http://arts.guardian.co.uk/filmandmu...836214,00.html
Christina Aguilera, Back to Basics [2/5]
(RCA)
Dorian Lyskey
Friday August 4, 2006
The Guardian
Buy Back to Basics now
So, farewell Xtina, the dirrty girl who dressed like a hooker from Star Wars and insisted she was beautiful no matter what you said, and hello Christina, the sophisticated vamp with the Jean Harlow coiffure and the 1940s wardrobe. As the curtain rises on Aguilera's third album, the 25-year-old former Disney Club moppet announces her intention to acknowledge "those before me who laid it down and paved the way" and to follow in their footsteps.
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Needless to say, she has her work cut out. In the small pond of twentysomething pop divas, Aguilera is undoubtedly a big fish - more resilient than Britney, more intriguing than Beyoncé - but measuring up to the jazz and soul greats is another matter entirely. Aguilera calls Back to Basics a concept album. The first half is a sample-powered dancefloor disc; the second, produced by Linda Perry, promises "a modern take on jazz, soul and blues from the 1920s, 30s and 40s". But the concept is so wide as to be meaningless. The roll call of heroes on the song Back in the Day runs from Billie Holiday to Marvin Gaye, which brings up the question: back in what day, exactly? The 1930s? The 1960s? Practically everything recorded before Aguilera was born blurs into one amorphous genre, which she categorises, somewhat inadequately, as "fun music".
She was wise to enlist DJ Premier, the producer whose canny way with a sampler helped define the sound of 1990s east-coast hip-hop. Like a washed-up boxer given one last shot at the title, he comes out swinging. Ain't No Other Man is already the tune of the summer, a brassy, brilliant love song with the same aerobic oomph as Beyoncé's Crazy in Love. Whipped along by crisp funk and blurting horns, Aguilera's voice has commanding power and sinew; and she puts it through its paces like an Olympic gymnast. Premier's not the only gifted studio rat on board. Understand, produced by Kwame, has the lush southern-soul upholstery of a Gladys Knight ballad, and Mark Ronson's Slow Down Baby smartly slaps a 50 Cent sample atop low-riding cop-show funk. Fun music indeed.
Beyond the retro instrumentation, however, it's unclear what Aguilera has really learned from her idols. Aretha Franklin didn't build her reputation on songs about being Aretha Franklin, yet this album sinks under the weight of Aguilera's self-obsession. The problem with attaining colossal success in your teens is that the narcissism of adolescence segues into the narcissism of celebrity with no time for a sharp intake of reality. Like Madonna, Aguilera purports to reveal her inner self without the insight to make those revelations enlightening. All the listener learns is that she's Still Dirrty (she still likes sex, apparently) and that she's Here to Stay, carrying on like the victim of a McCarthyite witch hunt rather than of a few snarky comments about dressing like a hooker from Star Wars.
All this is humility itself next to the jawdropping Thank You (Dedication to Fans), which promises to be five of the most excruciating minutes you will ever spend outside of a dentist's chair. Ostensibly a tribute to her loyal fans, it celebrates nothing so much as Aguilera's own wonderfulness. According to the collage of answerphone messages from grateful mortals, her music has comforted troops in Iraq, eased childhood traumas and averted suicide. Never mind Condi, let's send Christina to the Middle East.
Hubris of a different stripe infects the second disc. It opens with Enter the Circus, an overwrought confection of cabaret kitsch that prompts flashbacks not to Sally Bowles but to Britney Spears' Onyx Hotel tour, a high-concept fiasco that was the worst thing to happen to Weimar since the Nazi party. The inspiration for heavy-breathing pastiches Nasty Naughty Boy and I Got Trouble, which reduce 1940s jazz to a saucy cartoon, was presumably Jessica Rabbit.
After that nonsense, the inevitable ballads are a blessed relief. Mercy on Me's churchy confession of weakness is overfamiliar and overcooked but at least she sounds like she means it. Save Me From Myself cracks open the super diva to reveal something like a real person inside, tenderly cooing her admiration for new husband Jordan Bratwell in a warm voice that sounds, for once, like it's aimed at one human ear rather than an entire Super Bowl crowd.
