Alicia Keys is back, Back, BACK!

Hands up who remembers Alicia Keys? Soulful singer of song and number 33 on VH1's "50 Greatest Women of the Video Era" list.

She's been off having a family for a couple of years, but now that her 5-year-old son Egypt has started producing tracks for Kendrick Lamar, she's been able to return to the studio to work on her sixth studio album.

The first single appeared online last night. A slinky, subtle ballad called In Common, it's a world away from the torch songs she's known for (Fallin, Girl On Fire, No-One). The lyrics are intriguing too. We open in a bedroom at sunrise. It's not her own. Against her better judgement Alicia has stayed the night, and not for the first time. Her partner is an acquaintance from "when we were young and had no vows". In the midst of their tryst, she informs him: "If you could love somebody like me, you must be messed up too".

You can hear the song, produced by The Weeknd's collaborator-in-chief Illangelo, below.


Alicia will perform In Common for the first time on Saturday Night Live this weekend, and a new album is expected in the summer, "reflecting her roots in NYC and hip-hop culture while blending her perspective of the raw humanity of the world and who she is today as an activist, woman and artist" (according to the press release).

That is all.

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