Christina Aguliera "Back To Basics" (2006)

[Deleted]

*Sold 4 million copies worldwide and won Christina a Gramny for ANOM
* Spawned 3 Platinum singles

I've been obsessing over this lately, and it's just so perfect. I never skip anything with this album, which is rare for me.

That look, tour, videos and live performances were perfect, too.

[Linnethia Monique]

This song is EVERYTHING!>>>>>

[Deleted]

My favorite album by her. I would like it a lot more if it were single disc and they cut a few tracks from the first disc and the vast majority of the second disc. Unnecessarily long.

[God]

She's always had a bad habit of putting, like... every single song recorded for an album onto its final tracklisting.

"Hurt" and "Makes Me Wanna ****" are far and away my two favorites from this one.

[Deleted]

"Without You" and "Save Me From Myself" are my two favorites -- just gorgeous.

[areyoureadytojump]

I remember people following this on the charts.

Everyone kept saying, "It should be doing better!"

People whined and whined.

If they had bothered to go to an actual record store and looked at the cd, they would have seen it was a *double album* priced at ~$17.99.

Of course it wasn't going to sell at that price.

Then people kept saying it should be 3xP. It has sold 1.7 million.

But, the running time wasn't long enough for the 2cd rule.

[#LisaRinna]

Literally basic.

[Khia]

The album has several great songs, but they could have easily cut at least 5-6 tracks.

[Deleted]

Great album.

[Ling-Ling]

Like all of her other albums, half good/half crap. This does have "Hurt" on it though, so major points for that one.

[Caviar]

Solid album all around. ANOM, "Without You", "Hurt", "Welcome", and "Mercy On Me" are all highlights.

[Deleted]

Jul 6, 2014 14:20:29 GMT -5 Linnethia Monique said:

This song is EVERYTHING!>>>

Funny, I used to think "Understand" was filler when I first bought the album. Now, it's one of my favorites and I listen to it all the time.


This album as a whole is so atmospheric, which is what I love about it, above the fact that it's sublime all-around.

[emilmortic]

CD2 is flawless, CD1 has some ups and downs but all in all it's an amazing album. I bought it the first day.

[halo19]

Solid album on the whole and probably her best. 06-07 gave plenty of quality pop albums coming from a person who wouldn't regularly enjoy whole albums from said artists.

[Ginger Spice]

I really enjoy the singles (particularly "Ain't No Other Man," "Candyman," "Hurt"), but I've never been able to make it through the whole album.

[Marooned@Midnight]

Can't do the album, but "Hurt" is flaw-free.

[bigbluenote]

Can't count how many times I have listened to these 2 CDs straight through over the past few years. Definitely one of her best: vocally, stylistically, instrumentally, etc.

[jordie]

For me it's not her best album, but not bad at all.

[NeRD]

Great album. I agree, def should have been a single disc.

[Deleted]

I don't usually care for double albums, but B2B flows perfectly for me.

Even the intros f**king slay <3

I actually didn't care for any of the singles much when the album came out (except the videos and "Hurt"), but these days I play the hell out of Candyman & ANOM.

Visually, vocally, and musically, ugh, such a perfect era.

[Live Your Life]

I agree that this should have been a single disc. I would have kept every song except "Thank You" on the first disc, and added "Hurt" and "Mercy on Me" to make it one disc. I will say, she was at her vocal peak here. This album was sophisticated and sexy. I'd love for her to do an album like this again.


AllMusic gave the album 4.5/5 stars:

When Christina Aguilera released her garish, sexually charged sophomore effort, Stripped, in 2002, it seemed that she pushed her obsessions with tweaking taboos just a little too far. Sure, she could still sing, but her music was now driven entirely by skeletal club grooves and explicit carnality. It was a bold break from the teenybopper persona she was desperate to shed, but it was overcorrective steering, taking her a little bit too far down the road toward a grotesque caricature, particularly in her ugly video for the album's lead single, "Dirrty." All this grandstanding provoked an intense reaction, not just among fans but among her collaborators, who also wondered if Christina was going a little too far, but she managed to keep from sinking largely on the strength of the ballad "Beautiful," an empowering statement of self-love that managed to dampen "Dirrty"'s impact even if it didn't erase it. It also set the stage for the next phase of her career: as an outright old-fashioned diva, much like Madonna or Cher. Smartly, she followed this path for her third album, the sprawling, deliriously entertaining double-disc Back to Basics.

The title alone on Back to Basics is an allusion that perhaps Christina herself thinks she might have gone a little too far with Stripped; she stops short of offering an apology -- she even has a song where she proclaims she's "Still Dirrty" -- but this album's emphasis on songs and singing, along with the fixation with the big-band era, does suggest that Aguilera is ready to be once again seen as a world-class vocalist. Nevertheless, Back to Basics also makes clear that Stripped, for as flawed as it is, was also a necessary artistic move for Christina: she needed to get that out of her system in order to create her own style, one that is self-consciously stylized, stylish, and sexy. As the endless series of pinup photos in the album's booklet illustrates, Christina is obsessed with earning credibility through association: she dresses up as a big-band vamp and drops allusions to Etta James, Billie Holiday, and Aretha Franklin, all under the assumption that listeners will think of Ms. Aguilera as the heir to that throne. While she may have the vocal chops to pull it off to a certain extent, Back to Basics doesn't quite feel like it belongs to the classic soul and R&B tradition, even if the second disc is designed to be an old-fashioned jazzy R&B album, complete with bluesy torch songs and occasionally live instrumentation. Aguilera's instincts are too modern to make the album sound classic. She remains stubbornly autobiographical -- she disses departed producer Scott Storch on "F.U.S.S.," again addresses the abuse inflicted on her mother by her father, spends much of the album detailing her love for her new husband, Jordan, and always filters everything through a very personal filter that makes this seem like a journal entry à la Alanis Morissette (even "Thank You," subtitled as her dedication to her fans, isn't about the fans; it's about how Christina has inspired them, saved their life, or kept them going while stationed in Iraq -- all stories recounted in the voicemail that runs throughout the track). Her lyrics remain bluntly direct, particularly when she talks about sex: "Candyman" makes her cherry pop and her panties drop, while the "Nasty Naughty Boy" will receive "a little taste of the sugar below my waist." That combined with the slick, precise computerized production means that even when Christina tries to sound classic, she winds up sounding like the present.

