Seriously, I don’t understand her appeal.

For years now, Alicia Keys has been a media darling and musical phenom, ad nauseum. Anytime she releases an album, pundits and fans alike adore and browbeat one another for the chance to praise and adorn her with accolades aplenty.

In short, everbody loves Alicia Keys and I honestly have no clue why. I’ve tried to get it. Can she sing? Well sure…she has an alright voice though I wouldn’t exactly place her anywhere near the upper echelon of singers. Face it. Mariah Carey she ain’t.

She plays the piano but whoopty-damn do. For the large part her albums don’t rely much on her piano abilities. Most of her songs are hip-hop influenced if anything with replayed or interpolated samples. Sure they have some piano influence in them…

…but so do a lot of my own beats and I can’t play the piano for shit.

Though I totally murder Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.

I. Just. Kill. That.

Alicia Keys get acting roles and to be honest, her role in Smoking Aces was the first time I’d ever found myself mentioning how attractive she is. Granted, I’d never kick her out of the bed under any circumstances but that makes her no more hot than anybody else.

Though, have you seen her on the cover of Complex magazine…watered down? Good googly moogly. I have said before and will repeat again that wet women look so much hotter than dry women. If you are a marginally attractive chick who rates like a 6 on the Dude Scale, go run under some sprinklers and always walk around like looking like you live under a rain cloud. You’re going to rate at least at a 7 at that point. And you can date 7’s.

Sixes? You just schlump them.

Back to the lecture at hand. Alicia Keys is light and brite so perhaps thats part of her draw as we all know racially ambiguous chilidren are much easier to market than children of the sun. But overall, I honestly don’t get it.

I have all of her albums and none of them was any better than most albums on the market. Songs In A Minor was alright, but I can only think of maybe 3 songs that I liked including the single, “Fallin’”. I liked “Butterfly” but I can’t even remember the name of the other joint I liked.

Diary was, eh…alright I guess. The only songs I liked were the single “You Don’t Know My Name” (which was largely piano influenced but was also a sampled piano by Kanye West) and “The Diary”. I can’t honestly even remember what the rest of the album sounds like.

So she’s not a first rate singer, doesn’t have albums that will be remembered 20 years from now, and is attractive but not in a “I want to sex you down on sight” kind of way. She’s like an upgraded version of Brandy except Brandy had some actual good entire albums (like Full Moon). She’s clearly a better songwriter than Beyonce, but hell, who isn’t?

Difference is that Beyonce’s popularity I can understand. She’s an ultimate performer. And she makes intentionall catchy pop music to appeal to the masses without any shade of personality. That’s how you bring folks in. However, Alicia Keys songs are apparently full of “integrity” or something. I don’t know.

Perhaps I’m a hater. However, I don’t care. She’s no more talented than anybody else and her albums are no better than anybody else…

…so why does everybody love them some damn Alicia Keys?

And “No One” is not a good song. You can disagree, but you will be wrong.