Christina Aguilera - 25th anniversary of the vocal bible

[Caviar]

The VOICE

[Caviar]

[Luckie Starchild]

Jul 16, 2021 9:59:56 GMT -5 🇯🇲 dollybaby 🇯🇲 said:

Generous queen

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CRXoODFphNA

She's so generous that she's even giving away free tickets to rich people who can afford to go SoulCycle!

[Caviar]

She’s still on the Billionaires Tour. The longest running tour for ten years straight!

[Luckie Starchild]

Jul 17, 2021 19:51:42 GMT -5 Caviar said:

She’s still on the Billionaires Tour. The longest running tour for ten years straight!

All of the FABULOUS people simply ADORE her!

[Exclusive]

https://www.instagram.com/p/CRfo27LpdJD

[Caviar]

This is why I stan a legend!!

Ariana was also there last night!

[Caviar]

[Caviar]

[🇯🇲 dollybaby 🇯🇲]

Yaaaaaas....Xtina showing Ariana how it's done. 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾

[Caviar]

Queen!!!

[Ryan]

My Kind of Christmas is getting reissued with new holographic artwork this October.



www.amazon.com/My-Kind-Christmas-Christina-Aguilera/dp/B08Z5LSLKM/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=my+kind+of+christmas+aguilera&qid=1627749332&sr=8-3

[Koochie]

Britney stans have caused “Your Body” to go viral on Twitter lol

[Zinc.]

http://instagram.com/p/CSXNmu_HRlD

[divasummer]

I really liked a decent amount of “Back To Basics”.
My favorites are “Understand , Ain’t No Other Man, Makes Me Wanna Pray, Hurt, Save Me From Myself and Slow Down Baby”.
One of my least favorites from the release was “Candyman”…

[gbaby]

Loved BTB. Makes Me Wanna Pray, Slow Down Baby, Still Dirrty, Mercy On Me and Save Me From Myself are probably my favorites. I mostly skipped Oh Mother, Enter The Circus and The Right Man, but everything else I adore.

Ain't No Other Man is iconic - those horns start and I'm brought right back to her concert, goosebumps and all. <3

[Mike]

New certifications from the RIAA:

"Back To Basics" (Album): 2x Platinum
"Ain't No Other Man": 2x Platinum
"Hurt": 1x Platinum
"Candyman: 1x Platinum

[Caviar]

Wow! "Hurt" is platinum!

[🇯🇲 dollybaby 🇯🇲]

Woah..15 yrs already! Xtina was still at her peak back then. I remember buying the album 3 months after its release from my college's Barnes and Noble store. I love all the songs from Disc 1. Such great, warm memories. 🤗

[felipe]

Crazy to look back now and see she went from her peak to being considered "a flop" on her next release, and never fully recovered since. She was the best pop artist of the 00s.

[upsidedown]

Aug 8, 2021 13:13:57 GMT -5 Koochie said:

Britney stans have caused “Your Body” to go viral on Twitter lol

Your Body still slaps to this day and I really wish she released the "Fuck Your Body" version officially.

[Love Plastic Love]

I loved Back to Basics and wish the era had been handled better. It was still pretty successful but could have been more so. Lots of great songs on it though.


Waiting for her next masterpiece right now though I will assume we won't be getting it until 2024 or something lol.

[🇯🇲 dollybaby 🇯🇲]

Random, but I just noticed that her albums tend to have a pattern like the artwork either have a light colored or black theme.

Light: debut, back to basics, lotus
Dark/black: stripped, bionic, liberation

Maybe on her next album she'll go back to a light colored theme lol

[🇯🇲 dollybaby 🇯🇲]

[Caviar]

http://instagram.com/p/CS2m1o0pC22

[Choco]

"Your Body" deserved better.

[theflying]

Aug 11, 2021 6:43:22 GMT -5 felipe said:

Crazy to look back now and see she went from her peak to being considered "a flop" on her next release, and never fully recovered since. She was the best pop artist of the 00s.

I will say, as crazy as the trajectory is, even distilling things down to what’s important - the quality of her music took a hit after Back to Basics.

