- Critic Score
- Most active
- Publication
- Most clicked
-
Nov 26, 201286Her fifth and arguably most consistent album to date.
-
Dec 11, 201280Her technical brilliance remains stunning; it's now matched by her maturity and modernity. [Jan 2013, p.74]
-
Nov 30, 201280Girl on Fire is a smart album, maintaining the high standards set on The Element of Freedom.
-
Nov 27, 201280Keys has rarely ever sounded so at ease, so downright sensual, as she does as her latest.
-
Nov 27, 201280The result is both her catchiest and subtlest album yet--and one of the best R&B records of 2012.
-
Nov 26, 201280She wants to deliver good, solid, heartfelt slabs of it. And on those terms, her fifth studio album is her best record in years.
-
Dec 4, 201275Like Stevie Wonder--who could throw together cloying ballads, funky grooves and reggae homages--Keys is willing to probe her oeuvre and now her own self for songs that resonate beneath the surface.
-
Nov 21, 201275Some of Girl on Fire's best moments come down to just Keys and her piano.
-
Dec 4, 201271"New Day" has a transformative effect within the album, whose middle is as strong as any sequence of songs Keys has recorded.
-
Dec 11, 201270Less of an anthemic, balls-to-the-wall affair than Elements of Freedom (still her strongest album overall), this one does have its own liberating, empowering charms.
-
Dec 10, 201270Girl On Fire pushes her superb writing skills forward without losing what makes Alicia Keys the artist she promised to be 11 years ago.
-
Nov 29, 201270This balance of radio-friendly R&B and piano ballads bursting with her irrefutable talent is a road frequently traveled for this singer, but it's oh-so-entertaining to watch her set the road ablaze.
-
Nov 21, 201270After a pair of bombastic anthems--including the oddly written "Girl on Fire," which has her "living in a world, and it's on fire," then "on top of the world" with "both feet on the ground" and "our head in the clouds"--the album loses its grip.
-
Nov 27, 201263In spite of that fresh blood [of collaborators], Girl on Fire basically delivers the same payload as Keys' other albums; it's a collection of handsomely crafted, gorgeously sung ballads interrupted by several overworked anthems about the value of perseverance.
-
Dec 17, 201260A girl on fire? Now and then--and inbetween times, she smoulders as well as ever. [Jan 2013, p.95]
-
Dec 11, 201260No flame then, but her light shows no sign of going out. [Jan 2013, p.112]
-
Dec 3, 201260Alicia Keys is a singer-songwriter in the purest sense, and Girl On Fire is at its best when Keys (and her collaborators) remember that.
-
Nov 26, 201260As a reinvention, the album doesn't go far enough, and there are some underwhelming tunes, but the best song here--Girl on Fire--wonderfully blends Keys old and new.
-
Nov 26, 201260Girl on Fire is less a portrait of Keys's womanhood at a crossroads as it is another extension of a career spent predominantly navigating straight down the middle of the road.
-
Nov 26, 201260["When It's All Over"] itself is one of the worst here, mercifully outnumbered by the merely adequate and the few standout songs.
-
Nov 26, 201260Her fifth studio album is dominated by navel-gazing auto-therapy sessions.
-
Nov 26, 201250It's a measure of how powerful parenthood really is that it generates so many clichés. The new songs that push that subtext out front quickly grow trite, in words and music.... It's the tracks in which Ms. Keys seems to pay attention to a quieter story rather than building new pedestals for herself--that echo and smudge and smear sounds, that lead toward paradox--that suggest something new for her.
-
Nov 26, 201250Despite being hyped as her most "personal" album, Girl on Fire is really just more of the same.
-
Dec 6, 201240Despite Keys's proficiency (she co-wrote Where's The Fun In Forever, one of the best songs on Miguel's new album), she's always seemed a little boring. On that front, she delivers.
-
Nov 26, 201240Ultimately, though, it still cleaves too close to the polite piano soul with which Keys has filled 10 years.