| Back to Basics | 
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| Artist: Christina Aguilera
Label: RCA
Category: Music
List Price: $21.98
Buy New: $4.99
You Save: $16.99 (77%)
New (64) Used (46) from $4.26
Avg. Customer Rating:  420 reviews
Sales Rank: 589
Media: Audio CD
Discs: 2
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.1
Dimensions (in): 5.6 x 4.9 x 0.4
MPN: 82639
UPC: 828768963425
EAN: 0828768263921
ASIN: B000G759LW
Release Date: August 15, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Still factory-sealed, case has lots of cracks/damage; CD guaranteed
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| Tracks:
| • | Intro (Back To Basics) | | • | Makes Me Wanna Pray featuring Steve Winwood | | • | Back In The Day | | • | Ain't No Other Man | | • | Understand | | • | Slow Down Baby | | • | Oh Mother | | • | F.U.S.S. (Interlude) | | • | On Our Way | | • | Without You | | • | Still Dirrty | | • | Here To Stay | | • | Thank You (Dedication To Fans...) | | • | Enter The Circus | | • | Welcome | | • | Candyman | | • | Nasty Naughty Boy | | • | I Got Trouble | | • | Hurt | | • | Mercy On Me | | • | Save Me From Myself | | • | The Right Man | | • | Back To Basics (Bonus Video) |
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| Editorial Reviews:
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. Here, 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 bada--." --Tammy La Gorce More from Xtina 
Christina Aguilera | 
Stripped | 
Mi Reflejo | 
My Kind of Christmas | 
Christina Aguilera -Stripped-Live in the UK | 
Christina Aguilera-My Reflection |
Album Description
Japanese pressing of the highly anticipated two CD 2006 release from Pop diva Christina Aguilera features bonus Enhanced Video material. Christina Aguilera has transformed her image and musical style with every album. With the new Back to Basics album, her musical style has changed from the urban and light rock sounds of Stripped to a soulful and jazz-inspired album. Aguilera has described this album as a soul record combining elements of 1920s, '30s and '40s blues and jazz with modern day influences. The record finds her working with hip-hop producers DJ Premier, Kwame and Mark Ronson for the first time. It will also find her working with Linda Perry, who worked with Aguilera on Stripped (2002). RCA.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 415 more reviews...
 Christina's Respect to Back In the Day August 16, 2006
132 out of 151 found this review helpful
How refreshing to see someone as young as Christina paying respect and tribute to the soul/jazz/blues legends of yesteryear (even though she appears to be confused about the eras. Most of the songs has influences from the 50s, 60s, and 70s and not just the 20s, 30s, and 40s as she claimed). This confusion does not hurt the beauty of this cd. In fact, it allows Christina to offer something to everyone.
On Disc One, Christina joins forces with DJ Premier, Rich Harrison, Kwame, Mark Ronson, Charles Roane, Big Tank and Tony Reyes & Ben H. Allen for an exciting world of R&B, Soul, Hip Hop and some Blues. The songs are either uptempo or midtempo, but Christina commands every lyric and melody. From the churchy "Makes Me Wanna Pray" to the edgy "Here To Stay", Christina holds your attention. Even when she is all about "me" like on interludes F.U.S.S and Intro (Back to Basic), Christina comes across as being true with her emotions. The only song that suffers is "Thank You" which I find rather pointless.
On Disc Two, the show is all about Christina and Linda Perry (who is becoming one of the most important female writers/producers of all time). Songs like the Andrew Sisters-inspired "Candyman", the sexy "Nasty Naughty Boy, and the bluesy "I Got Trouble" are all throwbacks to another era of time. While songs like the pop ballad "Hurt" and the churchy "Mercy On Me" has a modern day twist. Christina really sells these songs but the biggest surprise is the sweet folky "Save Me From Myself" and the 50s pop style "The Right Man". In both songs, you can tell Christina is singing from the heart and to her new husband.
