Alicia Keys’s eighth album – the follow-up to 2020’s guest-heavy Alicia – is a strange beast. A 26-track double album, the first side includes a suite of songs, (billed as Originals) that showcase a more stripped-back, piano-based sound, while the Unlocked side features beefed up, hip-hop-leaning reworkings co-produced by Mike Will Made It. It’s an intriguing concept that, when it works, offers a glimpse into an artist’s creative process, but when it doesn’t, feels like hedge-betting.
Highlights include Old Memories, morphed from a jazzy standard into side two’s dancefloor goliath, and the original version of Daffodils, which pairs piano, delicate electronics and a lullaby melody to soothing effect. The ebullient, career-high Love When You Call My Name, meanwhile, works perfectly in both iterations.
Unfortunately, on some of Unlocked, the songs are contorted into ungainly shapes. Only You’s smoky subtlety is hijacked by crass dance beats, while the controlled drama of the original Nat King Cole is lost thanks to a slurred guest verse from Lil Wayne. There’s enough across both albums to keep fans happy, and that soulful voice is still a thing of wonder, but Keys has a strange hotchpotch feel to it.
