Alicia Keys fires up raucous sing-alongs

She envisions herself with an 'S' upon her chest, a heroine in high heels, her words the starch that stiffens the upper lips of her many female apprentices, taking at least some of the sting out of their sore ankles.

"Oh yes, I am a superwoman," Alicia Keys announced with the aplomb of a dressed-to-the-nines drill sergeant, swishing her hips, rolling her shoulders, gesticulating like a cop directing traffic.

And she wasn't done yet.

"I can fly!" she bellowed at song's end, her voice sprouting the wings that she imagined for herself, zooming into the rafters, zapping the crowd in the kidneys.

It was the culmination of a night of feminine assertiveness and uncomfortable, narrow-toed shoes, of you-go-girl bravado and gotta-treat-your-man-right acquiescence.

This is the tightrope that Alicia Keys sashayed down Friday at the MGM Grand Garden.

She distinguishes herself from her pop peers by being a classically trained musician who owes as much to Chopin as Mariah Carey, by writing most of her songs herself and by proudly declaring that "This a woman's world," as she did at the end of "A Woman's Worth."

Along the way, she steadfastly refuses to use sex as a selling point.

"They always told me to shake it more, to take it off," Keys said before launching into sultry ballad "Sure Looks Good to Me." "But I wanted to do something different, something more meaningful. I wanted to play my piano."

But at the same time, Keys squeezes herself into the same slinky dresses that Beyoncé does, indulges in similarly choreographed dance moves and, after passionately testifying to the value of female self-assuredness, tells the crowd that, "A real woman knows that a real man always comes first."

And so, while impeccably crafted, Keys' catalog comes off as a little incongruous at times: she fancies herself an independent woman, but yet she's constantly defining herself in relation to men, and with the exception of but two or three songs out of the two-dozen she performed at the MGM Grand, nearly every one was about this guy or the next.

Doesn't such a sharp, headstrong young woman have more to talk about than dudes?

Apparently not, but at least Keys is gifted at making her thematic monotony go down easy: when she takes a break from the been-there, done-that dance numbers and sits down at her piano, her extensive backing band confined to the shadows, she emerges as one of the more compelling performers in contemporary pop and R&B.

She's got a steel-belted, fire siren of a voice, but unlike other gifted singers like the aforementioned Beyoncé or the terminally overwrought Christina Aguilera, she lets it off its leash only intermittently and to great effect.

On magma-hot duet "Tender Love," Keys' voice smoldered like embers in a campfire; during the high-stepping funk of "Unbreakable," her vocal chords proved themselves to be as limber as a busload of gymnasts, playing footsie with the rock-hard rhythms but never suffocating them.

Keys has a painter's eye for detail, and she seldom overwhelms, possessing a rare gift for restraint and eventual release that culminates in slow-building jams like "That's the Thing About Love," which boiled over into the kind of sweaty crescendo that leaves windows fogged.

Of course, by show's conclusion, nuance gave way to raucous sing-alongs. Force eventually overcame finesse.

By the time a set-ending "If I Ain't Got You" rolled around, the ladies were out of their seats, on their feet, making Keys' sentiments their own, supplying all the feminine fortitude that her words occasionally lacked.

Even though this was most definitely a girls' night out, there was one welcome interloper, local-boy-gone-good Ne-Yo, who primed the ladies' libidos with slick, Viagra-laced R&B that turned the arena into one big bedroom.

Taking the stage in a natty top-hat and tux, backed by an equally well-dressed band, Ne-Yo came with fleet-footed, horn-fired soul lite equally indebted to Michael Jackson, Marvin Gaye, Fred Astaire and Tim Meadows' oversexed Ladies Man character on "Saturday Night Live."

Backed by tendrils of wah-wah guitar, Ne-Yo glided across the stage, clasping hands with female admirers, singing from the balls of his feet and bumping and grinding with a curvy dancer whose violent hip thrusts approximated Lisa Bonet's primal movements in "Angel Heart."

When it was all said and done, the crooner bid farewell by referring to himself as "Las Vegas' own Ne-Yo."

As if he could have come from anywhere else.

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin @reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476.