In The Village Voice 's 2001 Pazz & Jop critics' poll, the song appeared at number four on the list. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic pointed out the lack of depth in the song, saying it "doesn't have much body to it", which he felt was "a testament to Keys' skills as a musician." Accolades Sal Cinquemani of Slant Magazine said that "the gospel-tinged starts out simply with measured piano and basic drum programming, eventually building to a crescendo of operatic proportions." Steve Jones of USA Today described the song as "a bluesy ode to self-destructive love" and further commented that the song "is only a teaser for what she has to offer." Simon Price of The Independent called the song Keys' breakthrough song and noted how the melody of the song is similar to Queen's " We Are the Champions". Robert Hilburn of The Los Angeles Times described the song as having "the neo-soul vitality of Macy Gray and Jill Scott." Sam Faulkner of NME said that the song had "deeper moments creep up and grab you exemplified." Mark Anthony Neal of PopMatters said that the song "combines Keys' natural blues register with a subtle, and brilliantly so, sample of James Brown's ' It's a Man's, Man's, Man's World'." Barry Walters of Rolling Stone said "there's no denying the serious early Aretha vibe permeating the hit." The song was described as "gospel fervor of lovesick righteousness" by Beth Johnson of Entertainment Weekly. NME called it a "assive, massive massive hit" adding "Piano tinkles, drum machine coughs like an athsmatic whippet and Alicia strokes your spine with ice cubes and spatters your spotty back with hot candle wax". Keys performing "Fallin'" in Frankfurt, Germany in 2002 The song has a basic chord progression of Em–Bm 7–Em–Bm 7 as it follows a "moderate blues tempo" throughout the chorus of the song. It is composed in the key of E minor with Keys' vocal range spanning from the low-note of B 3 to the high-note of E 5. You fall in and out, sometimes it goes back and forth, and that's just what relationships are about." Īccording to the sheet music published at by Sony/ATV Music Publishing, the song is set in 12/8 time with a "free" tempo of 60 beats per minute. Sometimes, you're completely head-over-heels in love with someone, and sometimes you can't stand that person. is about the ins and outs of a relationship. Even though he was young, he was singing some deep stuff back then. When asked about the background behind the song, Keys told Billboard, "I wanted to write a song for someone who was 10 or 12 years old – like a young Michael Jackson. And while she’s won so many Grammys (15) that she eventually took over the ceremony as host in 20, Keys invested the normally scripted role with the same sort of casual cool and off-the-cuff intimacy that have made her America’s most down-to-earth R&B queen.The song was written by Alicia Keys as the lead single from her debut studio album, Songs in A Minor.
But from her lofty position, she’s been eager to dismantle the oppressive, male-gaze-oriented beauty standards applied to pop divas-after appearing on the cover of 2016’s Here without makeup, Keys made that natural look her red-carpet signature. She’s continued to put up hall-of-fame numbers: in her first two decades, Keys never had an album chart lower than No.
Keys’ combination of elegant songcraft and raw attitude would give hits like “Fallin’” (2001) and “No One” (2007) ample crossover appeal among pop, R&B and adult-contemporary audiences, and she carved out a place in the rap canon thanks to her skyscraping chorus on JAY-Z’s ubiquitous 2009 anthem “Empire State of Mind”. The artist born Alicia Augello Cook in 1981 was classically trained but a product of the streets, raised by a single mother in a rough Hell’s Kitchen neighbourhood from which piano-playing offered sanctuary. As R&B hurtled toward the future in the early 2000s and pop was achieving new levels of gloss, Alicia Keys stood out not just as a torchbearer for organic, old-school soul, but as a quadruple threat-captivating singer, skilled keyboardist, pop-savvy songwriter and ambitious producer-rarely seen since the heydays of Stevie Wonder and Prince.
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