紐約時報
August 17, 2006
Critic’s Notebook
Honey They’ve Shrunk the Pop Stars (but Christina Aguilera Fights On)
By KELEFA SANNEH
To hear Christina Aguilera tell it, she has spent most of her recent career
fighting for her rights. In nearly every interview, she talks about the
importance of being true to yourself and being fearless. You can hear it in
her music, too, which is full of mildly rebellious rhetoric. Or as she put it
in a recent single: “Thank you for making me a fighter.”
Precisely what is she fighting for? Let’s see. She has affirmed in song the
importance of being “beautiful in every single way.” She has insisted on
recording both sentimental ballads and jumped-up club tracks. And in “Still
Dirrty,” from her new double CD “Back to Basics” (RCA/Sony BMG) she
demands that she be allowed to make mildly smutty music videos whenever she
wants. Make no mistake: in Ms. Aguilera’s Bill of Rights, she is granted the
freedom to “wear lingerie outside of my clothes.”
There’s nothing unreasonable about these demands. You might even say that
for someone like Ms. Aguilera these aren’t rights at all: they’re
responsibilities. If she’s a fighter, it’s because she’s fighting for the
right to be what she already is: a pop star. She’s demanding that she be
allowed to do her job.
This demand is the main theme of “Back to Basics,” a double CD that
contains a roughly even number of great songs and lousy ones. The first disc
is full of rationales, ranging from the self-referential (“I’m going back
to basics,” she sings, in the introduction) to the paradoxical (“I pay no
mind/To the negative kind,” she claims). Perhaps this is the weird but (in
hindsight) predictable result of our hyper-tabloid culture. In print, online,
on television, celebrities are constantly being asked to explain themselves.
So we shouldn’t be surprised when they comply.
The second disc, largely written with Linda Perry, ends with a couple of
songs clearly meant as odes to Ms. Aguilera’s husband, Jordan Bratman. But
even these literal-minded love songs seem like explanations: having told us
how much she has changed, the singer now wants to tell us why. “Never felt
like I needed any man,” she wails, in the beyond-bombastic finale, “The
Right Man.” But she’s not really addressing her husband; she’s addressing
listeners who are confused about all the mushy stuff. Even when she’s
singing a love song, Ms. Aguilera sounds a bit defensive.
Can you blame her? These days, pop stars — especially female ones — decline
our demands for explanations at their own peril. Look at Janet Jackson, whose
career still hasn’t recovered from the Super Bowl incident in 2004 and (more
to the point) from her silence after it. And you can bet that when Ms.
Aguilera’s former counterpart, the besieged Britney Spears, finally makes
another album, it will be full of complaints (about her treatment at the
hands of the tabloids), justifications, counter-arguments and — best of all
— juicy details.
“Back to Basics” arrives at a time when pop stars — again, especially
female ones — are under siege. With album sales down and singles more
important than ever, many aspiring divas find themselves living hit to hit.
After failing to ascend the singles chart, the seemingly unstoppable singer,
dancer and actor Christina Milian was dropped from her label, Island Def Jam,
barely a month after releasing a heavily promoted album. (Rihanna, her
lightweight former label mate, has had much better luck on the charts: she’s
a smaller personality, but she makes bigger hits.) The punky loudmouth Pink
is on the ropes, and bulletproof Beyonce suddenly looks vulnerable; by
contrast the all-but-faceless flirts in the Pussycat Dolls are riding high.
This is the era of the incredible shrinking pop star.
Lest we forget, Ms. Aguilera has something that most of her rivals don’t: a
freakishly huge voice. But so what? As pop stars have shrunk, perhaps their
vocal ranges have shrunk too. Mariah Carey made her big comeback not by
belting but by cooing (“We Belong Together”) and murmuring (“Shake It Off”
). Another big-voiced star, Kelly Clarkson, also learned how to hold back:
her career-defining hit, “Since U Been Gone,” isn’t a showoffy ballad, it’
s a singalong rock song.
To Ms. Aguilera, this state of affairs means one thing: market share up for
grabs. She seems intent on establishing herself as a modern anomaly, a pop
singer who really — really, really — sings. Much of the first “Back to
Basics” disc was produced by DJ Premier, a pioneering hip-hop producer; his
barebones staccato beats give her plenty of room to ululate. His productions
include “Ain’t No Other Man,” the album’s glorious, mile-a-minute hit
single, which proves once again that no one can roar like Ms. Aguilera.
Her decision to work with the low-key Premier was also a decision to snub
some of the big-name producers on whom pop stars often rely. In one song she
rails against a big-name producer who is also a former collaborator, Scott
Storch, taunting, “Looks like I didn’t need you.” Indeed Ms. Aguilera
looks as if she’s well on her way to achieving what really matters: an
impressive first week of sales. (For what shall it profit a pop star, if she
shall gain the whole world and lose her own SoundScan figures?)
There is a lot about “Back to Basics” that simply doesn’t make sense.
(Suffice it to say that her homages to World War II-era pop music resemble
skits more than songs.) And yet Ms. Aguilera’s sometimes risible
righteousness — her insistence that she’s fighting for her rights — makes
more sense than ever.
With every statement of purpose and every expression of pique, with every
ostentatious ad-lib and show-stopping high note, she is serving notice that
the fight will go on. She is fighting for the powerless, the voiceless, the
prideless; all the downtrodden drudges who are tired of being told what to
do. Perhaps you’re familiar with these pitiable creatures. They used to be
known as pop stars.
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