We kind of knew the Alicia Keys album, “Keys,” was a disaster waiting to happen, and now it’s happened.
Alicia’s “Keys” unlocked nothing. According to hitsdailydouble.com, “Keys” sold fewer than 17.000 copies in its debut and failed to make the top 50.
Another source, Chart Data, says “Keys” sold 20,000 copies and missed their top 40. Either way. it’s a disaster.
Even the singer-songwriter’s last album, “Alicia.” sold 62,000 copies in its first week. But most of those were CDs. And guess what? “Keys” had no CDs. They didn’t make any.
All of this raises a lot of questions. Alicia is signed to RCA but no one at the label would respond to emails last week when the album came out. It seems as if they’ve disowned her. And not manufacturing CDs indicates possibly that Keys went rogue on this release, a year after a “Alicia.”
As with “Alicia,” and the prior album, Keys had no singles for the label to promote. It’s not like “Keys” isn’t a solid R&B album. It is. But when Alicia recorded for Clive Davis (and now, subsequently, Peter Edge, who’s been with her at RCA/J for two decades) the album would not have been released without an obvious hit. Alicia’s last actual hit was “Girl on Fire,” a decade ago.
This is what happens when legacy artists like Keys become wealthy and insulated from reality. The “Keys” album will be a souvenir for very select fans, and we move on.
It’s too bad. There were a couple of tracks on there I thought had potential. Here they are:
