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Celeb News: Lotus: 58/100 @ Metacritic based on 10 Critics
Member Since: 3/30/2009
Posts: 79,408
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Lotus: 58/100 @ Metacritic based on 10 Critics
Metascore
58 out of 100
Mixed or average reviews based on 10 Critics
- Christina Aguilera's latest album may be called "Lotus," but "Soldier" might have been an equally apt title.
- With song titles like "Army Of Me" and "Cease Fire," military drums serving as percussion for tracks like "Around The World" and "Best Of Me," rampant references to being a fighter and plenty of ammo for her haters, Aguilera is on the warpath for reclaiming her pop stardom. And rightfully so, after a rough 2010 that saw her album "Bionic" flop and the cancellation of its accompanying tour; a divorce from husband Jordan Bratman; and the disappointment of her movie "Burlesque" and its Aguilera-heavy soundtrack. But after rebounding as a coach on "The Voice" and scoring her first No. 1 hit in a decade with the Maroon 5 duet "Moves Like Jagger," the stage has been set for a comeback.
- As evidenced by lead single "Your Body," her first collaboration with Max Martin, Aguilera is back with guns blazing on "Lotus," a bright, shiny, and loud pop album that also features contributions from Alex da Kid (Rihanna, Eminem), Sia and Lucas Secon, as well as guest appearances from fellow "Voice" coaches Cee-Lo Green and Blake Shelton. The album finds Aguilera trying out piano ballads to club-ready dance pop to country to 90s rock, all with the subtlety of a chainsaw. It's full-throttle Aguilera as her fans want to hear, bringing her voice front and center where it was often muted on "Bionic." No note is left un-belted, no metaphor goes un-exhausted, and few verses feature just one Aguilera singing when three or four would be better. And yet, "Lotus" largely benefits from all the bombast - Aguilera hasn't sounded so fun and energized in years.
- Considering all the trials and tribulations surrounding her 2010 album Bionic, Phoenix may have been a more appropriate title for Christina Aguilera's fifth album than Lotus. Plagued by delays, Bionic underwhelmed upon its 2010 release, as did Xtina's silver screen debut Burlesque, and her career appeared on the brink of meltdown until she signed up to be a voice on the NBC singing competition The Voice. Soon, she was duetting with her co-star Adam Levine on Maroon 5's "Moves Like Jagger," her star was hotter than ever, and she was determined to not have it dim with Lotus. Streamlined considerably from the confused but often gripping Bionic and the sprawling double-album Back to Basics, Lotus isn't without risks -- "Red Hot Kind of Love" is a giddy, delirious piece of pop produced by Lucas Secon of "Lucas with the Lid Off" fame, as bracingly different as anything on the radio in 2012 -- but Aguilera isn't attempting a robotic future-soul, she's sticking with the belting soul ballads, hard disco, and pop that made her a star. And she feels comfortable in this familiar, slightly freshened territory, riding the glitzy pulse of "Let There Be Love," seizing the solo spotlight on the spare piano-and-voice ballad "Blank Page," sneering at her haters on "Circles," and spitting at them on the bonus cut "Shut Up." Christina may not pushing at her limits here -- a safeness underscored by the presence of not one but two Voice co-stars -- Cee Lo Green comes in for the pulsating party "Make the World Move," Blake Shelton duets on the slow, bluesy closer "Just a Fool" -- but it's hard to blame her for playing it safe, particularly because she wound up with such a strong pop album, one that reconfirms her gifts as a singer and savviness as a pop star.
- It’s been six years since Christina Aguilera made a record that would remind us why she was a perfect choice for a show called “The Voice.” For better and for worse, the NBC singing competition is what the former Mouseketeer is best known for now. Bubbling over with memorable melodies, throbbing dance grooves, and dynamic vocals, her new album, “Lotus,” is a good start in the effort to refocus attention on Aguilera’s skills and scrub our memories of 2010’s disastrous “Bionic.”
