Parents who complain about music 'just not being like it used to be' would have been pleasantly surprised (and proven totally wrong) by Alicia Key’s "Set the World on Fire" tour stop at the Tampa Bay Times Forum this past Sunday night.
Opening the show was soon to be superstar (I'm calling it), Miguel. Miguel is old school, new school and everything smooth in between. Since I heard his Grammy award-winning single, "Adorn," I've been telling my boyfriend he's the next Marvin Gaye. His live show changed my mind. He's the next Prince — and I don’t use Prince’s name in vain. I have been more than slightly obsessed with The Purple One since I got the Purple Rain soundtrack on cassette tape for my 8th birthday, and because of this, Miguel won me over more than he had already. His moves, his falsettos, his oozing sexuality and his voice made me swoon. If it wasn’t dark, I’m afraid the people next to me would've seen me blush. He performed songs from both studio albums All I Want is You and Kaleidoscope Dream, and closed the set with the aforementioned "Adorn," a song that pretty much guarantees a make-out session with whoever is around. I don’t doubt that nine months from tonight, some births are going to happen thanks to Miguel’s performance.
Then there was Alicia Keys. At 32, Keys is a veteran and it showed in her performance. She is a brilliant singer but sometimes almost too perfect. (Though, I am not implying she went the Beyonce inauguration route.) The New York-centric Keys started the show with images of the Brooklyn Bridge. Four male dancers appeared and reappeared throughout the show, sometimes distractingly. Mainly, I could not stop staring at their horrible harem pants. Throughout the night, Keys sometimes joined the dancers, though she mainly sang while playing various pianos, organs and even drums, while her backing band and singers stayed tucked away behind her. I preferred the bare-boned Alicia, just a girl and her piano, like when she performed debut single “Fallin’” and “You Don’t Know My Name.”
To go along with the night's baby-making mood, Keys engineered a call-and-response moment during the song “Unthinkable,” encouraging the crowd with an “Everyone say, ‘I’m ready!’” After shouting back an enthusiastic “I’m ready!”, I realized the content of the song (about being ready to get pregnant), I had a "Wait…what?" moment and briefly thought about shouting “I’m not ready!” instead.
Like other female singers, Keys works best for me as a role model of strength and perseverance. I prefer the break-up songs over the still-in-love odes. “Brand New Kind of Me” would’ve have been right up there with Beyonce’s “Irreplaceable” in my break-up song rotation several years ago. Though Keys is now married and a mother, she is still a great performer and evokes the same level of emotion when she sings songs about heartache as she does with songs about being in love. When she dedicated “Not Even the King” to her son, I felt tears swelle and could tell the folks around me were getting choked-up too.
The crowd cheered most loudly for current mega hit “Girl on Fire” and of course, "New York," the encore that brought everything full circle.
Though I would’ve preferred more of a stage spectacle with various costume and set changes, Keys’ talent was the real show and you can’t be mad at her for that. And your parents won’t, either.
This article appears in Mar 28 – Apr 3, 2013.