This was my first concert of the year and let me say, this was a great way to start the year. I had never seen Alicia Keys live and she did not disappoint. But let me go back to the beginning of the show.
Jermaine Paul opened the show. You know who he is, the guy who killed Diary with Alicia live. Gives me chills every time I hear it. He sang three songs, which were hard to understand because of the sound system. He came out and started jamming on his guitar and moving across the stage. He has great stage presence and energy. Although he only sang three songs, he was a nice warm up for the rest of the evening. I would love to see him in concert where he has more time to showcase his own material. I listened to two of his songs online after the concert and he has good content. Airplane and Ready To Fall In Love are good, especially the second song.
Melanie Fiona was a surprise performance. I had seen some clips of her performing live before but it was different experiencing it myself. She started off with the high energy Bang Bang then went into her hit single Give It To Me Right. She took us back to Chaka Khan and early Mary J Blige with her cover of Sweet Thing. She then went to her newest hit, It Kills Me, and tore it down. You could feel the emotion while she was singing it. She closed out her set with Ay Yo, inspiring people to reach for their dreams. I would love to see her in concert again once she has some more material.
Robin Thicke's portion of the show was too short. Considering his catalog, I wanted him to perform longer. He started with Magic, which was the perfect opening. He then went into two songs from his new album, Shakin' It For Daddy and 2 Luv Birds. He had the saxophone player from his horn section solo before he began singing. His set was a red and black theme and he played 2 Luv Birds and Dreamworld at a cherry red piano that was center stage. He did Shooter next which got the crowd hyped up. He went into Sex Therapy and ended his show with Lost Without You. He had great energy throughout his performance and I loved the fact that he had a full band and only used tracks on a few songs that had sounds that couldn’t be played on a traditional instrument.
Alicia Keys was next and the crowd was wild before she even came on stage. Her set was one of the most inventive sets I’ve ever seen. It consisted on three different levels of digitized screens that moved throughout the show and displayed different graphics throughout the show. She did such classics such as You Don’t Know My Name, Fallin’, and If I Ain’t Got You. Off her new CD she did Like The Sea, Love Is Blind and Wait Til’ You See My Smile. Early in the show her piano came out on stage and it was wrapped in a digital screen that asked her to play it. Once she began playing it said thank you. Later in the show, the images on her piano synched with the images on the screen. On Go Ahead, Alicia had a keytar (keyboard/guitar combo) and had a battle with her guitar player.
During a wardrobe change, one of Alicia’s background singers went into a cover of Feeling Good. I understand why Alicia has her on her team. The girl killed the song and made it her own. The crowd went wild when Alicia went to the keys and turned up that intro note on Try Sleeping With A Broken Heart. Jermaine Paul came back out and sang Diary with her and it was just as good as on the Unplugged live album. Empire State Of Mind was her encore and she flipped the words in the chorus to Newark for one chorus to rep for the city she was in. it was the perfect way to end the concert.
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