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Heartburn marries the explosive brass and choppy guitars of a Blaxploitation soundtrack to a beat bearing the influence of visionary producer Timbaland. Its highlights fuse the earthiness of her heroes with some of the futuristic flash of current R&B. Her second album indicates this question has bothered Keys herself. Why would an artist such as Keys bother imitating the past when the present is so exciting? In fact, it is as thrilling and innovative a genre as currently exists. It is a reaction against modern R&B, which is neither drearily excessive nor underachieving. However, while Britpop was an understandable reaction to the dreary excesses of post-grunge rock and grey, underachieving indie, nu-soul is more problematic.
They slavishly mimic Marvin Gaye, Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway. Like Oasis, nu-soul artists are musical reactionaries, looking to the past for inspiration. She has a good voice, but Keys is an exponent of nu-soul, urban music's equivalent of Britpop.
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On purely musical terms, it is difficult to see what the fuss is about. As for prizes, Keys has won everything except the FA Cup: Grammies, Billboard Awards, American Music Awards, a VMA, NAACP Image Awards, Soul Train Awards, World Music Awards and something called an ECCHO, which leads you to suspect that people are actually making up awards in order to give them to her. Politicians, not a social group renowned for their love of retro soul, seem to love her: she has performed at the House of Commons and spoken before a US congressional committee. In two years, the 21-year-old New Yorker seems to have achieved a mass acceptance that stretches far beyond platinum discs. It is not just a matter of commercial success, although her 2001 debut album, Songs in A Minor, sold 10m copies. I f pop stars had approval ratings, Alicia Keys's score would go off the chart.