I mean, Not Myself Tonight is just not good. Is it serviceable and catchy? Sure. But, you can see based on all the metrics that people genuinely didn’t like the song. And Bionic has a lot of good instincts, and I’m not saying it deserved to flop, but a lot of the melodies and lyrics just weren’t as strong on Bionic. That stuff carried over to Lotus too.

I don’t say that as even a casual fan — she was my number one artist from childhood. The music took a hit. I’m listening to Lorde’s “Solar Power” right now, and this is clearly an album that will commercially flop (despite the “look at the sales with no hit!” chatter) — and yet, even though Lorde threw her fanbase for a loop with the new sound, it’s still clearly connecting because the quality is still really high even if it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.

Back to Basics was the last time a Christina album felt totally strong from top to bottom. Where there was that high a level of commitment shown.
The best way I can describe her stuff after that is there’s something…artistically guarded by it. Like, you really can feel how whatever the mess of Bionic was knocked something out of her, and instead of trying to fight back she just didn’t want to play that game anymore. No fan ever wants their fave to be unhappy, but when Christina stopped chasing the career heights, her melodies weren’t as sharp, her lyrics became a little more generic or reductive of something she’d already done. The production *clearly* took a hit.

Liberation was a much nicer return to form, but you can still tell the fight to really GO for something as a total body of work was still absent, even if a lot of the individual songs on it are really strong.

[theflying]

To do a quick addendum to my last thought on how after Back to Basics her music took a hit (see the bottom of last page), here are a few more specific thoughts on Bionic:

The highest quality song on Bionic is WooHoo. Why? It's a genuine bop, with great, tight production, a really catchy melody, well-placed adlibs, and her voice feels strong and free instead of processed and constrained. Above all else, it feels *authentic*.

Stuff like the song Bionic -- which I like -- it sounded dated even when it came out. Was that an intentional part of the charm? Probably. Is it a good album opener? Absolutely. But what is the universal feeling we connect to with that song?
If "Bionic" is the album's opener, it just reflects the surface-y and lack of emotional punch to most of the album's original instincts. Elastic Love, again, you feel like Christina is trying on a costume of ideas rather than actually putting her heart on the line in any of these conceptual songs -- so, because they don't stick, they just feel jarring because you don't listen to Christina Aguilera for any semblance of what this song is, even if the song itself is perfectly fine. It's the same with Birds of Prey -- there's some genuinely interesting instincts here -- but you listen to this song and since the surrounding tracks don't provide extra context to fill in the gaps of what the function of this song is, you're confused what exactly she's going for (hence it's a bonus track).

Glam is like the epitome of everything wrong with this album. Why? It's a harmless, fun, little carefree strut. But the whole thing just comes across so...B-list. Like, it really does feel like a white woman "Yas Queening" her gays in a song -- it's just basic and uninteresting. It's the same with I Hate Boys -- she thinks she's being fun and carefree, but it just ends up feeling surface-y and thus not sticking. It's like she defaulted to "fun" in lieu of trying to say anything interesting, and both these songs are such good examples of that. My Girls, which I do like, still feels forced, like a cheerleader trying to hype up a dead crowd, around a really basic generic message of girl power that she'd already done so much better her prior 3 albums. Vanity, Bobblehead -- again, she decided to go for carefree, camp, and fun -- but looking back, you just can't help but detect that this part of her that doesn't feel like trying too hard is because it's allowing her to stay more artistically and emotionally guarded.

