The November issue of French glossy 'Madame Figaro' features Alicia Keys on their cover.
She even did a chic new spread to go along with it and looked totally fierce! Alicia is preparing to give birth to her second child later this month (December arrives on Monday so let's pretend we're in December now.) This means her 7th studio album won't drop until next year.
But how does it differ from the last project? "Girl On Fire, in 2012, showed a positive tone." she tells the mag, "I evolved, matured and wanted to dig the soil of our common human experiences, evoke more emotion and indignation. So it will be a more aggressive album, less focused on the melodies. It contains protest songs such as We Are Here, the first single from the album, co-written with Swizz Beatz. Music is for me the best way to engage and pursue a universal dialogue."
I'm definitely excited to hear her more aggressive side as her new tune doesn't show it at all. Pharrell Williams has done several songs that I'm really curious about. He's been dragging this disco/funk wave into the ground lately and I just want him to produce the insanely good records he did back with the Neptunes. At least with Gwen Stefani's new tune, he went back to basics by not straying away from their earlier work. I'm also anxious about what he's cooked up for Christina Aguilera's new record as well. His work is looking to dominate 2015, just like it did the year before.
Although R&B has been struggling, I hope Alicia can continue to have success with the next album. 'Girl On Fire' was a bit of a letdown and her performances were a hot mess. As time went on, she did get better. But she no longer has the vocals back when she first started out. Therefore, I'm going to need her to start singing in her range and not try to hit notes she simply can't do anymore. You can read Alicia's entire interview over on the magazine's website but the text is all in French. You will have to run it through Google translation which works really well as that is how I pulled the above quote. Are you looking forward to her new album? Check out her newest spread in HQ below.
Thoughts?