Buy Now
- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
-
MojoDec 17, 2012A girl on fire? Now and then--and inbetween times, she smoulders as well as ever. [Jan 2013, p.95]
-
Q MagazineDec 11, 2012No flame then, but her light shows no sign of going out. [Jan 2013, p.112]
-
Dec 6, 2012Despite 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.
-
Dec 3, 2012Alicia 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, 2012Despite being hyped as her most "personal" album, Girl on Fire is really just more of the same.
-
Nov 26, 2012It'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, 2012Girl 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, 2012As 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, 2012["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, 2012Her fifth studio album is dominated by navel-gazing auto-therapy sessions.
-
Nov 26, 2012Ultimately, though, it still cleaves too close to the polite piano soul with which Keys has filled 10 years.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
-
Positive: 80 out of 100
-
Mixed: 9 out of 100
-
Negative: 11 out of 100
-
Nov 27, 2012
-
Nov 27, 2012
-
Dec 13, 2012