Liking Alicia Keys

...is not something that I should admit to, but I will anyway. My friend Matthew would be aghast at this - not that I like Alicia Keys, although who knows, but at the fact that I wouldn't be comfortable admitting it. Matthew has a sort of relentlessly hip taste in music - he's the sort of person who might have a blog that dissects every single Bjork song ever (and by "might have" I mean "actually has"). But he made a good point a while ago when I mentioned that Kelly Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone" was a guilty pleasure: he said that there should be no such thing. And he's right (well, maybe heroin should be a guilty pleasure, but that's someone else's blog.) So I'll say it: "Since U Been Gone" is probably the second best pop song of the millennium, and I like the new Alicia Keys album.

There, I admit it. The first single, "No One," is the sort of radio-friendly singalong that no one should be ashamed to sing along to (much like, well, the aforementioned Kelly Clarkson track) and there are plenty of other eminently hummable tunes. I first caught win of the record almost by accident: Ms. Keys performed on "Fashion Rocks" this year and I was so taken by her live version of "The Thing About Love" that I assumed it was actually a cover.



So, there, I've admitted to it. There's more on the album, too: a great jam called "I Need You," and something called "Teenage Love Affair" that should be awful but isn't. I may be sacrificing whatever little hipster cred I have managed to hold on to until now by writing about this, but I don't worry, 'cause everything's gonna be all right.