On Bionic, you have the stuff that's high quality, but doesn't connect in the same way because it doesn't surprise us and the concept/execution of the song just feels reductive of something she's done before. Prima Donna (which we figure to have been included because the label) is really catchy and feels authentically like Christina -- but there's nothing new or interesting in here that she either hasn't covered before or adjusts our perception of her. It's the same with Stronger Than Ever -- why would you listen to this (or Army of Me) over Fighter? Sex for Breakfast feels authentic, is high-quality, and a strong song. But: 1) a mid-tempo R&B sex jam has nothing to do with the theme of the album, 2) there isn't any new dimension being explored in the concept of the song, nor is the subject matter saying anything interesting that she hadn't said before on "Get Mine, Get Yours". It's the same thing with Lift Me Up -- it's too generic to connect. Same with Monday Morning -- I like it, but there's no heart on the line, no interesting artistic thoughts here -- it's someone going through the motions.
I Am is the same. On "paper" it's lovely, but it just feels like someone doing the steps of a self-empowerment song. There's no stakes to the song. She sings "I'm asking you to take me just the way I am" as if she's already perfectly content with herself regardless of what the guy says, and the song is like that from the very first lyric.
All I Need -- Again, she's so incredibly self-assured, and it makes the song completely uninteresting. Compare it with Save Me From Myself -- where there's REAL vulnerability and laying it all out there, with REAL stakes in the song.

To me, going from Save Me From Myself to the ballads on Bionic is SUCH a good example of the quality dip from Back to Basics. You went from deeply beautiful, restrained, heartfelt, and vulnerable -- to very self-assured, guarded, by-the-numbers-generic songs.

The one exception? You Lost Me. Why?

My personal theory about this album is that her marriage was really in trouble and I wonder if she just didn't want to get into it and tried to escape into more "fun", surface stuff. I'm not saying this is proof, but this might be why You Lost Me feels actually authentic. I am done. Smoking gun. We lost it all. The love is gone. I mean, geez -- if any part of that is from her own life, that about sums up Bionic to me as an album where Christina's marriage is dead and she's escaped into conceptual ideas and "having fun" over wanting to really get into it. In terms of the song, there's actual vulnerability there (instead of the "vulnerability" that was touted on the other ballads just because she sang more restrained).
There's an actual reason to listen to this song rather than something she's done before.
But in terms of comparing it to the big radio-ready ballad on Back to Basics, Hurt -- You Lost Me starts with the end result: The love is gone and this is how she's feeling. Whereas with Hurt, there's an active situation, with stakes going on -- If I had just one more day, I would tell you how much that I missed you since you've been away. Hurt ends up being compelling because of this compelling situation with stakes for the narrator going on; You Lost Me is a reporting of the current state of a dead love and how she's feeling (confused and lost), and thus, the song just doesn't take off like it thinks it does.

[Snowbeast]

Aug 23, 2021 18:36:03 GMT -5 theflying said:

To do a quick addendum to my last thought on how after Back to Basics her music took a hit (see the bottom of last page), here are a few more specific thoughts on Bionic:

The highest quality song on Bionic is WooHoo. Why? It's a genuine bop, with great, tight production, a really catchy melody, well-placed adlibs, and her voice feels strong and free instead of processed and constrained. Above all else, it feels *authentic*.

Stuff like the song Bionic, which I like, it sounded dated even when it came out. Was that an intentional part of the charm? Probably. Is it a good album opener? Absolutely. But what is the universal feeling we connect to with that song?
If "Bionic" is the album's opener, it just reflects the surface-y and lack of emotional punch to most of the album's original instincts. Elastic Love, again, you feel like Christina is trying on a costume of ideas rather than actually putting her heart on the line in any of these conceptual songs -- so, because they don't stick, they just feel jarring because you don't listen to Christina Aguilera for any semblance of what this song is, even if the song itself is perfectly fine. It's the same with Birds of Prey -- there's some genuinely interesting instincts here -- but you listen to this song and since the surrounding tracks don't provide extra context to fill in the gaps of what the function of this song is, you're confused what exactly she's going for (hence it's a bonus track).

Glam is like the epitome of everything wrong with this album. Why? It's a harmless, fun, little carefree strut. But the whole thing just comes across so...B-list. Like, it really does feel like a white woman "Yas Queening" her gays in a song -- it's just basic and uninteresting. It's the same with I Hate Boys -- she thinks she's being fun and carefree, but it just ends up feeling surface-y and thus not sticking. It's like she defaulted to "fun" in lieu of trying to say anything interesting, and both these songs are such good examples of that. My Girls, which I do like, still feels forced, like a cheerleader trying to hype up a dead crowd, around a really basic generic message of girl power that she'd already done so much better her prior 3 albums. Vanity, Bobblehead -- again, she decided to go for carefree, camp, and fun -- but looking back, you just can't help but detect that this part of her that doesn't feel like trying too hard is because it's allowing her to stay more artistically and emotionally guarded.

