy as the classical piano did on Songs in A Minor proper, and a cover of the Doors’ “Light My Fire” that sits somewhere between the original and Al Green’s revision while lacking the signature flavor of either.
The rest of the disc is mostly an attempt to expose Keys’ underexposed roots in funk music, whether it’s her playful re-interpretation of Mtume’s mega-classic “Juicy”, an early rendering of “If I Was Your Woman” (which wouldn’t be finalized until Diary of Alicia Keys) from 1998, or “I Won’t (Crazy World)”, which is the highlight of the original songs here. A “Fallin'” remix lifted from the Will Smith vehicle Ali can’t promise the same sort of re-imagining, however, as it’s turned into a melodramatic little dirge complete with an orchestral interlude that doesn’t do anything positive for the song, especially without accompanying visuals. The Drumline (one of those irrevocably average teen movies from Nick Cannon’s heartthrob days) remix of “Butterflyz” is one of the rare soundtrack remixes that works, trading its classical piano, teenaged girl at her window feel for a sexier, more seductive vibe that allows the song to grow up from its humble beginnings as one of the first songs Keyz ever wrote. Keys’ vocal feels equally uninterested, but it’s a weak point most of disc does its best to distance itself from. The disc starts off with a remix of “A Woman’s Worth”, which bears similarities to the one found on previous re-issues but replaces Busta Rhymes and Rampage (member of Busta’s Flipmode crew) with Nas, who delivers a hilariously off-key performance centered around a clumsy Rikers-as-girlfriend metaphor.
Other than the UK edit of “Girlfriend”, none of the tracks from the album’s previous two re-releases are present here, not even the Neptunes remix of “How Come You Don’t Call Me?”, which is fine anyway, since that track always felt fairly castrated in comparison to the original. Keys and her co-producers were smart to avoid a fairly common mistake of anniversary releases of albums that have already received the collector’s/limited edition treatment at the time of their original release. Songs in A Minor was a great, personal album in 2001 and it remains so today, ripe with cuts like “Rock Wit U”, “Troubles”, “Butterflyz”, the awesome cover of Prince’s “How Come You Don’t Call Me?” and, of course, “Fallin’.” If you’re buying this Collector’s Edition, you probably already knew that and agree, which brings me to the bonus disc and DVD. The first disc remains untouched, a pristine example of the marriage between mainstream production values and a singer-songwriter type R&B girl. Through it all she’s become a much different animal than the self-proclaimed caged bird of Harlem’s streets who penned 2004’s Diary of Alicia Keys and Songs in A Minor, and this 10th Anniversary collection serves as an appropriate reminder of just how much she’s evolved as an artist in just one decade. So too has her music expanded from her homely, R&B meets hip-hop roots to include more ballads, more explicitly “inspirational” numbers and cleaner, more nuanced crooning. Over the past decade Keys has grown to accept her fame wholeheartedly, becoming a spokeswoman for all manner of charitable causes, a perennial Grammy performer, and mother of famous hip-hop producer Swizz Beatz’ child. At the time one couldn’t exactly say she was shy, but she often came off more bashful than she does now, less ready for the attention of the camera. It’s very interesting to see how far Alicia Keys has come as a person in the decade since she stormed onto MTV and VH1 with the video for “Fallin'”.
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