★★★★★
There's a sly pun in the title of Alicia Keys' 2001 debut. "A minor" doesn't simply describe the key of the music; it also refers to the artist herself, who was underage when she wrote most of these songs. By the time songs in A minor was released in June, she was 19, but that doesn't make her confidence and poise any less startling or any less compelling...
- www.americansongwriter.com
2013-04-25
★★★★★
Veteran R&B/pop songstress Alicia Keys has dropped new album Girl on Fire, via RCA Records. The singer's first full-length since 2009's The Element of Freedom, the project features 13 original records, including the set's lead single and title track, as well as featured cuts "Not Even the King."
Nicki Minaj and Maxwell make guest appearances throughout the LP, which features production by Keys herself along with production from Jeff Bhasker, Pop & Oak, Salaam Remi, Swizz Beatz, and The...
- www.djbooth.net
2013-04-02
★★★★★
Alicia Keys's debut single, Fallin', was vital and heartbreaking, but as piano-and-pathos became her template, the music crept closer to commercially passable and critically whatever. Despite being an able, talented songwriter, she lacked adventurousness. Fifth album Girl On Fire is a stultifying, prescriptive rebirth record...
- nowtoronto.com
2013-04-02
★★★★★
7
Critical Mass
Release Date: November 22, 2012Label: RCA
With Girl on Fire, her fifth studio album since 2001, Alicia Keys officially joins the postmodern-R&B old school. Eleven years is a long time...
- www.spin.com
2012-12-11
★★★★★
"Girl On Fire" finds the perfect balance of self-help and realized-romance. Alicia Keys has released her fifth album Girl On Fire a little over a decade since she first came into recorded music prominence. The Hell's Kitchen R&B Singer-Songwriter went cross-genre in 2001 thanks in due part to her ability to add musicality to R&B. It wasn't anything new to the genre, but at the time it was something that wasn't common...
- www.hiphopdx.com
2012-12-10
★★★★★
"Girl On Fire" finds the perfect balance of self-help and realized-romance. Alicia Keys has released her fifth album Girl On Fire a little over a decade since she first came into recorded music prominence. The Hell's Kitchen R&B Singer-Songwriter went cross-genre in 2001 thanks in due part to her ability to add musicality to R&B. It wasn't anything new to the genre, but at the time it was something that wasn't common...
- www.hiphopdx.com
2012-12-10
★★★★★
Alicia Keys' fifth studio album opens the same way each one of her previous albums does: with a short, pensive piano piece. The quiet "De Novo Adagio" is meant to set the stage for the drama to come, but it handily accomplishes two other things as well. First, it reminds listeners that Keys is a classically trained musician, that she graduated from Professional Performing Arts School and studied at Columbia University...
- pitchfork.com
2013-04-01
★★★★★
With a few carefully considered piano notes, "De Novo Adagio" reminds fans of soul diva Alicia Keys' classical roots and sets the stage for an album that reaches beyond obvious anthems ("Empire State of Mind," "Fallin'") for a new urbanity, offering a variety of moods, notions, even introspection. Fear not, fans of ubiquity...
- www.pastemagazine.com
2012-12-04
★★★★★
Available on: RCA Since the release of 2009's Element of Freedom, Alicia Keys has married super-producer Swizz Beatz and gave birth to a son, Egypt. So when Keys promised an album that represented "new beginnings, new perspectives and fresh starts" in Girl On Fire, she was describing her life and not necessarily her music. While Keys' voice is as smooth as her piano playing is sharp, Girl On Fire is not a "fresh start" by any means...
- www.factmag.com
2012-12-03