I like Alicia Keys a lot, but whenever I hear anyone talk about her "classical" background it still bothers me. She took Fur Elise and made a pretty good song out of it, yes, but her strength is in her powerful singing and songwriting more than in her piano skill. She's an excellent R&B songwriter. If she has great piano skill, she tends not to demonstrate it on a classical level. She says Chopin is her favorite composer, btw. (Quoted as saying "I love Chopin - he's my dawg.") She reportedly was playing the Chopin Sonatas by age nine after two years of lessons. In high school her piano teacher told her he had "nothing left to show her" and so she then began to learn jazz.
There was a Saturday Night Live sketch where Kirsten Dunst played a parody version of Keys' appearance on Carson Daly that had then talking about classical influences followed by songs based on Mary Had a Little Lamb and songs like that which seemed exactly how it felt if you had scene that Carson episode. Still, I love Alicia as a
songwriter and a talented
singers. (Good singers don't get much credit these days.) She did take piano lessons throughout her life in classical music, but I have no idea what her repertoire was beyond Fur Elise and the first movement of Moonlight Sonata. She did graduate from Manhattan's Professional Performance Arts School at 16 but her concentration was actually Choir which explains her great voice.
Pretty much everyone in the entertainment industry seems to agree that Britney Spears can't sing. I've talked to friends who've seen concerts where she opted not to lip synch and her voice is alledgedly pretty bad. Her latest album,
In The Zone, doesn't even have much of any singing on it. She mostly whispers through the notes while they have some of the great modern electronic artists provide the beats and music. I was really suprised when I heard the song Toxic and liked it to find that it was Britney. The whole album is pretty good, but she's barely in it and she has great producers and songwriters to do it all . I have no problem with artists who don't write their own songs since songwriters often need a strong singer, but that's not Britney!

Makes me wonder if the breakup with her and Timberlake was because he can sing and she can't ... Not that I follow those kinds of things.
It's often taboo to like both classical and popish styles but meh, they're entertaining in different ways. In the end, many classical was musicians wanted the same appeal as pop, r&b and other widespread music do today. If Alicia Keys encourages one kid or adult to start learning to play classical piano that's not so bad. Maybe Britney will encourage someone to get a degree in singing or music.