Alicia Keys and Her “Element of Freedom”

On 12.12.09, In Music, by Roque.

Alicia Keys has established herself as an increasingly rare thing in pop music: “The class act.” It’s made her a consistently gratifying album artist, if not always an immediately dazzling one.

The Element of Freedom’s fist single, the pensive love-is-the-drug ballad “Doesn’t Mean Anything,” seemed to get lost among its more aggressive chart peers when it was released in late September.

The second, “Try Sleeping With a Broken Heart,” doesn’t deserve the same fate. It’s insidiously, almost obscenely hooky: a slithering riff on early- ’80s Prince with a monster synth line.

What Keys’ often-banal lyrics lack, her quicksilver voice carries: it’s bluesy and subterranean on the atmospheric opener, “Love Is Blind”; it is a pure honeyed uplift on “Wait ‘Till You See My Smile” and “That’s How Strong My Love Is”; and ragged with longing on “Love Is My Disease,” a stirring semi- sequel to her ‘07 smash “No One.”

“Put It in a Love Song,’ (a saucy duet with Beyonce,) is fun, though not entirely in sync with the record’s lush, mid tempo vibe.

Keys’ material is ultimately about the slow reveal, not the instant blitz.

If…”Element of Freedom” asks for patience, it also earns it.

You can download, “Try Sleeping With a Broken Heart.”