You got style, you're badass

Continuing my trip back through the 2006 album charts.

27/08/06 : Back To Basics - Christina Aguilera


I've liked the Xtina singles I've come across in my time - "Genie In A Bottle" is a fantastically saucy number, "Beautiful" is a most excellent power ballad, "Thank You" has a fine strong message and "Dirrty" is just nice clean filth.  But, have I ever listened to a whole album of hers?  Go on, guess...

So, here we are and I didn't mind this at all in places.  To start with, it felt to me like it was kinda what both Justin Timberlake and Beyoncé were going for - a retro sound updated to sound contemporary.  Christina holds on to her roots more obviously than either of them do and I think it helps - for a bit.  But, on the second half of the double album, she gives up on the contemporary and goes way back to the first half of the 20th century - she does it well, but I'm not sure it's what anyone was asking for.  All in all, it's a bit of an odd mix and “Enter The Circus” is a just a very odd track - no idea what anyone was thinking there.  But I do like "Ain't No Other Man" - it's just not quite up there with top tier Christina.  Over the course of a whole album (78 minutes long!) the vocal gymnastics do get a bit too much at times though.

We're at #2 in the charts this week on her second week of a 25 week run, having debuted at #1 - it then took a month off and came back for another 14 weeks.  The rest of the top five this week were Snow Patrol, James Morrison, Orson (awww, bless 'em) and The Feeling and the highest new entry was Outkast at #16 (which is one of theirs I've not had the pleasure of listening to yet).

Wikipedia has a lot more than I was expecting on the album (343 milliPeppers) but there's very little content.  It does tell me that Mark Ronson and Linda Perry were involved - she's called in the big guns there.  The critics were generally happy enough with it and it did pretty well commercially as well - #1 in plenty of countries including the US.

"Customers also listened to" Alicia Keys, Leona Lewis, Duffy and Kelly Clarkson - a somewhat odd mix.  There's no doubting Christina's vocal ability but I'm not convinced I need a whole album of it - certainly not this album anyway.  I can believe she was trying something a bit new and it's an interesting attempt, but it doesn't quite work for me.

20/08/06 - Some pleasing enough cheeky chappies
03/09/06 - Revisiting an old friend

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