Bionic Reviews: The Good, The Bad, & The Brutal
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"Bionic" is Christina Aguilera's first album since the birth of her son and the rise of Lady Gaga, events it seems to regard as equally significant. For Aguilera, the mere existence of Gaga must be infuriating: Gaga the interloper, who has cribbed from Aguilera for years, despite the public perception that it's the other way around; Gaga the space cadet, who appears to have dropped in from Mars but still seems more earthy than the cool, crisp Aguilera, who sings about sex like she was reading from the manual that came with her refrigerator.
On "Bionic," Aguilera tries to do it all: to revel in her newfound domesticity, to wrest her crown from Gaga and to reestablish her sex kitten bona fides. It's a tall order, and "Bionic" -- noisy, robotic and overstuffed -- goes about filling it in exactly the wrong way. It buries Aguilera's copious charms -- that voice, those flashes of playfulness, intelligence and grit -- under pedestrian electro-pop beats that could belong to anyone, and occasionally do.
"Bionic" is larded with guest stars -- Le Tigre, M.I.A., Sia -- whose combined weight suffocates. The more they labor, the less distinctive Aguilera sounds. The first half of "Bionic," the would-be edgy-electro half, possesses some great moments. There's the blazing "Not Myself Tonight," which sounds better when divorced from its infamous video. And "Elastic Love," a nifty bit of neo-futurist '80s pop co-penned by M.I.A., and "Glam," which, though it suggests "Vogue" if Gaga did it, is really the only overtly Gaga-esque track.
There are also some not-so-great moments, like the strained Nicki Minaj collaboration "Woohoo"; "Sex for Breakfast," a joyless to-do list of a song; and plenty of standard '09 dance-floor fare like "Prima Donna," which Aguilera sings if she didn't realize that anonymous, Tricky Stewart-made pop tracks are the reason God invented Ciara.
One of the disc's greatest disappointments, at least in its first half, is its virtual abandonment of Aguilera's voice. Gone is the melismatic trilling imitated by countless amateur national anthem murderers and "American Idol" contestants, replaced by undersinging (undersinging!) and overuse of the already tired robo-voice.
The disc's limpid second half mixes a handful of slow songs (like the obligatory but still goose-bump-raising inspirational ballad "Lift Me Up") with tame, hand-clappy, Gwen Stefani-inspired pop ("I Hate Boys," "My Girls," upon which a guesting Peaches can inflict little damage). None of these seems to be direct expressions of Aguilera's personality, but who knows? Artists should be moving targets, but the real Aguilera remains unnecessarily elusive. She may not know either.
The astringent album closer "Vanity" positions her as a harmless, mirror-kissing vamp. "Every day I see myself/I love me even more," explains Aguilera, who is kidding, but not really. Like many tracks on "Bionic," "Vanity" is an ode to the greatness of Aguilera cloaked in a paean to female empowerment (We're all great, seems to be her line of thinking. I'm just a little bit more great).
"Who owns the throne?" Aguilera asks as the song lurches to a close.
"You do, Mommy," coos a small child, presumably her son Max. He's very, very lucky he didn't say Lady Gaga instead.
Recommended Tracks
"Lift Me Up," "Elastic Love"
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Christina Aguilera has been absent from the music scene for almost 4 years, with her last release being 2006’s ‘Back to Basics’. Now the vocal powerhouse has returned with her new album, ‘Bionic’, equipped with new sounds, thanks to a diverse assembly of some of the industry’s most sought-after producers and songwriters. However, despite the claims by her critics that the LP represents her attempt to emulate Pop sensation Lady GaGa, the record actually showcases a wide variety of musical styles that bear little similarity to her chart counterpart. In fact, on ‘Bionic’, Aguilera finds herself imitating almost everyone except GaGa.
The 18-track LP starts of strong with the title track which was written by Aguilera (who co-wrote almost every song on the album), Kalenna Harper, John Hill, and David Taylor. It is with this song that listeners are able to hear the futuristic appeal that Aguilera has been promising her fans since 2008. Nevertheless, her vocal delivery has a striking resemblance to the work done by Santigold and could have easily been a bonus track on her 2008 self-titled project. Still, the track is held together with tight production and underscored with an ingenious beat, making the record one of the strongest pieces on the album and it is clear to see why it was once in the running to be the lead single.