- Aside from the hokey title track, it is front-loaded with goodies, including the Gloria Gaynor-meets-Depeche Mode dance of anger that is “Army of Me,” the kooky horn-and-yodel fest “Red Hot Kinda Love,” and the impossible-to-resist exhortation to “Make the World Move.” The piano ballad “Blank Page,” co-written by Aguilera, Australian singer-songwriter Sia, and Chris Braide, is among the best performances Aguilera has ever put to tape. Two of her fellow “Voice” coaches pitch in elsewhere, with Cee Lo Green helping turn up the love on “Make the World Move” and Blake Shelton helping turn down the lights on the country-inflected closer, “Just a Fool.”
- There are missteps, including needless Auto-tune and a few of what sound like Rihanna or Katy Perry leftovers. And there are several tracks that sound mindlessly repetitive as sedentary listening experiences but will likely improve with the addition of a dancefloor, including the Max Martin-Shellback produced “Let There Be Love.” Welcome back, Xtina.
- It's a strange time to be Christina Aguilera.
- Her too-long-coming electroclash album tanked because Lady Gaga was all over that stuff. Furthermore, she reckons she's now considered "too fat" by the industry. Lotus, however, is the sound of Xtina coming out fighting. Its best moments are its electro-pop numbers. Token lung-bursting ballads notwithstanding, we won't be seeing Xtina at the Superbowl again. But that's fine. The dancefloor is her home now.
- Stars like Christina Aguilera aren't supposed to fall. The status of multi-platinum A-lister comes with an in-built positive feedback mechanism. Success, at this level, tends to maintain. A team ensures your singles sound like hits while fans buy into a star and are reluctant to disinvest because that implies their own taste wasn't trustworthy to begin with.
- Nevertheless, Aguilera took a big knock with her last album, Bionic (2010). It probably sold around half a million copies worldwide (a big flop, in pop money). Blogs still rage about whether Bionic was too brave, featuring as it did collaborations with riot grrl veterans Le Tigre, or whether the record company dropped the ball. It was the tipping point for an annus horribilis. Aguilera got divorced, released a flop film, Burlesque, over-sang the Star-Spangled Banner at the 2011 Super Bowl, was arrested for being drunk in public, and acquired hips.
- In pop terms, all this now makes the 31-year-old mother of one a Survivor, and that, in turn, allows her to dip freely into the righteousness narrative of older female stars who've been divorced, abused or addicted. Tenacity and rebirth are themes telegraphed hard on Lotus. Nothing to do with the luxury sports car – apparently the lotus is an "unbreakable flower that withstands any harsh weather conditions… and remains beautiful and strong". This is wiffle of the highest order. But one of the pleasures of Aguilera is that she can use polysyllables, even when talking the rot that fills women's mags.
- Her ex (we presume) is the target on at least a couple of tracks, which serve up divorce two ways, devilled and fried. Uptempo thumper Army of Me shares emotional territory with the Björk song of the same name and Aguilera's old hit, Fighter. Aguilera may be in pieces but all those bits have Uzis. Circles enjoins some dude to swivel on her middle finger. The sing-song verse is redolent of Rihanna but you can forgive a lot when there's a line as zingy as "Why you always tryna be up in my mixture?/ Cos I'm freaky fly fresh/ And you just bitter."
- Elsewhere Aguilera tries hard to soothe the horses. Most of the uptempo tracks follow production trends closely and then drop an ecstatic Aguilerean ululation on top. You can see straight through them but they work. There's more Rihanna-copping, for instance, on Around the World, a come-hither tune that also quotes from Aguilera and co's cover of Lady Marmalade (Aguilera, Lil' Kim, Mýa, Pink), from a time when she could put no stiletto wrong.
- Aguilera's stock is not at rock bottom. She is a judge on the successful US version of The Voice. She guested on Maroon 5's inescapable hit Moves Like Jagger; TV co-stars like Cee-Lo Green are on board here too, for tracks such as Make the World Move.The only risks are taken on the introductory bagatelle, where multiple, chorusing Aguileras coo and bass booms. She's pulled in writers such as Max Martin (Britney Spears) for insurance on tracks like the first single Your Body (but, ironically, it didn't chart particularly well). The album's midpoint rave banger, Let There Be Love, is about as formulaic as club pop gets. But it resonates effectively, like much else here; every throb and ooh in the right place.
