As many current R&B mainstays are wont to do at this point, Alicia Keys dropped Frank Ocean’s name as a major inspiration for her upcoming fifth studio album, Girl On Fire, in a discussion with The New York Times. More importantly (to us, anyway), the title, unfortunately, wasn’t drawn from The Hunger Games protagonist Katniss Everdeen’s public moniker after she appeared at the Games’ Opening Ceremonies in a gown that appeared aflame.
It came from this interview that I did, and the woman wrote something like, ‘She’s like a girl on fire. And I was like: I love that.
The titular single debuted at the MTV Awards, featuring a rap verse by Nicki Minaj and the onstage gymnastic stylings of a beaming Gabby Douglas, not to mention a fabulous after-show Twitpic. The #GOF and #GOFMovement hashtags currently dominate Keys’ Twitter feed. So what does the phrase mean, as far as she’s concerned?
[Producer Salaam Remi] started going through his sample library and all these different crazy drums. And there were these loud, obnoxious, just destructive drums, and I was like, “Yeah!” A girl on fire is loud and obnoxious and destructive and just, like, totally unrelenting and she’s free, you know what I mean? That’s what a girl on fire sounds like.
Which does sound rather like Katniss after all. And Gabby Douglas, for that matter.
‘Alicia Keys Goes From Spark To Flame’ [NYT]