Other stand-out tracks on the album include the Latin-flavoured ‘Desnudate’ and the Madonna-inspired ‘Glam’, which were both produced by Tricky Stewart. The former is by far the most infectious record of the entire album; reinforced by Aguilera’s astounding vocal performance and an unforgettable hook that should make it a major force on the charts, especially with her long forgotten Spanish-speaking audience.
The album’s 1st single, ‘Not Myself Tonight’, should not be overlooked though. Despite its failure to achieve chart success - probably because of its lack of an apparent hook - Polow Da Don’s brilliant production is hard to deny, particularly at the beat-driven climax. The Ester Dean-produced ‘Vanity’ also deserves a notable mention for it’s contemporary Pop production and hilariously arrogant lyrics - “V is for vanity. Every time I look at me, I turn myself on.”
Yet, with a tracklist as extensive as the one on ‘Bionic’, there were bound to be several missteps. Aguilera finds herself being overly manipulated by M.I.A. who co-wrote ‘Elastic Love’. Indeed, similar to the album’s title track, Aguilera sounds like she is trying to imitate someone else, rather than being herself. Although this showcases her dynamism as a singer, she goes too far and sounds almost unrecognisable. Other low points on the LP include the dated ‘Prima Donna’, ‘I Hate Boys’ - which sounds like it was a leftover from her ‘Stripped’ project’ - ‘My Girls’, the abrasively cocky ‘Love & Glamour (Intro)’ and ‘Morning Desert (Intro)’ which, while a pleasant listen, has a remarkable similarity to Mariah Carey’s ‘The Impossible’ (though not nearly as interesting).
Aguilera stumbles again on the recently announced 2nd single, ‘Woo Hoo’, where guest performer Nicki Minaj completely steals the spotlight. In fact, Minaj’s delivery on the song is so strong that Aguilera may be thought of as the featured act instead.
In the end, Aguilera shines brightest on the ballads. From the powerfully delivered ‘You Lost Me’ to the vocally astounding ‘I Am’ and ‘All I Need’, her co-writers Sia Furler and Samuel Dixon bring out the right mix of raw emotion and restraint. Moreover, on the only track that Aguilera did not co-write, ‘Lift Me Up’, Linda Perry manages to draw a passionate performance out of Aguilera while keeping her overwhelming pipes in check.
All in all, ‘Bionic’ serves as one of Aguilera’s strongest works and is definitely one of the best Pop releases of 2010 thus far. While her voice has certainly suffered some wear and tear since her last album, she manages to keep her listeners engaged (for the most part) throughout the album. Those who are eager to hear Aguilera engaging in her signature screaming best look elsewhere because it seems that she has finally learned that bigger doesn’t always mean better.
That Grape Juice Rating: 4/5 stars
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June 4, 2010
Christina Aguilera: Bionic
Sounding older and more confident than early, effortful works such as Genie in Bottle, the singer puts the X in Xtina
Pete Paphides
4/5
The transition from teen stardom to something less ephemeral isn’t easy at the best of times. For the Mickey Mouse Club alumnus Christina Aguilera it’s a transition that has inevitably involved the jettisoning of clothes for high-profile video shoots. “I nearly died when I saw she was wearing so little,” said Delci Fidler, the singer’s grandmother back in 2001, on seeing Aguilera perform Lady Marmalade wearing make-up whose total weight exceeded that of her clothes.
Semi-naked album shoots (Stripped in 2001) and Rolling Stone covers followed. But with Back to Basics in 2006 Aguilera seemed to turn a corner. Addressing her marketing executive fiancé Jordan Bratman on the album’s final song, The Right Man, Aguilera’s formidable pipes cannoned their way through a wall of choral harmonies and right into the chapel where her future husband awaited her.
If nothing else, you imagine Fidler must have been delighted to see someone make an honest woman of her granddaughter. Should she want to keep it that way, it’s perhaps best that Aguilera avoid offering her gran a copy of her fourth album, coming with what must rank as some of the singer’s most explicit songs to date.
