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- Who clipped Christina Aguilera's Bi-On-Ic wings? | Priya Elan
Christina Aguilera's album is disappointingly predictable. Is she just the latest artist to suffer from record label intervention?
In his review, Alexis Petridis called Christina Aguilera's Bi-On-Ic "occasionally brilliant and brave, occasionally teeth gritting and stupid". Well the biggest disappointment arises out of how much more brilliant and brave it could have been had it not been for someone, possibly Aguilera's record label RCA, getting cold feet regarding the original vision of the album.
As Alexis points out, the wonderful Ladytron collaboration Birds Of Prey has been relegated to the bonus disc. But so has the duo of great Santigold tracks, Monday Morning and Bobblehead. At least they had a better fate than the Goldfrapp co-writes and her cover of Ladyhawke's My Delirium and (according to collaborator Sia) the proposed first single; the dubby sounding title track, all of which missed the boat. These snippets of information, however, give a tantalising insight into what the album could have been.
From early quotes about Bi-On-Ic, it seemed like it would be experimental, driven by alternative pop classics. During interviews for 2008's Keeps Gettin' Better: A Decade Of Hits, Christina said her next album would sound "futuristic", taking pop art cues from, of all people, The Velvet Underground and Nico. As if this wasn't mind-boggling enough, Johanna Fateman from Le Tigre excitedly blogged that "Deceptacon was Christina's jam", while Ladytron's Reuben Wu revealed the former Mouseketeer played Elastica in her car.
To fit with this new musical edge, Christina even hinted at a persona change, brought about by her pregnancy. She told Ryan Seacreast: "I can't say too much but I've been brainstorming for the last nine months of pregnancy so I have all these mood boards for visuals and how I'd like to evolve and transform into a new character."
As Reuben Wu of Ladytron told Spinner earlier this year: "My feeling is that she got to a point in her life where she wanted to take her music to a different level. She was willing to take a risk and go in a completely different direction."
But the final product is an album that takes too few risks and, aside from a few bright spots (the Sia ballads, the MIA track), eschews the more outré collaborations for by-numbers contributions from Tricky Stewart (known for his work with Mariah Carey) and Polow da Don (associated with the Pussycat Dolls).
So what happened? Given the snippets we know about what was happening in the run up to Bi-On-Ic, it would be fair to assume that the resulting album is the result of the record label playing it safe, ditching the challenging for the predictable. After all, record companies have a habit of getting their big acts to change planned releases. Famously, the now-classic likes of Diana Ross's Diana and Blur's Modern Life Is Rubbish were meddled with after mutterings from unhappy label heads, while Marvin Gaye's What's Going On and Fleetwood Mac's Tusk dismayed their paymasters. Lindsey Buckingham snarkily commented that "when the people at Warners first heard Tusk they saw their Christmas bonuses going out the window". Most recently, both Klaxons and Jennifer Hudson were told to re-record their all-important second albums.
It would be easy to imagine an out of touch A&R blanching at the sound of Aguilera pushing the pop envelope. The thing is though, "playing it safe" in a post-Gaga world is a pop anomaly. Diana Vickers scored a number one with an album featuring a song co-written by Lightspeed Champion and a Sugarcubes cover. Consequently, Bi-On-Ic is not the sound of assured success; it's the sound of Aguilera going from a knowing anti-Britney to a lacklustre relic from a different era. The public seem to agree: the single Not Myself Tonight has failed to make a significant impression on the charts, her American tour has been scrapped and fans have been bemoaning the tracks that made the final cut of the album. From potentially the biggest pop reinvention since Madonna's Ray Of Light to this? A shame and a lesson that labels should have more trust in their artists.
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Переслать - And in other news ... Whoomph! It's Barack Obama!
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guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More FeedsПереслать - Video: Watch the video for Gil Scott-Heron's I'm New Here
This beautiful cover of the Smog track is a highlight from Scott-Heron's latest album
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