Not Myself Tonight

Song: Not Myself Tonight

Artist: Christina Aguilera

Album: Bionic

Christina Aguilera has spent her entire career in the shadow of Britney Spears. While Christina has spent the last decade attempting to build a strong discography with her brand of adventurous pop and technically impressive vocals, Brit has had double the amount of output, all pretty squarely in the realm of dance pop, and been much more successful and obsessed over. While they both started in teen dance pop, Britney has segued into electro while Christina has played with rock, hip-hop, 20-40's style soul with a "modern" flare, and of course ballads. Many, many ballads.

I give Aguilera credit for trying, but her last album, "Back to Basics," was a double album revolving around one idea that created exactly one good song; "Ain't No Other Man." Admittedly, while not a huge fan, I thought that song was pretty amazing, and got the record. Which was terrible.

So does it come as any surprise that Xtina has now decided to give it a go at electro dance-pop? Not really. She toed the waters a bit on her greatest hits album with the first single "Keeps Getting Better" (which I liked but the world met with a shrug) as well as "re-imagining" electro versions of her biggest hits "Beautiful" and "Genie in a Bottle." Her new album is called "Bionic" and the first single is the hard-charging Polow da Don produced "Not Myself Tonight" which throws a bunch of things at the wall... club beats, Justin style bleeps, the diva vocals, sexual cooing, and a vague "it's a new me y'all" message. It's not bad... but doesn't really distinguish itself from the flurry of electro-pop that's out on the market both in corporate pop and the indie world. And at it's worse... it's a bit Pussycat Dolls.

The jury is still out on the album which is being released in June, but I must say I'm interested in her other collaborators for the project: Sia, Goldfrapp, M.I.A., Ladytron, and Le Tigre to name a few. Interesting. We'll see.

Enjoy.

Not Myself Tonight