On Bionic, you have the stuff that's high quality, but doesn't connect in the same way because it doesn't surprise us and the concept/execution of the song just feels reductive of something she's done before. Prima Donna (which we figure to have been included because the label) is really catchy and feels authentically like Christina -- but there's nothing new or interesting in here that she either hasn't covered before or adjusts our perception of her. It's the same with Stronger Than Ever -- why would you listen to this (or Army of Me) over Fighter? Sex for Breakfast feels authentic, is high-quality, and a strong song. But: 1) a mid-tempo R&B sex jam has nothing to do with the theme of the album, 2) there isn't any new dimension being explored in the concept of the song, nor is the subject matter saying anything interesting that she hadn't said before on "Get Mine, Get Yours". It's the same thing with Lift Me Up -- it's too generic to connect. Same with Monday Morning -- I like it, but there's no heart on the line, no interesting artistic thoughts here -- it's someone going through the motions.
I Am is the same. On "paper" it's lovely, but it just feels like someone doing the steps of a self-empowerment song. There's no stakes to the song. She sings "I'm asking you to take me just the way I am" as if she's already perfectly content with herself regardless of what the guy says, and the song is like that from the very first lyric.
All I Need -- Again, she's so incredibly self-assured, and it makes the song completely uninteresting. Compare it with Save Me From Myself -- where there's REAL vulnerability and laying it all out there, with REAL stakes in the song.

My personal theory about this album? Her marriage was really in trouble and I wonder if she just didn't want to get into it and tried to escape into more "fun", surface stuff. I'm not saying this is proof, but this might be why You Lost Me feels actually authentic.

I still randomly hear I KNOW ILL REST TOMORROWWWWWWW in my head. Her delivery on that song is chilling.

Honestly, your overall sentiment when describing these songs could transfer onto anything she’s done since Bionic, too. Her last great “album” was Back to Basics, which also drowned any real vulnerability (aside from Hurt) in concept overkill.

Her albums are generally mixes that aim to showcase vocal ability and be listenable bops. To be honest, after Stripped I don’t feel like the GP is listening to what she sings, they’re tuning in for the signature voice and to be blown away by how she sings it.

[theflying]

Snowbeast, we’re definitely in agreement with that sentiment applying to most of Lotus, too. Liberation is a much stronger return to form, and there’s a lot more authenticity there in the individual songs even if the actual album as a whole isn’t trying to aim for “body-of-work” highs.

So, about Back to Basics:

I don’t agree with you — there’s a lot of genuine vulnerability and authenticity on that album.

Look at The Right Man — it’s not a song particularly regarded as a standout, or remembered necessarily. But you can absolutely feel Christina right there - she talks of her past, her current feelings, her future daughter — all in a powerful active situation of a wedding, with a ton of stakes in how the vocal climaxes to the “taking of a chance”. That’s a ton of vulnerability, and of a new, personal dimension there. The Right Man alone — again, not particularly regarded as a standout or highlight on Back to Basics — is a higher quality song than almost anything on Bionic or Lotus and much of Liberation.

Welcome is also really strong and vulnerable, all in the active situation of starting a circus show; being on top of the world and then falling to the ground — wondering where did they all go? Singing about how she’s been pushed down, playing the clown — all absolutely vulnerable.

On Our Way and Without You — while not being ground-breaking, they work because they were different dimensions than Christina and covered before, and you can definitely hear the genuine sentiment going to her sister, and the fragility of what the world would look like without her lover.

Save Me From Myself is one of the most genuine, vulnerable, best songs she’s ever done.

Makes Me Wanna Pray is such a good example of Christina being AUTHENTICALLY joyful that feels so free and unforced, compared to the forced, sterile dude of “My Girls” or “I Hate Boys”.


Honestly? Back to Basics is REALLY strong. It deserved to be even more successful, and I wish it was a little more remembered in the zeitgeist.