Keys sat at a piano as images of American soldiers overseas were inter-spliced with footage of her performance and emotional athletes.
“I’m really excited about it, I can’t even lie,” Keys said in advance of Sunday’s performance. “I have to rehearse it totally, as if it’s a brand-new song, because it is actually a brand new song in the style that I’ll deliver it. I’m actually rehearsing it like a maniac.”
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Top Cuts: “Girl on Fire,” Listen to your Heart,” “De Novo Adagio,” Brand New Me”
With Special Guests; Maxwell, Emile Sande and Miguel
Credit: RCA
Cool and collected Alicia Keys was just 20 years old when she stepped onto the scene with her startling debut album: Songs in A Minor. With a sophisticated blend of gentle musicianship and defiant dignity, she span the gorgeous ballad Fallin’ out of the Moonlight Sonata, plunging those 1801 ivories confidently into tough 2001 beats. She’s since been consistent releasing some of the greatest hits of our time.
In the three years since 2009′s “The Element of Freedom,” Mrs. Alicia Keys has gotten married, had a baby and collaborated with some of the most iconic recording artist on the scene today.
“Girl on Fire” is her fifth Album and is arguably the most consistent CD to date. It’s also the best song to ever sample Billy Squier(The Big Beat).
Girl On Fire” explores love past and present with a triumphant mood that prevails throughout. It’s equally concerned with settling the score with a few past flames as it is with celebrating her wedded bliss with her husband, Swizz Beatz.
In its various bouts of independence-declaring and hater-berating (pop divas, like warlords and movie moguls, apparently have many enemies), “Girl on Fire” suggests a slightly more self-aware version of Christina Aguilera’s “Lotus.” “Thought that you’d be happy / I found the one thing I need,” Keys trills on “Brand New Me,” co-written with singer Emeli Sande, the Alicia Keys of British People, before asking, “Why you mad?” Ha ha ha!
Who could be upset? “Girl” sands down the edges of Keys’s nobility, but even at its most venomous, it doesn’t bite — it nibbles like an angry kitten. Its real pleasures lie in its subtle updating of her familiar, diaristic piano ballads, its incorporation of vaguely modern beats (like the woozy “When It’s All Over,” with nonspecific chill-out tent noises courtesy of Jamie xx), and distinctive, martial percussion. But “Girl” can’t perform miracles, and it may have erred in placing Keys, Version 2.0, in the proximity of the perpetually smoldering R&B star Maxwell. He sets the otherwise mild bedroom jam “Fire We Make” ablaze just by showing up.Keys is at her best on “Tears Always Win,” a ’60s-style soul ballad wrenching in its simplicity, that encapsulates everything she does well in less than four minutes. She brings her past influences into the present, twisting it into something new, singing it dramatically without going over-the-top.
Girl on Fire” feels organically fed with inspiration, this girl is on fire, and definitely here for the long run.
According to an insider, Swizz has been exchanging some salacious texts, including seksi photos, with a young lady named Christina Elizabeth. In the texts, Swizz tells her that he’s going to fly her out when he travels to other cities for his gigs and that he wants to “f**k the sh*t out of her asap.”
The two reportedly met back in 2007 at a birthday part for Solange and Swizz has been in contact with the 23-year-old ever since.
Christina is credited as being one of the reasons for his breakup with baby mama Mashonda, too.
Christina Elizabeth tweeted, while not denying nor confirming that any of what was said is true–
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