No One

Song: No One
Artist: Alicia Keys
Album: As I Am



I was never much of an Alicia Keys fans in the beginning, got quickly tired of “Fallin’” and the Grammy onslaught at the time. (I don’t know why but it seems when everyone is raving about someone I tend to immediately not want to like them. Odd? Yes.) My thoughts were changed about Keys since hearing the unbelievably beautiful “Ain’t Got You” from her sophomore album “The Diary of Alicia Keys.” That song is one of the most beautiful I have heard from the neo-soul movement, and one that proved Alicia’s got more up her sleeve. While I haven’t spent enough time with either of her records, it seems she should have more songs become popular, vs. just one mega hit per record. (I know she has released other singles from her records, they just don’t seem to make the same impact.)

Alicia will be releasing her third album, “As I Am” in early November, “No One” is the first single from the record. At first listen it seems like standard Keys… piano based emotional ballad with street-cred maintaining beats underneath. After a couple listens I realize two things… this in fact is a pretty great song, and second… that “standard” is not the appropriate way to describe what Keys does. She fills her songs with poetry and such emotion that I can see why her music speaks to so many. She really has “soul-ache” down.

While I am really liking this song, and its very odd keyboard work (not typically found in Top 40-reaching R&B) I am not sure how much of a single it makes. It very much sounds like the closing or end of something. It would be perfect album ender to me, both emotional, ballad-y, etc. Though since it is the first single I doubt it’s the last track. Not that she hasn’t had hits with songs of this tempo, on the contrary she’s sort of made her career from songs like this… but it just doesn’t sound like a single, despite how good it is.

I look forward to hearing more from the album and want to give the full thing a proper listen when it is released.

Enjoy.

Ain’t Got You