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. Her studies no longer determine her sound the way they once did, but a moment like this reminds you she's a serious artist.
Second: "De Novo Adagio", which translates loosely to "Adagio Again", signals that Girl on Fire is an album about rebirth and renewal. That girl on fire is a phoenix, and to demonstrate that point, "Adagio" segues seamlessly into "Brand New Me", a slow-burning declaration of independence co-written with Scottish singer-songwriter Emeli Sandé. Keys excels at this kind of self-esteem anthem, but this one feels a little too familiar-- an old way of introducing her new self. That song is followed by the Jamie xx-produced "When It's All Over", and it's perhaps a sign that I'm listening to too much Taylor Swift that I naturally wondered what had happened in Keys' personal life to warrant a record so heavy on break-up songs. Then I remembered that it doesn't matter: Keys has retooled and reinvented herself, however subtly and slightly, on every album, so it makes sense that she would use romantic tragedy as the engine for transformation.
Four albums about rebirth, however, can become a bit predictable, if not an outright drag. Neither "Brand New Me" nor "When It's Over" does much that Keys hasn't done in the past, but then she drops "New Day", a heavy banger that actually feels brand new. With her sharp eh-eh-eh-ehs and slightly accented delivery, she sounds like she's channeling Rihanna without the regrettable drama that has sadly infected the "Umbrella" singer's most recent efforts. In a way this is exactly the kind of song we wish Rihanna were singing: something strong and forceful and self-assertive, something that writes the happy ending we want for our pop stars. Keys throws herself into the song; her voice quavering during the rawer moments, as though the notes are well within her range but the emotions are not.
A collaboration with Swizz Beatz (Keys' husband) and Dr. Dre, "New Day" has a transformative effect within the album, whose middle is as strong as any sequence of songs Keys has recorded. After a rough start lyrically ("She's just a girl and she's on fire"), the title track features Keys' most powerful vocals and a too-brief cameo from Nicki Minaj, who sounds like she's just getting started before her verse comes to an end. "Fire We Make", her duet with Maxwell, is an old-fashioned slow jam that doesn't have a whole lot of actual song to it and honestly doesn't need it. Instead, it's an excuse for vocal and sexual fireworks from two of r&b's strongest singers, with Keys' bold voice evocatively contrasting Maxwell's softer, slightly hoarse delivery.
Keys has always chosen her collaborators well, and even when she's working with the ultimate alpha males (Kanye West on The Diary of Alicia Keys, John Mayer on As I Am), she never lets anyone elbow her out of the spotlight. Still, the announcement that she was doing a song with Bruno Mars and the Smeezingtons, the team responsible for Cee Lo Green's "Fuck You" and Mars' own "Grenade", was enough to arch some eyebrows. They're pop throwbacks, but they throw back to a completely different pop era than Keys evokes, and does anyone want to see this woman, who seems to draw inspiration from Aretha and Pam Grier equally, show up at the sockhop? Surprisingly, "Tears Always Win" manages to split the difference between Keys and Mars, and the retro flourishes-- the shuffling drumbeat, the doo wop backing vocals-- reinforce rather than distract from the pain in Keys' vocals and lyrics. With its bedroom setting and emotional insomnia, the song comes across like a sequel to "Try Sleeping with a Broken Heart", holding its own against one of Key's finest moments.
After that comes "Not Even the King", which features just Keys and her piano. It's a respectable ballad, albeit a bit too devoted to its own metaphor, and it's refreshing to hear her in such a spare setting. But it also brings the album back down to earth, stalling the momentum she'd established. Following the rhythmically and grammatically awkwardly "Limitedless", a pair of fine ballads, "One Thing" and "101", sound good on their own but dour as back-to-back closers. The latter culminates in a loud coda that's among the heaviest passages Keys has recorded, full of shouted hallelujahs and some startlingly violent beats. It's a risky move, about as far from the pensive notes of "De Novo Adagio" as Keys could get, but she doesn’t pull it off. Far too bombastic to be especially cathartic, "101" makes for a gently unsatisfying conclusion to an otherwise assured album. It never quite lives up to its theme of rebirth, but especially given the range and power she's showed in the past, it doesn't really need to.
