From Precocious Pop to Retro Rock

Alicia Keys, the 20-year-old pop-soul sensation from New York, had the ideal pop freshman year--a case of an immensely talented artist who finds an immediate audience.

The singer-songwriter-pianist is not only a cinch for a best new artist nomination in the upcoming Grammy competition, but she also may get a best album nomination for “Songs in A Minor,” which has sold more than 3.4 million copies in the U.S. in five months

Unfortunately, Keys’ breakthrough isn’t typical of the success curve of noteworthy pop arrivals. “Songs in A Minor” has sold more copies than all the other current albums from Calendar’s annual Freshman Class combined. New rock entries B.R.M.C. and the White Stripes, for instance, have sold only about 20,000 and 31,000, respectively, of their latest albums.

But all three end up on the Freshman Class list, an annual salute to the most notable pop newcomers, because it focuses on quality, not sales.

Although some of the acts released records before 2001, they all either made their major-label debuts or broke through to a dramatic new level of attention during the year.

The list is alphabetical.

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Ryan Adams. The North Carolina singer-songwriter has just turned 27, but he’s been stardom-bound since the mid-’90s when he put together the band Whiskeytown. The buzz picked up last year when Adams went solo with “Heartbreaker,” but his true creative blossoming was the release this fall of his major-label debut, “Gold,” on Lost Highway. Adams, whose influences range from Bob Dylan and Gram Parsons to Black Flag and the Rolling Stones, explores such classic pop themes as loneliness and yearning with the complexity of poetry and the simplicity of someone who loves the directness of pop music.

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Beachwood Sparks. Where country-rock pioneer Parsons is just one of many influences on Adams, he seems at times the only one on this L.A. outfit. There are traces of Poco and Buffalo Springfield at work in Sparks’ freewheeling, psychedelic approach, but it’s Parsons’ wistful search for comfort in a world turned cold that is at the heart of the group’s “Once We Were Trees” album on Sub Pop. It’s a theme as relevant today as when Parsons led the Flying Burrito Brothers onstage 30 years ago at the Whisky.

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Bilal. Just 22, Bilal Sayeed Oliver sounds icy at times, as if he’s willing to settle for professionalism rather than inspiration. Yet the Philadelphia native, who is schooled in jazz, funk and soul, exudes enough promise in “Second Child,” the key track on his “1st Born Second” album on Interscope, to make you take him seriously. It’s a seven-minute tale of struggle that speaks for a generation in a way few pop artists would have the courage to do.

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Bitch and Animal. There was a lot of the usual confrontation and anger in rock this year, but not much extremism, which is one of the virtues of this female duo’s “Eternally Hard” album, from Ani DiFranco’s Righteous Babe label. The language is crude in places, but the body-part references are often broadsides at stereotypes in these tales of sexual and social politics. There is a lesbian sensibility at work, with a humor and underlying vulnerability that is almost always universal. The pair can also wrap a lot of commentary into a single line: “I’m just a little girl boy/Trying to make my way/in a man’s world.”

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B.R.M.C. This California trio draws upon one of the most thrilling rock sounds of the last 20 years in its “Black Rebel Motorcycle Club” album--the Jesus and Mary Chain’s mix of haunting melodies and slashing, guitar-driven aggression. The sound was considered too far ahead of its time when that English band was at its peak in the ‘80s, so maybe B.R.M.C.’s timing will be better. The best tracks on the band’s debut on Virgin Records--including “Love Burns” and “Red Eyes and Tears”--are feverish enough to have fit nicely on “Psychocandy,” the Jesus and Mary Chain’s 1985 masterpiece about romantic obsession. B.R.M.C. plays Dec. 18-19 at the Fold at the Silverlake Lounge.

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Coldplay. This British pop-rock entry is invariably linked with Travis because both bands speak in intimate, unassuming tones. “Look at the stars/How they shine for you,” leader Chris Martin declares in “Yellow,” the uplifting track from the group’s “Parachutes” album on Nettwerk America. But it is the more complex and adventurous “Everything’s Not Lost” that makes you look forward most to the group’s next CD. It’s the kind of gritty barroom pep talk you might expect from Tom Waits.

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Alicia Keys. The sales and acclaim have come so fast for Keys that you can sense a backlash looming. What’s so special about her? The answer is only partially answered by the “Songs in A Minor” album, which is so loaded with potential hits that J Records may still be working the album next summer. The rest of the answer deals with her promise. At 20, she’s a remarkably poised and talented singer, songwriter and record producer who showed in “Songs” that she can operate comfortably in a variety of pop, soul and funk styles. If she can avoid the distractions of fame, she could be a top figure in pop for years.

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Mystic. This former Digital Underground affiliate proves the most prolific and thoughtful wordsmith of all female hip-hoppers. There is a serious, sometimes somber tone to much of her album, “Cuts for Luck and Scars for Freedom,” on Barak Records, but it’s accompanied by an underlying optimism that is reminiscent of Lauryn Hill. To reach her potential, however, Mystic needs to sit down with some savvy advisors before going into the studio again, to make sure the musical textures are as striking as the words.

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Sigur Ros. You can see why Radiohead’s Thom Yorke fell in love with the lush, richly layered soundscapes on this Icelandic band’s “Agaetis Byrjun” album when he was running away from everything r-o-c-k after the success of “OK Computer.” The music is distant in places, leaving it short of the kind of emotional payoff that you’d like. But it sometimes reaches moments that are both beautiful and epic. As with Bitch and Animal, there is a welcome sense of extremism here.

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The White Stripes. I got a sense of why the indie-rock world is so excited about the White Stripes after seeing them for the first time last summer at the Troubadour and thinking it was the best club rock show I’d seen in ages--only to learn from band watchers that it was an off night. Singer-guitarist Jack White brings to the stage the cockiness of Billy Corgan and the nonnegotiable independence of Johnny Cash, with influences that range from garage rock to Nashville. The Stripes’ explosive, renegade-spirited “White Blood Cells,” on the Sympathy for the Record Industry label, is one of the year’s half-dozen best albums.

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Robert Hilburn, The Times’ pop music critic, can be reached at robert.hilburn@latimes.com.