Alicia Keys - Girl on Fire

Alicia Keys definitely seems to be trying to bring back some of her big success back from her debut.  While she's had some nice songs over time, none of them have been very big hits like "Fallin" and "No One" were.  Well, it seems like her response is just to repeat, "No One" with new lyrics and hope for a hit.

Like "No One," "Girl on Fire" is a pretty song.  What it lacks that is the power and emotion that her previous hit had.  The song mainly just repeats itself with never really building too strong.  It's a slow song that stays at a leisurely pace throughout it's play.  While she does put some strength into the word "fire" each time she says it, that's about as good as it gets.  The song just feels like it should be building somewhere, but it never does.

By taking a slow tender approach, you're already crossing off the dance appeal, so that means that it had better be a beautiful song.  Like I said, it's pretty, but it's far from beautiful.  The lyrics are motivational, and could be emotional, but it just feels like there isn't any feeling behind them.  This song doesn't feel like it's about Alicia, it feels like it's about some girl that Alicia is being paid to sing about.

There's a Nicki Minaj version, too, which presumably is what will be marketed to the radio.  Like the rest of the song, Nicki is slow, boring, emotionless, and meaningless in her lyrics.  While normally you'd think that adding a rapper like her to the song would be an attempt to pick it up a bit, all she does is make the songs a few seconds longer.

The song is a bore overall.  Maybe it'll be sweet to hear once in a while, but it's not something that is going to keep people interested.  It simply doesn't feel like a hit.  If Alicia wants to recapture what she had with "No One" she should keep in mind that it takes more than the same formula to make a song into a hit.