Its alright I suppose

But not as good as her older stuff

But then again, she had alot to live up to

Edited September 12, 200717 yr by eek.Mikeyjosh

Added to US iTunes today! Hopefully it'll be on the Billboard Hot 100 tomorrow and then by next week downloads will have helped it make a huge leap. :D

Debuts on the Hot 100 at #71 on airplay alone! B)

My fave song right now. I totally love it, and I remember hearing a snippet of 'Superwoman' sometime ago on youtube. I think this album is gonna be good. I'll have to pick up a copy. If anyone wants the audio to this song just PM me

I'm sure this new album will be hot. She never lets me down.

 

New article, talking about the album amongst other stuff:

 

AT midnight on a Monday in late July, the day was far from over for Alicia Keys. That morning the Jamaican bassist and producer Robbie Shakespeare, from the duo Sly and Robbie, had flown in from Miami for a session at the Oven: a house on Long Island that Ms. Keys and her producing partner, Kerry (Krucial) Brothers, have converted into a complex of recording and mixing studios. She spent the afternoon rehearsing with her band in Weehawken, N.J., then headed back to the Oven for a late-night mixing session.

 

Alicia Keys in her mother’s house in Washington Heights. Her new album, “As I Am,” will be released this fall.

 

What she did between albums: Alicia Keys playing a hitwoman in the 2006 film “Smokin’ Aces.” Her new studio album will be released in November.

“I love my spot,” she said proudly as she offered a visitor a tour, wearing wraparound sunglasses and a “Born to Be Wild” T-shirt. “It looks like Grandma’s house.” From the outside it did. But beyond its parlor the Oven was a warren of clean, well-equipped studios on three floors. Photos of Nina Simone, Janis Joplin, Bob Marley and other old-school figures presided from the walls.

 

It’s where she made her next album, “As I Am” (J Records), working at her own pace. Due for release on Nov. 13, “As I Am” will be her first studio album since she released “The Diary of Alicia Keys” in 2003, and Ms. Keys has been describing it as “rebellious” at every opportunity. “I just was really adamant about doing things that were not expected,” she said. While some of its songs reaffirm her connection to 1960s and ’70s soul, others lean closer to rock — from the Beatles to U2 — than she has before.

 

The album was about 10 days from being finished, and well into the wee hours people were busy with last-minute mixing and mastering. Manny Marroquin, who was mixing the album’s first single, “No One,” told Ms. Keys he had just gotten a no-pressure-but-pressure call from her A&R contact at J Records. “He was, like, ‘Do your thing,’ ” Mr. Marroquin reported, imitating the tone of the record-company man. “ ‘I’ve just got to turn the song in by Wednesday, and I’m not going to get in the way, but —— ’ ”

 

Ms. Keys interrupted him. “Back up,” she said. “I don’t like to hear all that. It’ll be in when it’s in. It’s there when it’s right, and that’s when it’s there.”

 

Getting it right is essential both for Ms. Keys as a musician and for a recording business with few young stars that inspire loyalty. In the four years between Ms. Keys’s studio albums, CD sales have stayed in a tailspin and albums have been dismantled in favor of singles and ring tones. Careers have been forged by “American Idol,” which boosts singers rather than songwriters, entertainers more than musicians — nearly the opposite of a self-determined performer like Ms. Keys.

 

Although she is only 26, in many ways Ms. 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 including, on this album, the rock and pop producer Linda Perry and the songwriter from Floetry, Marsha Ambrosius. She is an accomplished keyboardist and a singer who needs no electronic assistance.

 

“She doesn’t compromise,” said Clive Davis, the chairman of BMG North America (the parent of J Records), who has nurtured her career since he signed her as a teenager and his company released her 2001 debut, the multimillion-selling “Songs in A Minor.” “I would never think of remotely asking her to compromise.”

 

Although he has appeared on “American Idol” as a musical coach, “I don’t give her any advice,” he said. “And she doesn’t rest on any laurels.”

 

Her songs often recall gospel-rooted, idealistic vintage soul, updated with deeper bass and programmed drumbeats. “I do feel like I was born in the wrong era sometimes,” Ms. Keys said. “Maybe I just passed away early and ended up being reborn in this one. There is obviously some kind of true cosmic connection with that music of the ’60s and the ’70s.”

 

She continued: “I love how social people were, how politically aware they were. Mobilizing massive amounts of people for one singular vision and making tremendous strides: How does that happen? I’m very fascinated by that.”

 

As urban radio stations thump with proudly synthetic R&B and hip-hop, the organic soul and rock sound of Ms. Keys’s new songs are almost defiant. But she may have enough good will among fans and gatekeepers to thrive as a nonconformist.

 

“The climate now is not unlike the one when she first entered,” said Stephen Hill, executive vice president of music entertainment at Black Entertainment Television. “There was nothing like her when she came out. And when she did ‘If I Ain’t Got You,’ that also sounded like nothing else on the radio, but it was soulful.”

 

 

For Ms. Keys four years passed quickly. She toured repeatedly, made an MTV “Unplugged” album and traveled in Africa to support the AIDS-response organization Keep a Child Alive. She did some movie acting, playing a hitwoman in “Smokin’ Aces” and Scarlett Johansson’s friend in “The Nanny Diaries.” She and Mr. Brothers started a television production company called Big Pita, Little Pita that’s working on a series about a biracial child growing up in New York City, as Ms. Keys did.

 

And for a while Ms. Keys set aside career to tend to an older relative she declines to name, who was dying. “Somebody extremely close to me got very ill,” she said, “and I was really the only one that was able to help care for them. This person was strong and my rock, and then, totally, not even able to walk without assistance. I had no choice but to stop.”

