Alicia Keys

24/05/2010

New York state of mind @ SECC, Glasgow

Alicia Keys
SECC, Glasgow
2/5

By 10.30 tonight, the audience inside the SECC is on its feet and singing as one as Alicia Keys belts out her impressive Jay Z-less version of ‘Empire State of Mind’. It’s a pretty persuasive argument for the transformative power of the pop song as the paen to Keys’ home town of New York is lovingly adopted by thousands of sweltering Scots.

But, my God, we’re a hell of a long time getting here. Rewind to 9pm.

Wheeled out inside a cage, enchained by what looks like a dozen big paperclips, Keys ‘escapes’ to rapturous applause. ‘You Don’t Know my Name’ kicks in as the overhead screens display images of MLK and JFK alongside those of North Korean military rallies and, um, General de Gaulle. Still, even this haphazard visual assault is less bewildering than Keys’ current identity crisis as she seeks to position herself alongside Beyonce et al as a bona-fide pop diva.

Keys can’t really dance, to be honest – at times she even seems to have some difficulty walking – so it’s all the more bizarre that she chooses to abandon her default position at the piano for much of tonight’s set. A flat rendition of potential showstopper ‘Fallin’ is only made worse (and slightly surreal) by it being delivered by our would-be pop princess playing what looks like a ZX Spectrum while standing behind a lectern. Clearly, there is still some work to be done on presentation.

‘Pray for Forgiveness’ at least has the virtue of having Keys sit at the piano for the first time tonight and focus on the task at hand; which at this point – a good half hour in - is winning over an audience that, while entranced by her presence, seem as lost as I am in making sense of such a contrived and awkward display. But, for the next few minutes, the crowd are rapt. There is a voice there, somewhere; a voice with grit and grain and honest-to-goodness, genuine soul.

But it gets lost in the static. As a ticker-tape parade of empty platitudes flit across the onstage screens - ‘Your struggle’, ‘Our tenacity’, ‘Hope’, ‘Change’ etc – you begin to wonder if there is any point in valuing genuine musical talent when it can be so easily compromised by an industry intent on reducing it to a commodity or a lifestyle choice.

Derek Kennedy