Her new double album, “Keys,” shows how thoroughly the production can transform her songs.
“Keys,” Alicia Keys’s new album, is a high-concept experiment, the kind of self-conscious, introspective project that has been emerging during the pandemic. Like Keys’s decision to no longer wear makeup in public, the album is in part a pushback against phony, superficial perfection. “I used to live hidden in a disguise,” she sings in “Plentiful,” an affirmation of both religious faith and faith in herself that opens the album. “Keys” also exposes the options available to a 21st-century musician, the countless digital tweaks and variations. It’s a double album with 21 songs, eight of them appearing twice. It begins with “Originals,” tracks that Keys largely produced by herself, followed by “Unlocked”: alternate versions produced by Keys with the hitmaker Michael Williams II, who bills himself as Mike WiLL Made-It. Though the whole album is a studio production, “Originals” has a home-alone spirit, while “Unlocked” heads for the car and the club. Each half tells a different story about how songs move listeners, physically and emotionally. The songs themselves explore desire, love and loneliness. Throughout her career, Keys has mingled the personal and the political, often invoking a woman’s strength and determination. But for most of “Keys,” she plays a woman in thrall to her feelings, by turns connected, needy, amorous, giving, desolate, jealous, and, eventually, healing.
