CD review: The Element Of Freedom by Alicia Keys

Posted by vicki1980 on December 12, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Alicia Keys waived ‘The Element Of Freedom’ on breaking points.

Of course, from the intimacy of old days are not much left. The piano runs that songs like ‘Falling’ accounted for the Soul and their arrest in the 70s, all that is actually already since the last studio album ‘As I Am’ passÃ©. And ‘The Element Of Freedom’ is about, what concerns the effort in terms of production work, a step further. As so often, you can read this paradigm shift twofold: First, the opening to pop an increase in the generality of its own and an emancipation from that is so often perceived as a pure black soul music genre. On the other hand, the smoothness of the contours, the good pieces now need even obliterated, but sometimes much on Alicia Keys’ fourth album.

‘Consider’ The Element Of Freedom ‘is one of the usual material battles of modern pop music, but would fall short – because of Entscheidungsehrgeiz Alicia Keys’ always seems to play a greater role than any of their calculations, the market research department of big record company. Exactly one feature is available on the album – and this fits zahnradgenau: Beyonce sings for ‘Put It In A Love Song’, an astonishingly bold-produced R & B anthem, in harmony with a compelling beat percussion before the saved drift into the kitsch. Whose husband Jay-Z did, however, contrary to speculation appropriate at home: ‘Empire State Of Mind’, the great collaboration on his last studio album ‘The Blueprint III’, can be found on ‘The Element Of Freedom’, although without a new version, but the rapper.

Both songs are not representative. The hallmark of the album is another one that was already in the video for the first single ‘Does not Mean Anything’ sufficiently conjugated Pop as carpet, which must be staged with some effort. ‘Try Sleeping With A Broken Heart’ for example starts with a sound that could pass as helicopters, but is a really extremely broad radio anthem, the theme of the withering away of its own sentimentality, but time with his arrangements, all content to the edge . ‘Love My Disease’ works in the content, similar to, but just in time to leave the danger zone and Celine Dion is running as a thick precisely staged soul song with gospel touch.

And intimate it gets rare. Even the songs that build on a piano run, about ‘Like The Sea’, are richly endowed. And sometimes, especially in the really awful squinting Radio Direction ‘Distance And Time’, has been precisely the impression that the producers are here drÃ¼bergegangen again with her Politurtuch. But it is just pop music in the variant, which is also known as trailer music ‘Only love would work’.