So, I just saw a clip of Alicia on Vh1 Storytellers. She tells the story of how she heard and covered "How Come U Don't Call Me Anymore". She noted how you have to ask permission from the songwriter to cover a song. So she had her management arrange a phone call with Prince. We've heard it before.

What stood out was something she said that was pure fiction. "The songwriter had never let anyone sing that song before." Uh, really girl?

Stephanie Mills did it in 1983, and Joshua Redman did it in 1998 as an instrumental. I'm not sure why Ms. Keys always has an altered view of reality, but it's glaringly obvious in the video. Like I've mentioned before... she comes across really arrogant, and always laughing at an inside joke that no one else in the world is in on. (Plot twist: No one wants to be in on it.)

I don't give her an excuse that maybe she just didn't know two other artists, big in their field (one in her genre), had covered the song before. Shit - it's even on the song's Wikipedia page. Even if she didn't know it in 2001, she has to know it before she filmed Storytellers this year.

journalism16 said:

I just watched it, and noticed that! I, however, did not know that other artists covered his song before her. But it is interesting to hear her say that.

I definitely remember Stephanie Mills' version. It was on her 1983 album Merciless, as the opening track. It's a cute version. Her voice is primo anyway. Alicia has this attitude that she's the first of everything. She's just not.

I heard Redman's version a couple of years after the fact.

They even borrowed some of the backing vocal arrangement from Stephanie Mills' version in Alicia's cover. That line at 2:34 in the former gets picked up in the latter version. I like Alicia, but, yeah, I guess she must be putting reality aside to spin a good yarn here.