But it isn't enough. Contrasting Aguilera's claims to belong to a classic lineage with the music itself calls to mind Senator Lloyd Bentsen's famous retort after Dan Quayle consistently and tiresomely compared himself to John F Kennedy: "Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy." Back to Basics doubtless has enough potential hits to secure Aguilera's position in this decade's pop pantheon but, on the terms that the singer herself defined, she's no Billie Holiday.
http://www.musicomh.com/albums5/chri...ilera_0806.htm
2/5
So, welcome then to Christina Aguilera v3. She's been a fluffy pop poppet in her Genie In A Bottle days, a Dirrty, leather chaps clad girl in her Stripped period, and now she returns all respectable and married and talking about channeling the spirit of Ella Fitzgerald and Etta James. Confused? You will be...
For Back To Basics marks Christina's attempt at being a 'serious artist'. The press notes talk of her wanting to follow in the footsteps of such legends as Marvin Gaye and Aretha Franklin. While Aguilera does have an undeniably great voice, she's pretty far from names such as that, especially when the material on this double album is so tepid.
Back To Basics is split into two discs, and like most double albums there's a fair amount of filler here. However, most of the good material can be found on the first disc, produced by DJ Premier, such as the terrific brass-laden single Ain't No Other Man - the best RnB/pop crossover hit since Beyonce's Crazy In Love.
The ballad Understand is another highlight, with Aguilera's impressive voice meshing well with the sample of '60s soul diva Betty Harris. Mark Ronson pops up as well to produce one of the best tracks, the fresh and funky Slow Down Baby. It's on songs like this that Aguilera is at her best, producing sharp and sassy infectious pop.
Yet the good points here just make the bad moments feel so much worse. The main fault is with some astonishingly self-indulgent and self-obsessed lyrics - if it's not endless declarations of love to the new Mr Aguilera, it's songs about Christina's mum (Oh Mother), songs about how Christina's not just a flash in the pan pop starlet (Here To Stay), or songs about how, although she's married now, Christina still likes a good bit of sex (Still Dirrty).
The latter is particularly odd, attempting to come over like an unapologetic boast of being a proudly sexual woman, yet lyrics like "there's some women out there who talk and stare, who never seem to let down their hair" appear to have a sub-text of 'blimey, all these feminists just need a damn good rogering, don't they lads?'.
Perhaps the most cringeworthy moment on the album is Thank You, a horrific dirge which is punctuated by answerphone messages from obsessive Aguilera fans telling the object of her affection how beautiful and inspirational she is, what a wonderful role model she is, and at one point, a serving soldier pops up to tell Christina how her voice has got him through some tough times (sadly, we can't quite make out his army friends giggling in the background, nudging each other and whispering "yeah, right, it's her voice...").
It's at such moments that Back To Basics seems like the biggest ego-fuelled act of folly since Michael Jackson decided it would be a good idea to float a gigantic statue of himself down the Thames. The second disc though is slightly more bearable. Here, Linda Perry takes over production duties, and she has an admirable stab at creating a retro '40s atmosphere.
Candyman is quite fun, even though it is basically a rewrite of the old standard Boogie Woogie Company Boy. It's worth nothing that the ghost of Madonna singing Hanky Panky does loom large. Although it's difficult to imagine Ella Fitzgerald purring and growling her way through Naughty Nasty Boy, it does show off Aguilera's voice to it's very best advantage while she's singing some X-rated lyrics ("I'm gonna give you a little taste of the sugar beneath my waist" indeed...). The blaring horn section only adds to the song's simmering sexual tension.
It does soon descend into overblown ballad territory though - Hurt is an otherwise touching ode to Aguilera's troubled relationship with her late father, but is hampered by a sugary-sweet string section that overwhelms the song. Other moments are screamingly camp, such as The Right Man - one of the seemingly endless tributes to her new husband - but it's similarly overblown and cliched. Save Me From Myself is rather nice however, a quiet, fragile little ballad with Aguilera at last remembering to add some restraint to her vocals.
To be fair to Aguilera, it's hard to imagine someone like Jessica Simpson or even her former rival Britney Spears attempting something as ambitious as Back To Basics. She should be given credit for that at least, and with some judicious editing this could have been a truly great pop album. As it is however, this rather bloated record should be regarded as a disappointment - an interesting one, but a disappointment none the less.
- John Murphy
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