Posted July 25, 200618 yr from The Sun: Christina: She is brilliant CHRISTINA AGUILERA’s new album reveals the little girl with the big voice is better than ever. The petite American jetted into the UK to showcase songs from double CD Back To Basics at a London jazz club. She’s been brave and chosen to follow her heart by recording an album of jazz and blues-influenced tracks which show off her sensational voice. There are a few Lady Marmalade-style numbers which will keep the fans happy — and no doubt be released as singles. Stand-out songs for me include a huge power-ballad called Hurt, plus Nasty Naughty Boy and the first single from the album, Ain’t No Other Man, which is out on July 31. Christina has nothing to prove after selling 25 million albums worldwide but when I met her at Ronnie Scott’s this week, it was clear she was eager for approval. She said: “I hope you all like it. This album has been my life for the past 18 months.†The CD is due out on August 14. Edited August 11, 200618 yr by Blitz
July 26, 200618 yr Author Sounds interesting I'll be buying it. good to hear... there are clips of the songs in the other threads!! look out for 'Hurt'!! :wub: if anyone finds any reviews PLEASE post!! :D
August 2, 200618 yr Author amazon.com: Back to Basics, Christina Aguilera's first disc in four years, refines and clarifies the--let's call it "sexy"--aura surrounding this platinum firebrand. Now 26 and married, the best belter in a class that counts Jessica Simpson and Britney Spears on its roll call has turned her attention to love songs: the supercharged and ubiquitous first single "Ain't No Other Man," for one, and the hushed stunner "Save Me from Myself" for another. That doesn't mean she's foresworn being nasty, though. Dive deep into this set, past the gorgeous crackle that frames the old-school jazz-, blues-, and soul-inspired tracks on the first disc, and you'll reach a playful and familiar raunch; "Candyman" celebrates a "one-stop shop" who "makes the panties drop" to a boogie-woogie beat, and "Nasty Naughty Boy" sends out a heated, big-beated invitation to "sip on my champagne/Cause I'm gonna give you a little taste/Of the sugar below my waist." Thoughtful listeners should snap out of their fascination with Xtina's undiminished yet newly un-tramp-like sexuality, though, because what they'll really want to focus on throughout these 22 tracks is the honest-to-God artistry. While the rock producer Linda Perry helps disc two pop in interesting and unexpected ways (check the muffled blues number "I Got Trouble" and "Mercy on Me," an obvious nod to Fiona Apple), DJ Premier, a mainstay on Jay-Z and Nas projects, pipes a batch of aural high-fives into the nostalgia-bitten first disc (the deep-down funk of "Back in the Day," the strut-strut early hip-hop sound of "Still Dirrty"). Their nudges aside, though, Back to Basics is all Aguilera's baby--she executive-produced, and she's found herself artistically. Nobody would argue, in fact, if she swiveled around the chorus to "Ain't No Other Man," written for her husband, and aimed it at herself: "You got soul, you got class/You got style, you're badass." --Tammy La Gorce wow, excellent review!! :yahoo: :wub:
August 4, 200618 yr Just click the link below and you can read the review, they don't like it by the way. Guardian Website
August 4, 200618 yr It's not as good as I thought, and like they said, the Thank You song is cringeworthy.
August 4, 200618 yr Im waiting to buy it before I hear it, so it better be good! although maybe I should download first just to make sure :unsure:
August 4, 200618 yr I'm still not sure if I'll buy. I love Christina, but I think her new sound is DIRE :(
August 4, 200618 yr Author BOO, to them... :P this could of been posted in the B2B review thread!! actually i will move it... :D
August 4, 200618 yr Author It's not as good as I thought, and like they said, the Thank You song is cringeworthy. its not the BEST song BUT what do you expect fans of christina to say? 'your c**p and you dontinspire me'? :rolleyes: i think its great christina has given her fans a chance on one of her records, what an honour to the ones who got picked!!