Admittedly, there are no profanities on the digitised hump-tempo beats of Woohoo. But with such lines as, “All the boys think it’s cake when they taste my woohoo/ You don’t even need a plate/ Just ya face,” she’s clearly not talking about Kelloggs Rice Krispies Squares. As a marginally less silly companion piece to Flight of the Conchords’ horny ragga-pop explosion Boom, you really can’t fault it.
The good news is that, on what ranks as the most straight-up enjoyable album of her career, it’s not so out of place either. Whatever she’s baring on the mechanised hook-and-pull of the title track or the warped robo-pop of Elastic Love - the latter featuring the line, “If I was a ruler I’d set you straight” - it’s not her soul.
Far from being a problem, that might be the key to what makes them so likeable. If motherhood has relaxed her, then the maternal, mawkish sopfest of Lift Me Up is a small price to pay for what surrounds it. Percussive whip-cracks vie with mariachi horns that seem to ape cries of pain on the Latino sado-disco of Desnudate, while My Girls pays host to an alliance between Aguilera and celebrated Canadian gender-transgressor Peaches. Tempting as it is to imagine that Aguilera freighted in the creator of F*** the Pain Away and Diddle My Skittle for extra shock value, the fact is that Aguilera needs no help in that regard. The singer who famously sang, “I am beautiful/ No matter what they say” on her 2001 hit Beautiful, casts those sentiments in a more literal light on Vanity, a song about being “lawfully vetted” to the sight of your own reflection.
Presumably written for anyone who still didn’t know quite what she was getting at with Woohoo, Sex for Breakfast is better still - eliciting a gauzy post-coital performance from Aguilera as great in its way as the songs whose DNA it seems to share: Smokey Robinson’s Cruising and TLC’s Red Light Special.
For the measure of her progress, it’s worth contrasting the effortlessness of the execution here to early singles such as Genie in a Bottle. As early as 1999 Aguilera’s voice sounded as if it was straining to be more substantial than mere pop. By contrast, Bionic is the sound of a woman having far too much fun to give a stuff what you think. Which, needless to say, compounds its allure.
(Sony)
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Christina Aguilera: Bionic
By Ludovic Hunter-Tilney
Published: June 5 2010 01:43 | Last updated: June 5 2010 01:43
Christina Aguilera
Bionic
(RCA)
2/5
Christina Aguilera has gone from Disney poppet to “Dirrty” sleaze queen to the burlesque torch singer of her last album, 2006’s Back to Basics.
After a break for marriage and motherhood, she returns with the misfiring Bionic, which makes an ill-judged foray into electropop in an attempt to reposition her as an edgy pop superstar. Upstart rival Lady Gaga looms over the enterprise, though other names in the packed dance-pop firmament also come to mind.
The aptly titled “Not Myself Tonight” casts Aguilera as a Britney/Ke$ha-style good time girl, knocking back shots in a club and “kissing all the boys and girls” over a routine synth stomp. “Glam” is a dull rehash of Erotica-era Madonna. The enjoyably eccentric “Elastic Love” teams her with M.I.A, but the album’s other alt-pop collaboration, “My Girls” featuring Peaches, is forgettable.
Aguilera is most comfortable unfurling her powerful voice on a series of ballads such as the Linda Perry-penned stand-out “Lift Me Up”, but the abrupt lurch in tone, from robotic synths to emotional melodrama and then back again, comes across as confused and compromised. “Let us not forget who owns the throne,” Aguilera declares at the end: according to this disappointing comeback, the occupant is no longer her.
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Album review: Christina Aguilera’s ‘Bionic’ delivers what its title promises -- and then some
How’s this for a pop-music revolution? A multiplatinum-level superstar returns to the scene with her first studio album in four years, and she’s got more on her agenda than shifting an easy million units. To be sure, Christina Aguilera has no intention of letting her star dim without a fight, and she opens and closes Bionic (her new album, due next week) with state-of-the-art boasting to remind us that once, many pop eons ago, she was second only to Britney Spears among hit-making divas. But she clearly isn’t willing to sell her soul in order to line her coffers with more gold and platinum. This is the least overtly mainstream music of her career so far, and even if the failure of the treading-water first single didn’t hint at her endangered commercial fortunes, chart success would not be a given.