But that's what's good about Back to Basics -- even though she strives hard to be a classic soul singer here, she can't help but sound like herself, and surely there is no other big-budget pop album in 2006 that bears the stamp of its auteur so clearly. As she did on Stripped, she has gotten to indulge herself here, but where she was more concerned with sound than structure last time around, on Back to Basics she spends just as much time on song and structure, often coming up with strong, memorable ballads and dance tunes on both the dance-oriented first disc and the slow-burning second. Of course, she reveals more than she intended through her indulgence. Try as she may to sound like a classic singer from the '40s, she really seems to have learned all of her moves from Madonna in Dick Tracy; whether she's shaking her hips to a canned brass section or breathing heavily into a microphone, every move seems to have been copped from Breathless Mahoney -- and that's not just on the campily retro "Candyman" (which sounds like a rewrite of "Hanky Panky"), but it's also true on the deliberately modern numbers like "Ain't No Other Man," whose stabs of sampled brass sound straight out of early-'90s jazz-rap. When Aguilera does stray from the Madonna template here, it's to wander into Fiona Apple territory on the second disc -- with its loping piano, "Mercy on Me" is a dead ringer for anything from When the Pawn Hits the Conflicts He Thinks Like a King. There are hints of a couple other artists here -- some echoes of Norah Jones on the torch songs -- but the fusion of Madonna and Fiona Apple is so inspired and unexpected, it sounds original because nobody else would have thought of it, or put it together in such wildly weird ways as Christina does here. Sure, Back to Basics is way too long at two discs and some of it doesn't work quite as well as the rest, but it has far more hits than misses and it holds together as an artistic statement (certainly more so than any other album made by one of her teen pop peers). It may be all about style, it may be a little crass and self-centered, but it's also catchy, exciting, and unique. It's an album to build a career upon, which would be a remarkable achievement by any measure, but coming after the near career suicide of Stripped, it's all the more impressive.

[NeRD]

Her voice was GOLD during this time.

Mercy On Me ALONE. Oohh chile..

[🇯🇲 lucy88 🇯🇲]

I enjoyed the first disc more than I ever did with the second disc. Overall, it was a decent album with a great theme. Stripped still remains my favorite album from her ever.

[Zinc.]

My favorite album by her.

[brady47]

The visuals Christina served this era was AMAZING. She killed it!

Ain't No Other Man, Hurt and Candyman were amazing singles as well - I know Ain't No Other Man did decently in US, and Hurt was her biggest song in Europe since Genie in a Bottle, but I have no idea why Candyman underperformed! It was catchy af!

[Joe1240]

Great album from Christina. The era was also great with the performances and the music videos. My 2nd fave from Christina after "Stripped".

[theflying]

Phenomenal album. It deserves to be way more remembered than it is.

Ain't No Other Man, Makes Me Wanna ****, Hurt, Candyman, Mercy On Me, Save Me From Myself, Still Dirrty, Welcome, Nasty Naughty Boy.

Honestly my only knock (not really knock just) is that it's a bit of an intense listen. Even if the song isn't intense vocally, it's intense emotionally (Save Me From Myself) -- and indeed plenty of songs are both lol. It's part of what makes Christina great, how fierce and strong and present she is, but looking back on it I think just a lighter-sugary bop that wasn't QUITE so (amazingly) stylized like Candyman would've relieved some of the dramatic tension a little.

[myhouse911]

Her second bloated album, my ideal tracklist:
Still Dirrty
Ain't No Other Man
Understand
Slow Down Baby
Oh Mother
On Our Way
Without You
The Right Man
Candyman
Hurt
Mercy on Me
Makes Me Wanna Pray
Save Me from Myself

[divasummer]

I really liked most of “Back To Basics”.
I loved first single Ain’t No Other Man”. I love the horns and her vocals. It was a great exciting first single in my opinion.
However I was absolutely disappointed when they went with “Candyman” next. It was to vintage sounding for me. I got used to it but…
Then they released “Hurt” I was slightly disappointed. I grew to Love it, but “Understand” was right there!!!! plus it for with the theme of the album more with out going overboard like “Candyman”
I was always into “Slow Down Baby” and “Makes Me Wanna Pray”.
I actually like most of disk one.
On disk two I enjoyed “Hurt, Mercy On Me, Nasty Naughty Boy”and “Save Me From Myself” most.
I suppose she could of shaved off some songs and made it a one disk album, but I can see what she was going for and respect the effort.

[JessieLou]

LOVE this album.

The 1-2-3 punch of her debut, Stripped, and Back To Basics was iconic as fuck. I wish she would go back to that.