60 Slant Magazine Original Score: 3/5- Christina Aguilera is her own worst enemy. Judging by her recent interviews, in which she calls her 2010 flop, Bionic, "ahead of its time," and her early work "more daring" than that of her teeny-bopper compatriots, the best promo she could do for her new album, Lotus, is none at all. The admirably forward-thinking, if not forward-sounding, Bionic got a bum rap, but it should be people like me who say it, not her.
- Picking up where that album left off, Lotus opens with an electro-pop intro that samples M83 and features an Auto-Tuned Aguilera proclaiming her latest manifesto: "I sing for freedom and for love/I look at my reflection/Embrace the woman I've become/The unbreakable lotus in me, I now set free." But in an obviously calculated move, the rest of Lotus seems designed to appeal more to fans of her previous studio albums, and its lead single, "Your Body," was co-produced by Max Martin, the Swedish knob-twirler at the helm of all of those hits by Aguilera's fellow former Mouseketeers she inexplicably deemed less daring than "Genie in a Bottle."
- If a pop song is only as strong as its hook, though, then "Your Body" is a heavyweight, allowing Aguilera to tear it up during the chorus, and it features the kind of provocative single entendres we've come to expect from the singer, even as her tatas and bits are strategically concealed on the album's cover (which, for the record, looks like an ad for a feminine hygiene product): "We're moving faster than slow/If you don't know where to go/I'll finish off on my own." But if Aguilera and her label really wanted to ensure her comeback, an even safer bet would have been the album's other Martin-assisted track, "Let There Be Love," a virtual hybrid of recent club bangers by Rihanna, Britney, Katy, and Ke$ha.
- Aguilera has an infamous mean streak, and it often comes out in her songwriting, which is partly what sunk Bionic. But with the exception of the abrasive "Circles," on which she tells her foes to "spin around in circles on my middle finger," Lotus largely checks the attitude at the door and focuses instead on self-empowerment anthems like the dramatic and defiant "Best of Me." The rest of the album's slow songs don't fare quite as well: The pretty vocal runs at the end of "Sing for Me" aren't enough to save the otherwise too-bombastic and rote power ballad, while "Just a Fool," an out-of-place country-pop duet with Blake Shelton, feels like a cheap cash-in. (For those keeping count, Aguilera has now recorded duets with all of her fellow judges on The Voice.)
- By virtue of the fact that Lotus is Aguilera's shortest album since her debut, it boasts less filler, but also fewer obvious standouts. Produced by Lucas Secon, who scored a hit of his own in the '90s with the quirky "Lucas with the Lid Off," "Red Hot Kinda Love" effectively combines an old-school hip-hop loop, vocal samples, a catchy pre-chorus, and an even catchier chorus. The album's biggest surprise, though, is the raga-infused "Cease Fire," which employs a marching band and a carefully constructed collage of background vocals to bolster Aguilera's vaguely apolitical and shockingly non-schmaltzy call for peace. More songs like these would have made for a truly great album, something that, the first half of the double-disc Back to Basics notwithstanding, has thus far eluded her.
- Don't let the spiritual-rebirth title of Xtina's fifth LP fool you. Christina Aguilera has only one religious affiliation – the cult of the voice. And she has a great diva theme to rap her pipes around: surviving a divorce. "Spin around in circles on my middle, middle finger," she sings on "Circles." Producers like Shellback and Max Martin give her top-line tracks to body-slam, but, sadly, her bombastic breakup ballad with Blake Shelton, "Just a Fool," sounds more like a battle round on The Voice than a friendly duet. It's just one telling moment where this vitriol-tsunami of a record misses a chance to connect Aguilera's music with her warm, empathetic TV presence.
