Keys To Enchantment
Keys is like fine wine: she just gets better with time.
Alicia Keys was a class act at her recent Singapore performance, writes HAFIDAH SAMAT, who was at the SINGfest 2008 show.
ALICIA Keys was unstoppable when she took to the stage.
She sauntered in with nonchalant confidence and had her audience captivated right from the start.
Performing before the 15,000-odd crowd at Singapore’s Fort Canning Park during the two-day SINGfest 2008 recently, the 11th-time Grammy-winning singer-songwriter was hypnotic.
The fact that she was almost two hours late (because other acts before her got carried away) didn’t dampen the enthusiasm of the people some of whom had come from afar (Brunei, Thailand and Malaysia, to name a few) to hear her sing.
So Keys didn’t waste any time (it was 11.45pm by the time she started) in performing her compositions largely taken from her third album, As I Am, to rapturous cheers from the audience.
One would describe Keys’ show, who started off as a accomplished pianist, as a reflection of her career journey. “It’s going to be one of the best concerts you’d ever been to,” she promised her fans at the start of the show.
The colonial mansions amidst the lush landscape at Fort Canning made for a fitting backdrop for the concert.
After As I Am, she sang her haunting Go Ahead, the sappy and catchy Like You’ll Never See Me Again and the upbeat No One.
By this time she had the crowd eating out of her hand.
Her playful banter made for good rapport with the audience, much like the flirty attitude she displayed in her rendition of My Boo, the riveting mid-tempo song about teenage romance featuring R&B/soul sensation Usher in her music video.
She endeared herself to the crowd further with her amusing anecdotes.
“Oh, I love this crowd,” she exclaimed, before she broke into Superwoman, the celebratory anthem for women pursuing unrealistic ideals dictated by men.
“This song goes out to all women who have made a difference in the world,” she declared, before doing her thing on the piano. She and her band gave a flawless performance.
It was so moving that it brought some to tears.
The gospel-tinged How Come You Don’t Call Me Anymore, taken from her 2001 album Songs in A Minor, then followed. Karma (taken from the Grammy-winning The Diary of Alicia Keys album) was next.
Keys is like fine wine: she just gets better with time.
She seemed to have matured in her appearance too, trading her dreadlocks for a clean, back-combed hairdo.
No prizes for guessing what her last offering was, if you know the singer and her songs.
Yes, it was the phenomenal Fallin’, which incidentally won Song of the Year at the 2002 Grammy awards.
Keys even said in jest that if she had known the crowd was obliging and would stay till the end of the show (it was almost 1am by the time she hit the final note), she would certainly have done her songs differently. She was a class act.
If fans had their way, the concert would still be on till the wee hours of the morning.
New Straits Times