As I Am

Product Details

Artist : Alicia Keys
Format : Enhanced
Binding : Audio CD
EAN : 0886971151329
Label : Sony Music Canada Inc.
Number of Discs : 1
Product Group : Music
Release Date : 2007-11-13
UPC : 886971151329

ASIN : B000VEYJP2

Track Listings for

Disc-1
1. As I Am (Intro)
2. Go Ahead
3. Superwoman
4. No One
5. Like You'll Never See Me Again
6. Lesson Learned - Alicia Keys, , John Mayer
7. Wreckless Love
8. Thing About Love
9. Teenage Love Affair
10. I Need You
11. Where Do We Go from Here
12. Prelude to a Kiss
13. Tell You Something (Nana's Reprise)
14. Sure Looks Good to Me

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Editorial Reviews

From Amazon.com

By the time this long-awaited album saw its release date, most fans had probably read at least a couple of interviews with Alicia Keys in which she explained that first single, "No One"--a firestorm of a song clearly born of a sore heart and steeped in serious soul-searching, was about her decision to retreat from the obligations of stardom when she found out a loved one was in need of her care. The anecdote sticks not just because it explained the song so well--you can actually hear the pain, commitment, and determination in her sultry voice--but because it gets at what makes the woman behind the music so appealing. There's only one way R&B artists grow to become legends, and it's by drenching the words they sing with feeling (think Gladys Knight, Roberta Flack). The skeptical listener might have had her doubts before As I Am, but there's no mistaking it now: Alicia Keys is well on her way to sharing a category with them. This record radiates not just old-soul maturity, the kind Alicia fans say makes her modern rarity, but real soul. Vintage-leaning hooks and horns grab hold on "Where Do We Go from Here" and an assortment of other songs, but Keys can also get by just fine without them, as she proves on more pop-flavored numbers like "Lesson Learned," with John Mayer, and "Superwoman." The genres may be smearing, she seems to say, but bring them on: she won't shrink back. Her commitment is not to a single style but to what's stirring her soul. Because of it, she's moving R&B, or something like it, from the hips back to the heart. --Tammy La Gorce

Customer Reviews

This woman is amazing! (2008-03-20)

Her album "As I Am" is honestly quite lovely. Her poetry is beautiful. The instrumental is catchy. It's her best work yet! My favorite tracks are: "Lesson Learned", "Like You'll Never See Me Again", "No One", and "Tell You Something".

A brilliant, oddly old-fashioned album. (2007-11-14)

Although she is only 27, in many ways Keys comes across as a proud throwback: a soul singer in the era of abbreviated R&B hooks. She writes and produces her own songs with various collaborators. She is an accomplished keyboardist and a singer who needs no electronic assistance. With "As I Am", she returns to a purer, more traditional soul sound, ranging from from the anthemic single "No One" and the title track --which harnesses her romantic piano style to a punchy hip-hop drum programme -- to the sweet, caramel-smooth "Tell You Something" to the powerful, raw-voiced anthems "Go Ahead" and "Superwoman". The latter -- in which she channels every great diva who has ever asserted the power of woman -- draws on gospel and the Beatles, moving from uncertainty to determination. It's a reminder, she says, to herself. "Even when I'm out, and I'm just a mess, and everything's not great, and I'm struggling to figure out what is what" she says, "I'm still a superwoman". Much of this album feels like a deliberate homage to the best of mainstream Seventies and Eighties soul, with a pop-savvy modern edge contributed by co-producer Linda Perry. In place of former hip-hop and the urban influences on "The Diary of Alicia Keys", which featured collaboration with rappers Nas and Rakim , she has brought in blues maestro John Mayer, who complements her neatly on the wry, piano-heavy "Lesson Learned". Alicia Keys has never offered private details in her songs. Her hits, like "A Woman's Worth" and '"f I Ain't Got You", have revolved around advice and generalities. The usual complaint about Soul music is that the lyrics so often sound like an afterthought. That doesn't change in her new songs and her new album. "As I Am" is no exception on that count. Keys famously keeps her personal life a watertight secret, so that you could read anything you like into these lyrics without them carrying any personal feeling at all. If you can listen to that fluting, fierce, clear, dirty, magnificent voice while simultaneously shutting out the banality of what it's expressing, you'll have hours of pleasure from this gorgeously melodic, curiously old-fashioned album. Other highlights include her paean to spicy lovemaking "Wreckless Love", featuring a Jack Splash production blending his jazzy drum shuffle with horn and string arrangements reminiscent of Curtis Mayfield, and "Teenage Love Affair", on which she seems to summon up the ghost of that earlier pioneer of sophisticated Big Apple soul, Laura Nyro. My favourite tracks : "Tell You Something", "Superwoman", "Wreckless Love", "Teenage Love Affair", "No One" and "Go Ahead". All in one word : brilliant. Have a great listening experience!

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