- Christina Aguilera realized early on she couldn’t sustain a career by coasting on her multi-octave range or sticking with wholesome teen-pop. As a result, she’s spent the last decade or so trying on different musical personas: traditional R&B belter, streetwise hip-pop chick, tough rocker, and edgy electro sex-kitten. While not all of these reinventions were successful, her most successful songs tended to possess personality, vulnerability, and a defiant disregard for convention.
- Lotus, Aguilera’s fifth album of new material, often disappoints on all three counts. The relative indifference to her last album, 2010’s unfairly maligned Bionic, seems to have pushed her into making an album that isn’t as outré or risky. And so in spite of a recurring theme of rebirth, Lotus often plays it safe. “Around The World” and “Cease Fire” sound like Rihanna rejects, while “Let There Be Love” is faceless Top 40 EDM. On other songs, gimmickry supersedes sincerity. In spite of some lovely harmonies from her The Voice co-judge Blake Shelton, “Just A Fool” is schmaltzy, string-blasted heartbreak. “Circles” is even more frustrating. It’s bitter ’90s alt-rock crossed with M.I.A.’s antagonistic attitude; it should be an angry kiss-off. Instead, cringe-inducing lyrics (e.g., “Spin around in circles on my middle finger”) sap its ire.
- Lotus is far more successful when Aguilera drops the empty platitudes and embraces her individuality. Her playful side elevates the rousing “Army Of Me”—an empowered dance-floor anthem where she plays the role of sassy techno diva, crying repeatedly, “We’re gonna rise up!”—and the dancehall-tinged, vibrant party jam “Red Hot Kinda Love.” Better still is “Make The World Move,” a dizzying duet with another fellow Voice judge, Cee Lo Green; the song’s positive lyrics and Technicolor-soul beats are downright inspiring.
- But Lotus’ best songs convey real-talk intimacy. “Blank Page” (which was co-written with Sia) and “Sing For Me” are minimal piano ballads on which Aguilera discusses working through regret and reclaiming her sense of self, respectively. The spare music lets her still-powerful voice dominate, and her impassioned delivery conveys how meaningful these songs are to her. It makes sense that the rest of Lotus doesn’t connect on such a primal level. Aguilera has always been an unstoppable force when she pours her heart and soul into her music—and not as adept at dumbing down her voice or lyrics for the sake of lightweight tunes or prevailing trends. Unfortunately, by focusing on the latter route, Lotus becomes disappointingly faceless.
- You say you want a revolution? Good news! Christina Aguilera has already armed the battle-clones for war on ''Army of Me,'' one of many thundering self-empowerment anthems on her fifth studio album, Lotus. ''There's a thousand faces of me,'' she hollers. ''And we're gonna rise up.../For every time you wronged me/Well, you're gonna face an army, army of me.'' Which begs the question: Rise up against whom? Is the whole world really out to get her, or is this just an excuse to wear camouflage hot pants?
- If it sounds like Aguilera is in self-defense mode, that's not a surprise. Since she released her 2010 clunker, Bionic, she's gotten divorced, dodged tomatoes for her big-screen performance in Burlesque, and rebounded as a coach on NBC's The Voice. But her mixed messages are too often unintentionally funny. After inviting America to ''turn down the hate'' on ''Make the World Move,'' an electro-soul duet with Voice costar Cee Lo Green, she spends the sassy kiss-off ''Circles' telling her enemies to ''spin around in circles on my middle, middle finger.'' And getting behind the bouncy peace-flag-waver ''Let There Be Love'' is difficult when there's a bonus track called ''Shut Up'' that invites the haters to ''suck my d---.''
- Backed by megaproducers Max Martin, Shellback, and Lucas Secon, and boosted by The Voice, Lotus should have been Aguilera's mainstream pop comeback. Occasionally she can still power through a chorus like a Russian weight lifter (see: ''Sing for Me''). Too bad most of these tracks digitally smother her voice, draining all the emotion until she just sounds bitter. It's unclear whom she's mad at here. But somehow Lotus makes you want to root for the other guy.
