Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 28/10/2002
Label: RCA

To call this album preposterous would be a grand understatement. Circus acts featuring a hundred unicycling elephants juggling flaming torches to the theme tune from 'The Dambusters' are preposterous. Ten-hour rock operas about the fall of the Roman Empire, acted by knife wielding octogenarians and sung entirely in Icelandic are preposterous. This twenty track, seventy-seven minute, magnum opus of a career reinvention is so ridiculously, unbelievably, fantastically over the top you can't help looking for the name Jim Steinman on the sleeve.

Forget all you know about Christina Aguilera. She's discovered sex, rebellion, rock'n'roll and, at one amazing instant, drum'n'bass. Oh yes. She has jettisoned all notions of shame and decorum in the favour of becoming an uber-diva, a 21st century aluminium and steel robot Whitney with lasers for eyes and a voice that can shatter planets.

Don't be put off by the single, 'Dirrty'. It's little more than a clearly signposted shifting of the parameters, interesting chiefly for the pneumatic rhythm and guttural cabaret. In fact, the least affecting moments here are the most self-consciously state of the art: the recycled, sub-Destiny's Child growl of 'Can't Hold Us Down' and the identikit R&B of 'Get Mine, Get Yours'. Much better are the excerpts from 'Cabaret: The Bunny Boiler Years'.

The real entertainment starts, inevitably, with a ballad. 'Walk Away' is Liza Minelli sharpening a carving knife as mascara runs down her face. It's followed by the first of many sudden genre and mood shifts. 'Fighter' is hilarious: a brilliantly grandiose 'Bad'-era Michael Jackson rocker that finds Aguilera strutting like the least menacing person on Earth. 'Infatuation', next, is 'La Isla Bonita' meets 'Papa Don't Preach'. In Spanish. Partly. Then there's 'Loving For Me', an orchestral slice of Seventies soul that sees our girl get positively orgasmic over her dream date.

It goes on and on, each song more outrageous than the last. 'Impossible' is a doomed diva weepie replete with wailing woman Whitney-isms and Greek chorus. 'Under Appreciated' takes a wander into Macy fightback funk territory. 'Beautiful' insists "everyday is so beautiful and then suddenly it's hard to breathe", and then heads off on a 'Don't Look Back In Anger'-style self-pityfest, with overblown Beatles strings and the sound of Robbie gnashing his teeth in envy in the background.

But it doesn't stop there. Of course it doesn't. 'Makeover' has to be heard to believed. It starts with a syrup slinky flamenco crawl before suddenly breaking into the chorus to 'I'll Stick Around' by the Foo Fighters. You thought Christina wanted to be Madonna. You were wrong. She wants to be Courtney Love. With a machine gun. Listen to her spitting out "I'm the only one who can rescue me from me". She's on the verge of schizophrenia here. Especially as the next song could be an Andrew Lloyd Webber classic.

The only possible move after this is for Christina to do a duet with Meatloaf. Or better still, marry Meatloaf. Dressed as the 'Wicked Witch Of The West'. Nothing else could possibly come close.

    by Ian Watson