In a dazzling bit of sequencing, Keys plays enough characters here for a good episode of "One Life to Live," playing the innocent, the spurned, the angry, the loving and the indomitable in the span of 57 minutes. "Diary" probably reflects little of Keys's innermost thoughts, but it conveys at least the illusion of intimacy. You watched and worried that Keys was seduced by the silly extravaganza that was then her performing life. She was pandering a bit to the teen-pop world and at the same time all but shouting, I am a classically trained musician.
Her concerts to promote "A Minor" were a "Fame"-like circus, complete with backup dancers, silly props and a drawn-out introduction that boomed "A-li-cia Keys" to the da-da-da-dum riff of Beethoven's Fifth. That Keys has beaten the sophomore jinx is a bit of a surprise. She sounds here like an artist with less to prove, but one still fascinated by her source material and discovering new, more mature ways to celebrate it.
Keys has taken the best elements of "A Minor" - her supple grasp of ballads, her blending of vintage and modern R&B - and dialed back the flash. How do you follow an act like that? "The Diary of Alicia Keys" is the very satisfying answer, an album that flatly refuses to panic in the face of heightened expectations.
She loved the material, and despite her youth, she and her piano could conjure a lifetime of seemingly heartfelt emotion. "Songs in A Minor" introduced a music school valedictorian as fluent in Chopin as in Prince, and if, at moments, she came across like a showoff, it didn't much matter. With a tipped fedora on her head and pop's coolest braids in her hair, Alicia Keys released one of nu-soul's great debuts in 2001, the work of a singer-songwriter more self-assured than any 20-year-old has a right to be.