August 4, 200618 yr Author from pitchfork media: Approximately one month ago, I sat across from Jordan Bratman and fixated on his unshorn facial hair. His dark brown scruff was at least three days thick, but soft-looking, and underscored his casual ensemble-- slouchy pants, mint green and navy Nike dunks, a watch, and a fitted T. The watch was the only indicator he might be stacking. (I haven't seen his stock portfolio, but considering he runs his own management company, I'm just assuming.) He sat quietly, sipping an Amstel Light (the brew of the people), while his wife, Christina Aguilera, flanked him and commanded an audience. She was playing her new double record at New York's Sony Studios for a small gathering of critics and music-industry heads. He was clearly there to show his support. Bratman is one of the main topics on Aguilera's new album, Back to Basics, and in the age of Jessicas, Nicks, and Parises flinging dramatic song-disses like passed notes in junior high, he is an unassuming plot point. He may not even have a celebrity stylist. But he inspired Aguilera to write songs like the jacked-up "Ain't No Other Man" and her ode to "The Right Man". The fact that Aguilera found love and inspiration in such an everydude is a testament to her grounded (and private) nature, far from your average InTouch fixture. And don't blame Bratman for her shift in fashion choices: In New York, before she played Back to Basics' sexy burlesque number, "Nasty Naughty Boy", Aguilera bristled at the notion that marriage would tame her image or that she would ever let a man dictate her career. Yet between her toned-down style, recent collaboration with respected hip-hop producer DJ Premier, and continued work with songwriter Linda Perry, it seems that with Back to Basics-- a sprawling double album that uses both a string section and a stylus to encompass a range of styles, including throwback jazz, soulful hip-hop, and Tim Burton-influenced carnival music-- this former Mickey Mouse Clubber has changed. Or rather, this album will change how she is perceived. Though Aguilera's previous albums, Christina Aguilera, Mi Reflejo, My Kind of Christmas, and Stripped, showed her formidable vision, range, and lusciously oscillating, post-Mariah melisma, it's been a common misconception that Aguilera was just another pop tart whose fame was based on her sexuality more than her ability to sing or write songs. Now that Back to Basics has leaked, the party line emerging is that Aguilera's finally coming into her own as an artist-- never mind that Stripped was a sprawling album of empowerment anthems and hip-hop-influenced r&b ballads, that Christina Aguilera produced hip-hop-influenced pop hits with the delectable elasticity as any single by Annie, Brandy, or Kelly Clarkson, or that Mi Reflejo translated some of those hits to Spanish. But through the four albums she's released since the age of 19, Aguilera has always been an artist for whom long vision was much more important than short hemlines. (But if the skirt's too mini for you, then tough luck.) She runs a tight ship. (Though let's hope she doesn't conceive of her own videos, whose racial dynamic is another essay entirely.) As she told me later, she devised the Back to Basics' throwback concept before she had selected collaborators, hunting producers via the post office. "I typed a letter that started, 'Dear Producer,'" she explained, "and stated what kind of record I wanted to make: A soul record with elements of blues and jazz. I had a whole list of bullet points saying exactly what I liked about each song. The list was probably a little over 30 songs, and included all the artists I mention [in the throwback number 'Back in the Day']: Memphis Minnie, Eartha Kitt. Otis Redding's 'Shake' was on it, and Ray Charles' 'Nighttime Is the Right Time'. I sent it to all the producers who I thought might be able to wrap their heads around the concept. I said in the letter [i wanted producers who could] experiment, chop things up, reinvent new sounds, recreate old throwback sounds. Some people didn't get it or, I think, couldn't get it. But Linda Perry and Premier really just went there; they were able to get into it and experiment." Premier and Perry weren't the only ones who bit. The second disc of Back to Basics begins with a menacing calliope tune, a setting for a 1920s carnival that Aguilera compared to the music industry. The song "Enter the Circus" was meant to be a collaboration with the prominent movie-score composer Danny Elfman, she said, but "one crazy night" she and Perry drank a little booze (moonshine, no doubt) and decided they could do it themselves. Still, "I really love a lot of the things Danny Elfman has done with Tim Burton," she says. "I love the soundtrack he did for Beetlejuice. There was a circus portion in one of Tim Burton's more recent movies, Big Fish. It was a carnival scene, a little bit darker circus. It wasn't all clowns and happy and hoo-ha and all this stuff. I really wanted to experiment with that idea, set it in the 1920s, and that's what we did. I still can't wait to recreate the red-and-white circus tent for a tour." She also drew from the 16th century: "Enter the Circus" features "the Gregorian choir that sang at my wedding." While Aguilera and Perry devised songs on the fly from the drink, Aguilera and Premier pieced together joints from the crates. "Premier and I did go out and dig quite a few pieces of vinyl," says Aguilera. "When I told him the idea for the song 'Back in the Day' [which shouts out influential old-school artists], I really wanted to set the tone and get the listener in the headspace of paying homage. I was really interested in seeing what he was able to do with me, considering the work he's also done with Gang Starr. He did an interlude on their record called 'A Jazz Thing', which had a lot of elements of Bird and Coltrane and Billie Holliday. The way he chopped it up was so interesting to me." Aguilera has long been a target for rockists. In the same way critics (myself included) began calling Sleater-Kinney's The Woods their greatest album partly for its obvious Led Zeppelin influences, "Ain't No Other Man" and Back to Basics are finding wider acceptance because they draw so much on jazz and soul-- two forms that are accepted to the point of ossification, far from the more female-dominated pop and contemporary r&b. Yet if anyone can recognize gender-bias it's Christina, who plainly indicted double-standard on Stripped with "Can't Hold Us Down". She declined to call herself a feminist, noting, "I really don't like labels. Feminist to one person might mean something totally different and harsh to another." But she stresses that "I do like to stick up for women's rights and I think it's important for us to voice our opinions. [The idea of] 'how we should be' sexually has been so pushed upon females from a male perspective," she observed. "You know, 'Don't be too sexual because you're gonna get labeled,' or 'Don't be not sexy cause then you'll be unattractive.' I think it's up to us as women to support each other in whatever decision we feel is right for us. [it's up to us] not to label each other, not to take on the viewpoint of what some man has tried to put upon us." Married or single, wearing chaps or a habit, singing blues or pop, accepted or dismissed, debut or double album, Christina Aguilera has done, is doing, and will continue to do Christina Aguilera. apparently this is a REALLY respectable source over in the states although i have never heard of it!! :unsure: :lol: anyway, its ANOTHER awesome review for the masterpiece 'back to basics' is!! :wub:
August 4, 200618 yr Yay! The Guardian newspaper don't know what they're on about, they are kinda old people reviewing too! So they'll like the likes of old classics such as Elvis, not fresh, new artists such as Xtina :)
August 4, 200618 yr Author I still can't wait to recreate the red-and-white circus tent for a tour." She also drew from the 16th century: "Enter the Circus" features "the Gregorian choir that sang at my wedding." i like the sound of this... :cheer: :yahoo:
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