The Alicia + Keys Tour Shows That There Is Still ‘No One’ Like Her

August 11, 2022 NastyBreakdown 0 Review, Tour,

CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA – AUGUST 02: Alicia Keys performs during the ALICIA The World Tour opener at Charlotte Metro Credit Union Amphitheatre on August 02, 2022 in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images for AK)

Now officially more than twenty years into her career, Alicia Keys proves why she’s still a girl on fire live at her concert at the MGM National Harbor. After what was a two year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we FINALLY got the “Alicia + Keys” World Tour stop in the DMV on Friday, August 5.

The stage went dark which prompted us to take orbit through the solar system, as the words “more than you’re ready for” echoed against the walls of the interior bowl. Two video panels opened up, revealing the multi talented beauty in a sleek silver and black number going into “Nat King Cole” while a grand piano mystically glided over to her. With her favorite tool at her fingertips, a melodic version of “You Don’t Know My Name” was performed as she stood playing the keys, mixing it in with a groovy reggae beat.

: CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA – AUGUST 02: Alicia Keys performs during the ALICIA The World Tour opener at Charlotte Metro Credit Union Amphitheatre on August 02, 2022 in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images for AK)

: CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA – AUGUST 02: Alicia Keys performs during the ALICIA The World Tour opener at Charlotte Metro Credit Union Amphitheatre on August 02, 2022 in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Photo by Theo Wargo/Getty Images for AK)

It was clearly evident that Keys took the extra prep time given by the pandemic to get into tip top touring shape, as not only was she physically fit, but vocally she was in pristine condition. Her elevated levels of energy allowed her to dance and groove around stage, as she punched in a combination of newer songs from her latest two efforts “Alicia” and “Keys“, along with the hits from her discography that I’ve been singing since college.

I’m a stark concert fanatic, and one of the things that I pay attention to is the flow of the setlist, and let me tell you that AKeys did her homework when putting together the run of the show. Being the uber musically inclined woman that she is, she had to go back and watch footage from past concerts. There was something about the transitions between songs that made the music seem so cohesive, and dare I say magical. It was like she KNEW exactly which songs I wanted to hear when she effortlessly slid from “Karma,” to “New Day,” to “Un-Thinkable (I’m Ready),” to “So Done,” and finishing with “Diary“. Being that “The Diary of Alicia Keys” is my favorite album of hers, I was elated to find out that she put emphasis on bringing THOSE songs back into the fold.

Surely I’m a person who resides on nostalgia for many reasons, but this WAS a concert in support of her new albums. Standing surrounded by organs, she yelled “Welcome to the KEYS Universe” as she began to bring the heat by unlocking those gems. The performance of “Time Machine” invoked just that, feelings of being transported back to the 1970’s era of music, “Plentiful” sounded like a mashup of a hardcore hip-hop beat with a classical piano, “Skydive” was reminiscent of a Stevie Wonder classic, while the two sides of “Is It Insane” were as divergent as Jekyll and Hyde.

With all of the music that she had to unpack of her own, she still found time to give a little love to those artists who may have inspired her. One being when she covered Michael Jackson’s “Off The Wall” and then later she rested on the laurels that she was raised on, being an 80’s baby from New York’s Hell’s Kitchen who may have been a fan of house music. A dance inspired mashup of “In Common” and Crystal Waters’ “Gypsy Woman” were sounds that we didn’t know we needed, but are ever thankful that we got, because it allowed us to get our lives and become a slave to the rhythm.

A woman that’s so far ahead in her career could find it easy to maintain a relatively “out of touch” persona, but that clearly wasn’t the case as her interaction with the crowd appeared to be just as important as the music. During one of the biggest numbers of the night, she was escorted down into the audience with limited security to walk through the aisles as she sang “Empire State of Mind (Part II)“. The fan’s energy evidently charged her back up, as she powered through a number of her biggest hits “Try Sleeping With a Broken Heart,” “Girl On Fire,” “No One,” and the song that started it all for her, the debut single that the world fell in love with “Fallin’.”

Before she took her final bow, she along with her five piece band (that sounded much more like a full orchestra) played a version of “If I Ain’t Got You” that sounded as close to the album version as anything that I’ve heard. For almost two hours straight, there was absolutely no denying that there is NO ONE like Alicia Keys!