The Caged Bird Sings: Alicia Keys's Songs in A Minor

As I had said earlier in my part on Adele, sometimes all you take is a soft and a voice.

Alicia Keys remains one of the greatest musical artists of the final decade, and it has so been ten days since June 5, 2001, when her landmark debut album Songs in A Child was released to substantive critical acclaim and massive commercial success.

The musical landscape in 2001 marked the zenith of the bubblegum pop movement, where artists like Britney Spears, the Backstreet Boys and N`Sync regularly dropped albums that shifted a million copies in a week and sold out arenas. Since then, BSB have formed with their predecessor band NKOTB to build a nostalgic supergroup tour but experience had limited success. Justin Timberlake is rapidly distancing himself from his musical past to pursue acting. And Spears is comparable a sad blow-up doll, mouthing words passionlessly. All sold well but so did Keys, who was one of the biggest-selling artists of that era and has since released 3 more albums, each one a multi-platinum best-seller. She writes for other established artists and has street cred despite her classical breeding. Sometimes, good savor and serious sense truly prevails, in spectacular style.

Everyone recalls the start time they heard Alicia Keys on the radio. It was that pure, clear, soulful voice that pierced through the hush as she sung the opening lines to her first smash, "Fallin`", a cappella. The response was absolutely immediate as everyone asked, "Who was that???" It was the simple clarity of her sound that first grabbed our attention. No one has forgotten that voice ever since.

Keys makes her voice clear from the start of the album. Its opening track "Piano & I", is a clever interpolation of Beethoven`s Moonlight Sonata with a subtle R&B drum machine slinking its way in. It`s not unlike sneaking a Boom Box (remember those?) into a chamber music recital. "Do you love my figure?" If we didn`t then, we certainly knew by the end of that record. As so many R&B artists at the sentence were borrowing influences from pop and leaning heavily into materialistic gangsta rap, it was bracing for an artist to boldly proclaim that she gets down with classic music. Keys was the cool, understated girl in your music class who could absolutely murder Lizst`s Liebestraum and drive her bike home to Wu-Tang Clan. In other words, she was no mere manufactured pop star who was told she could "sing" by a fame-hungry, frustrated stage parent. Like Lady Gaga after her, Alicia Keys has actual musical education and the gift to cover it up. She writes her own songs, plays her own instruments, and has the maturity and imagination to get a permanent career out of it. Having graduated as valedictorian of New York City`s prestigious Professional Performing Arts School at age 16, it was plain that Keys was meant for greater things.

Ten days on, Songs in A Minor remains a classical study of new music. Keys`s simultaneously raspy and silky voice dances with her piano throughout the show and her spoken-word intro on "Piano & I" is sheer genius, as it encapsulates in less than two minutes its creator`s influences. She makes reference to a two-year struggle with Columbia Records, the judge with which she parted ways due to corporate indecision, indifference and blindness to her talent, and says she`s no longer "as helpless as [she] formerly was". It`s a bold statement, but she says "I`m ready". But are we?

Songs in A Child is timeless, unadulterated, pure R&B that will sound current years from now. Written by a prodigy at a new age, some of the songs` themes bear the hallmarks of grief and new love. It was startling to hear a young voice channel nearly every soul great, from Stevie Wonder to Etta James to Aretha Franklin and especially Billie Holiday. The neo-soul movement of the early millennium brought richness to the R&B genre that included artists such as Jill Scott, Macy Gray, Maxwell and Eric Benet. None of them matched the continuing artistic and commercial success of Alicia Keys. What has become abundantly clear in the final decade, as Keys matured, was that she gained still more maturity and position and brought darker themes to her follow-up albums, each one sonically masterful and a will to her ongoing status as an eminent artist. The longing of "Fallin`", although it does suffer from overplay due to its unexpectedly massive success, still captures the defeat and surrender of its protagonist. "A Woman`s Worth" is one of the all-time great, but never sentimental or obvious, female empowerment anthems. And "Rock Wit U" still sounds like the greatest funk record Stevie Wonder never recorded.

The music industry sat up and took notice. Songs in A Small sold almost a quarter-million copies in its first week of loss and at 6.2 million albums (twelve million globally), remains Keys`s most successful album to date. She earned no less than five Grammy Awards for her work, tying the book set three days prior by fellow R&B iconoclast Lauryn Hill, including Best New Artist and Call of the Year honors.

June 5, 2011 marks the 10th anniversary of the loss of Songs in A Minor. Keys has been celebrating this landmark on her Facebook page. The Blogger will observe by simply listening. That's all Keys would need from us. If she's ready, so are we.