Big smiles

I'm delighted Alicia Keys won all those Grammys. Her album Diary of Alicia Keys was one of my favorites last year, especially its singles "You Don't Know My Name" and "If I Ain't Got You," both of which got Grammy nods. She has a great, earthy singing voice and, unlike so many of her contemporaries, does not go in for excessive, "American Idol"-type melisma. (In that regard she's the anti-Beyonc�, not that I'm necessarily opposed to Beyonc�.)

She's also got terrific taste in songs. "If I Ain't Got You" is a fabulously old-school soul tune, with a horn track that could be straight from an Al Green side on Hi Records. And "You Don't Know My Name" blew me into the stratosphere when I first heard it, especially because of its deliciously over-the-top spoken section ("Hold on, my cell phone breakin' up"), perhaps the best spoken section in a pop song since Dolly Parton's "I Will Always Love You."