On her first live album, Alicia Keys plays around with her mannered retro arrangements and turns out seven previously unrecorded songs. Hits such as "Fallin' " groove easily with just a hint of indulgent operatics, and on "Heartburn" Keys exploits the catch in her voice for a punch-and-jab session with her crack band. The guests don't do much to remedy the album's duller moments: Keys calls on Common, Mos Def and Damian Marley for the closing "Love It or Leave It Alone/Welcome to Jamrock," which is sort of like trying to spice up a cocktail party by trotting out Noam Chomsky. Unplugged's clear high point, however, is "Unbreakable," a new original and one of the best Seventies-sitcom themes never written. Amid a megacatchy chorus, Keys invokes famous black couples before deciding her love is just fine, once again sounding older than her years and perfectly round-the-way.

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.