Think Again Music Man
Alicia Keys makes our writer eat his Vanilla Ice comparison
I hate to admit it, but when Alicia Keys made her debut nine years ago with the album, "Songs In A Minor" — featuring a cover picture of her in some sort of pimp sun bonnet with Bo Derek breads streaming from underneath it — I was thinking, "one-hit wonder."
True, she had a beautiful, soulful voice and her ability to play her own music on piano set her apart from the boy band/pop princess cycle that was dominating airwaves at that time. Still, her whole get-up felt a little contrived and produced in the same costume lab that manufactured the performing personas of Vanilla Ice or TLC.
Apparently Keys agreed.
Nine years and three more albums later (her latest release, "The Element of Freedom," came out just before Christmas last year) and the Keys Houston saw Saturday night at the Toyota Center looks and sounds nothing like lil' "Alicia from the block" from nearly a decade ago.
She still plays the piano, but now Keys is a fashion-forward, super glam diva more likely to be upstage leading the crowd through the chorus of new singles like "Try Sleeping With A Broken Heart," or "Unthinkable (I'm Ready)." Keys made an anything-but-conventional entrance at the Toyota Center, getting rolled out in a smoke-filled cage.
The standout moments at most Keys' shows are her former No. 1 singles, "Fallin' " and excellent live anthem, "No One." But with 22 singles and 14 million-plus albums sold, Keys has more than enough material to make this writer eat his "one hit wonder" predictions from the past.