Christina Aguilera – Back to Basics
RCA (released 8/15/06)
Pop/Jazz/Soul/R&B
http://www.christinaaguilera.com
http://www.myspace.com/christinaaguilera
Christina Aguilera’s Back to Basics, a 2-CD/22 tracks of retro-jazz, blues and soul via Aguilera’s fresh pop; R&B flavors make for a new standard of paying respects to the music legends before them.
I could have sworn that “Makes Me Wanna Pray” was Aguilera covering someone else—instead I discovered to my delight that she co-wrote this and the other 21 songs. “Mercy On Me” was the other spiritual track on disc two. When Aguilera covers spiritually fused tracks, it’s clearly not her going through the motions and the songs feel personal to her spiritually without being preachy. The energy of the Aguilera sound was consuming and easy to get into—from the uptempo beats from the “Intro (Back to Basics)” warm-up to track six’s “Slow Down Baby”, the movement was rocking. “Oh Mother” reminded me of Aguilera’s version of Pink’s “Family Portrait.”
“Ain’t No Other Man” was the perfect song to break Aguilera out to the mainstream audience with her experimental sound with this album.
Another theme of this collection is having two “dirty” freaky tracks on each disc, “Still Dirty” (“I still got the nasty in me/ Still got that dirty degree/ And if you want some more, sexy/ Still got that freak in me”) and “Nasty Naughty Boy” is what would Madonna would possibly sound like if she did freaky jazz.
I deeply enjoyed this collection as a whole, however, the first disc is more memorable than the second. The melodies, titles and lyrics don’t stay with me naturally as the 13 songs do in the first disc. Linda Perry co-wrote all the songs on the second disc, though I felt Perry’s influence wasn’t as strong on this album as a whole as I’ve seen in other collaborations Perry has been involved with. “Hurt” is currently number 60 on top downloaded songs on ITunes, and is Aguilera’s current single, even though that was not Aguilera’s original decision. “Hurt” was considered a safe choice because of the acclaim by pop critics, and felt it would be received well during the holiday season. The track would work well if it’s not overplayed, but not as good as “Beautiful”. “Hurt” is something I would expect Kelly Clarkson or Mariah Carey to perform. Another plus to the album is the gorgeous glossy artwork, photos of Aguilera in pin-up, Marilyn Monroe-inspired poses.
Aguilera is confident, strong and sexier than ever vocally with Back to Basics, where she took a risk and stepped out on her own, not following trends in pop music where everything appeals to a 16-year old sexually charged teenage girl, and possibly reestablishing trends by blending in different musical styles, past and present. I don’t know if any other artist could do it seemingly effortlessly and good as she can. Welcome back Miss Aguilera, show them all how it’s done.
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