- Christina Aguilera is one of the most powerful singers of her generation; is a friend to raunch, and an expert at making it broadly palatable; never lets tabloids get the best of her; has made it safe for still relevant midcareer pop stars to take sabbaticals for judging reality television competitions; hasn’t had a worthy hit in quite a few years; has maybe forgotten what Christina Aguilera does well.
- “Lotus” is Ms. Aguilera’s fifth original studio album in English since 1999, which, in pop star longevity terms, is a slow drip. (She has also released a Spanish album and a Christmas album.) But consider that a strength: Ms. Aguilera imprinted herself far more authoritatively than many of her contemporaries and those who have followed her. She is, and has been, unmistakable.
- Which is why the anonymity of much of “Lotus” is its biggest crime, more than its musical unadventurousness or its emphasis on bland self-help lyrics or its reluctance to lean on Ms. Aguilera’s voice, the thing that makes her special. All around her female pop stars are making pop that is forward and modern and often complex, while Ms. Aguilera, who used to play that role but is perhaps beginning to see herself as an elder stateswoman, is playing it straight.
- Largely that’s by working with Alex Da Kid, who of all of the breakthrough pop producers of recent years, has the dullest, most monochromatic style, mistaking scale for emotion. Of his contributions, only on “Best of Me” does Ms. Aguilera push her voice beyond comfort; mainly she lets him dictate the arc, and it’s predictable.
- Also, there are job requirements to fulfill. She collaborates here with two of her fellow judges on “The Voice,” probably just to give them duets to perform this season: with Cee Lo Green on the dull “Make the World Move,” and with Blake Shelton on the surprisingly warm “Just a Fool.” (She already collaborated with the third, Adam Levine, on Maroon 5’s “Moves Like Jagger.”)
- There are flashes of the Aguilera of old, though. Her voice veers volcanic on a pair of slow-build ballads, “Sing for Me” and “Blank Page.” The single “Your Body” is sweaty and bold, the characteristics that Ms. Aguilera once held tight to, and “Around the World,” which has flecks of reggae, is gauche and aesthetically vulgar in the way Ms. Aguilera once proudly was. As ever, Ms. Aguilera’s talent is in taking something tacky, and making it beautiful.
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Member Since: 6/24/2011
Posts: 3,599
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Member Since: 9/26/2011
Posts: 6,117
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Not a good start, was to be expected though 
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Member Since: 2/23/2012
Posts: 7,699
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Wasn't expecting much from her tbh
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Member Since: 12/7/2011
Posts: 10,117
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When will your faves? 
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Member Since: 7/1/2009
Posts: 2,852
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 Oh dear.
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Member Since: 2/27/2012
Posts: 12,567
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Legendary! 
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Member Since: 8/2/2010
Posts: 12,507
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What no Grapejuice? No 4Music?
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Member Since: 10/16/2005
Posts: 16,872
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Here we go. 
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Member Since: 6/15/2012
Posts: 33,138
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Let's try to get it above 60 this time around X.
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Member Since: 8/3/2012
Posts: 19,910
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This will be a hit thread
What was Bionic's score?
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Member Since: 1/30/2012
Posts: 2,658
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#SLAY and y'all better deal
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Member Since: 8/4/2012
Posts: 7,700
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Christina This is NOT gonna help those first week numbers!!
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Member Since: 12/5/2009
Posts: 9,974
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Another critically panned album from Legend X? I cannot.
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Member Since: 2/28/2012
Posts: 12,605
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Here we go 
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Member Since: 2/27/2012
Posts: 12,567
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Quote:
Originally posted by Britney Spears
When will your faves? |
Only the Katy kats can relate. 
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Member Since: 8/27/2012
Posts: 5,464
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I don't give a flying **** what critics say about, everybody has their own opinions, critics are just people
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Member Since: 8/1/2012
Posts: 4,779
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but there's not even a Metacritic page for it yet 
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Member Since: 8/4/2012
Posts: 7,700
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Quote:
Originally posted by Cassiopeia
This will be a hit thread
What was Bionic's score? |
53 if I'm not mistaken.
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Member Since: 7/3/2011
Posts: 10,425
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51? Queen of consistency
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