Forget “Not Myself Tonight” - if you haven’t already. It was not a wise choice for the first single, and fortunately, it’s Bionic’s weakest moment. The electro numbers on the first half of the album emphasize sound over song, accentuating the cybernetic aspect of the definition of “bionic,” with synthetic beats and occasionally processed vocals, which is initially jarring since Aguilera is one singer who definitely doesn’t need any AutoTune assist.
The artificial clamor would have been disastrous if Aguilera and her parade of producers - oh, how I miss the good old days of one album, one producer - didn’t push the sonic boundaries of modern pop with such an appealing wall of sound. Tracks like “Glam” and “Prima Donna,” as well as the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink-explosive opening title track, “Elastic Love” (co-written by M.I.A.) and “Woohoo” (the second single, which should have been the first), may not have melodies or hooks that burrow themselves into your memory after one listen, but they are among the most interesting music Aguilera has recorded. There are 18 tracks in all - including three interludes - and one of the most remarkable things about Bionic is that for such a long album, it goes by as quickly as it does.
Lyrically, she’s not breaking new ground: “Desnudate” (that would be “get naked” in Spanish), is punctuated with cool electro horns and incongruously followed by “Glam,” a ’90s-style ode to catwalking that warns “don’t let the clothes wear you.” Yawn. But the best thing about the electro-pop numbers is that Aguilera doesn’t beg comparisons to Lady Gaga or Britney or even Madonna, but rather conjures aural memories of Berlin’s Terri Nunn and Missing Persons’ Dale Bozzio as well as S Club 7’s Rachel Stevens (don’t laugh - check out Stevens’ brilliant, overlooked 2005 album Come and Get It, and see what I mean). I’m not saying the songs are ’80s retro because they aren’t. The most impressive thing about the album’s first half is that it recalls ’80s new-wave queens while simultaneously sounding of the moment and futuristic. Who knows what Aguilera’s longtime fans will think? Who cares? Well, she probably does, but that’s clearly not her primary concern. Like Rihanna’s Rated R, Bionic works because Aguilera’s not going after the easy hit.
Vocally, she occasionally still comes across like a show off, huffing, puffing and thumping her chest, as if to say, “I may be little but I can blow.” But for surprisingly long stretches, Aguilera keeps the vocal pyrotechnics in check, emphasizing subtlety over bombast, and on the ballads (more on them later), allowing her vulnerability to show. Attacking the electro pop with oversinging would have defeated the purpose, as in this kind of music, the vocals are supposed to blend into the mix as another “instrument,” enhancing, complementing the music but not overpowering it.
“All I Need,” “I Am” and “You Lost Me,” a trio of stunning ballads well past the album’s midway point, stress the “human” in the super-human aspect of “bionic,” and benefit most from Aguilera’s lighter vocal approach. Unlike pop’s biggest recent female arrivals (Gaga, Ke$ha and Katy Perry), Aguilera can sell a traditional ballad, and she could have gone to Ryan Tedder and commissioned her own “Bleeding Love,” “Halo” or “Battlefield.” Instead she teamed up with frequent Zero 7 collaborator Sia Furler and produced her best down-tempo songs since “Beautiful.” “I Am,” in particular, is 3:55 of chamber pop that expands on the self-acceptance theme of “Beautiful.” It sounds unlike anything on the radio right now and should eventually be a single. Aguilera makes her boldest Bionic impression here, and she doesn’t once raise her voice.
These tracks are so gorgeous that it’s almost a disappointment when “I Hate Boys” raises the tempo again, and the three electro tracks that close the album are a bit of a letdown because one wishes Aguilera had spent more time exploring her vulnerable side. Fewer collaborators (maybe an entire Aguilera/Furler/Linda Perry affair) and a non ballad or two that push pop’s limits without sacrificing songcraft - think “Get Mine, Get Yours” from Stripped, or “Candyman” from Back to Basics - would have made Bionic closer to great than merely good. Still, it’s Aguilera’s best album, and even if morphing into the six million dollar woman has cost her some soul, she ultimately proves that she still has a strong, beating heart.
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