 

Until then she had been working her career since she was a teenager. “Celebrity is like a drug,” she said. “In its purest form you get well known for something that you do, that you do well. That’s a genuine emotion, and then you love what you do, and you want to share it with the world, and then people say: ‘Well, you’ve got to do this this this this this. In three days you’re doing seven countries, go.’ And you go, ‘O.K., well I’ve got to go, go go go go.’ ”

 

She added, “Instead of you living your life, your life is living you.”

 

To visit her relative Ms. Keys would cut recording sessions short; she also flew home between tour dates. The experience, she said, of “dealing with mortality every day for a year” affected the songs she was writing. One, called “Tell You Something,” is a U2-flavored guitar anthem that vows, “Won’t wait till it’s too late.”

 

The album is titled “As I Am,” Ms. Keys said, because she has grown far more straightforward in recent years. “I was becoming a very hidden person,” she said. “I would just always try to keep everything even keeled and cool and just smooth everything over. That mask was getting very scary. And I didn’t like it.”

 

Growing up in Clinton, known as Hell’s Kitchen during the seedy years of Times Square, where she was raised by her mother after her parents separated, taught Ms. Keys to be defensive. “I’ve always been pretty guarded,” she said. “I remember I would have guys drop me off, like, two blocks before my house. I didn’t want them to know where I lived. Even on the phone I never wanted people getting too close to me, I never wanted people knowing too much about me. I always felt like if people knew about me, then they could use it against me.”

 

Now “I’m done with that,” she said. “And I’m done with being a person that doesn’t understand themselves because it’s being detrimental to my health and my spirit and my mind. Everybody’s in trouble now because I will tell it like it is.”

 

Still, Ms. Keys has never offered private details in her songs. Her hits, like “A Woman’s Worth” and “If I Ain’t Got You,” have revolved around advice and generalities. That doesn’t change in new songs like “The Thing About Love” or “Like You’ll Never See Me Again.”

 

But her voice can make truisms sound like confessions. One new song, “Superwoman,” draws on gospel and the Beatles, moving from uncertainty to determination. It’s a reminder, she said, to herself. “Even when I’m out, and I’m just a mess, and I’m not perfect, and everything’s not great, and I’m struggling to figure out what is what,” she said, “I’m still a superwoman.”

 

By coincidence this fall also promises new albums from Ms. Keys’s fellow neo-soul songwriters — Jill Scott, Angie Stone and Erykah Badu — as well as recharged soul singers like Bettye LaVette and Chaka Khan. Singing from the perspective of assertive, self-guided women, they defy the latest wave of pop and hip-hop sexism.

 

“Every guy actually thinks they can have any woman,” Ms. Keys said, shaking her head. “ ‘Oh, that’s just a woman. Oh, a woman is for my disposal. I use them as an ornament to hang on my arm. I use her as a piece of furniture to stay in my house and let her sit in my car.’ It’s not good.”

 

“I mean, not to say there aren’t brilliant, brave, beautiful women who aren’t all like that,” she added, “but I just don’t know when we started being cool with being the afterthought or being the accessory. There’s nothing wrong with being sensual, and there’s nothing wrong with being sexy, but there’s a misunderstanding of what sexy is. Sensuality is the mystery of what it could be.”

 

While fans have come to expect pro-woman songs from Ms. Keys, she has also decided to take up political matters, though much more subtly. One song on the new album is “Go Ahead,” which has a hip-hop beat and lyrics that might be about a deceitful lover. It’s more than that, Ms. Keys explained. “Lately I’ve been into taking social or political issues or problems or general ideas and making them people,” she said, “so that it comes off as if I’m speaking about a relationship, but I’m really speaking about a world issue.”

 

She parsed the song: “Who needs to go ahead and get out of here? Who knew all along that they did the wrong thing? And who needs to get out of here as quickly as possible?” She smiled. “That should tell you your answer.”

 

Although “As I Am” won’t be released until November, Ms. Keys was promoting it over the summer, jetting to London, Paris and Tokyo to preview songs for music-business powers. Once the album was finished, there would be video treatments to read and touring arrangements to decide. Ms. Keys was ready to plunge into the music business again, but she wanted to keep her priorities old-fashioned.

 

“I don’t know how to be a factory,” she said. “I don’t know how to churn out records every second. All I know how to do is what moves me, what really moves me to write, what moves me to sing.”

 

“Lately I’ve been into taking social or political issues or problems or general ideas and making them people,” she said, “so that it comes off as if I’m speaking about a relationship, but I’m really speaking about a world issue.”

 

That's really clever. She did that on 'Diary of Alicia Keys', too. :wub:

Album cover (apparently):

 

http://img339.imageshack.us/img339/1268/akcdqy3.jpg

 

It is not. I refuse to believe something so awful could be Alicia's album cover, or anybody's for that matter.

It is not. I refuse to believe something so awful could be Alicia's album cover, or anybody's for that matter.

I agree :puke2:

I hope it isn't. It's terrible.

Absolutely amazing song! probaly my fave atm :wub: the amount of emotion in her voice, songs just amazing and so is she! <3 and of course that won't be the cover :lol:

The song is GREAT!

I absolutely LOVE the beggining! :wub:

This and Kanye's song 'Homecoming is my fave of the moment. I don't understand how some of you don't like the song it's just so briliant. I listened to it 10 times earlier and was told to stop playing it lol

Edited September 14, 200717 yr by AnastaciaInspirated

Still loving this! Whens the video out?

Premiers today, Andy.

Today?!?!

 

Wooh!

Could someone PM me the track please?

You have it yet, Coolnav?

Could someone PM me it as well, I can't find it anywhere :(

Did you two get my PM's?

Video premieres this Friday on TRL now, apparently.