Disc One and Disc Two are actually two seperate albums because they are both very different in styles, but the quality of both cds are high level. The growth from the last cd is clear because the one thing I also noticed is while 'Stripped' concentrated on sound and structure, 'B2B' focus on songs and structures (two totally different concepts). This is also the cd in which Christina leaves behind Britney, Jessica, Lindsey and that crew and join Alicia and Beyonce as the most talented pop female artists of their generation. Wow! She has come a long way from her "Genie" days, let's hope she can continue to grow.
Highlights from the cd:
Back In the Day
Slow Down Baby
Without You
Still Dirrty
Candyman
Hurt
Mercy On Me
Save me From Myself
The Right Man
Double disc Back to Basics makes one excellent album. August 15, 2006
100 out of 125 found this review helpful
Its usually not a good sign when an artist delivers a two-disc record. Christina Aguilera's new record Back to Basics shows an adventurous ambition to produce two albums with different sounds but a common thematic arc. Though both discs have some excellent tracks, this could have been one amazing album instead of just two solid ones with some judicious editing. What you will find though, is great samples, huge hooks, and a fresh sound incorporating both old and new into a cohesive whole.
Disc One, produced by the impressive DJ Premier, is laden with great samples and entangling hooks. "Intro(Back to Basics)" is a funk filled preamble paying homage to "the soulsingers...jazzmakers and groundbreakers...who paved the way." Christina wastes no time in showing her vocal range on the piano and gospel choir driven track "Makes Me Wanna Pray." The excellent "Back in the Day" has a great retro sound and namechecks Coltrane and the "originators and innovators who...remain my inspiration every day." The trumpets bust out on the energetic, rhythmic "Ain't No Other Man," while "Slow Down Baby" is a sultry brush-off of a potential suitor, "You never gonna get it from me, because I'm with someone." "Oh Mother" is the most modern song on Disc One, lacing an elegant, emotional vocal on the abuse she and her mother suffered over a simple drum track. "Still Dirrty" is a mash of great samples with Christina's assurance that under the Jean Harlow glam she is still a freak. "Thank You(Dedication to Fans)" is a ode to the audience that, while very sweet, is an unnecessary addition.
Disc Two has a very different sound thanks to the tonal discord of the intro track, "Enter the Circus." The synth-heavy "Welcome" is a dark track that doesn't quite mesh with its upbeat lyrics. "Candyman" jumps with life from its opening bars, with a fun swing sound and layered harmonies. Sounding as if they came straight off a 40-year old vinyl disc, the delightfully risque "Nasty Naughty Boy," which takes sexual innuendo to a new level, and the soft and seductive "I Got Trouble" make for a great pairing. "Hurt" is a typical Christina ballad, and a likely huge hit, but one whose tone and sound are out of place on this record. The passionate "Mercy on Me" is a great stand alone track that sounds more 60s than jazz, and the sparse acoustic guitar of "Save Me From Myself" is a nice change of pace, but the keyboard-dominated "The Right Man" closes with a bit of a whimper rather than a bang. Linda Perry has co-written and produced some amazing tracks in her career, but that success leads her to veer wildly from sound to sound in search of a big single. Perry's ADD method of producing delivers three great tracks, but it's extremely ironic that DJ Premier's disc has an overall more cohesive sound with more commercial potential than Perry's.
This is a lot of music to absorb, and despite some tracks better suited to earlier albums or the recycle bin, this is one impressive collection of songs. Aguilera has an ability to reinvent herself from disc to disc, maintaining a freshness few artists have been able to retain. Her voice is as dominating as always, but she is smart enough to tone it down where necessary. Some track editing could have been used here, but there is more than enough to entertain, and fans will be able to mix and match their favorites into one amazing album. Recommended.
A.G. Corwin
St Louis, MO
 Ooooh dear, not very good at all. September 17, 2006
27 out of 44 found this review helpful
I have endured (there is no other way to describe it) this album for the last four days in my workplace. My goodwill towards and open mind about the music of Ms Christina Aguilera have dried up.
I hope I NEVER hear this sorry mess of an album again.
Why am I writing these things? Well, I have a number of complaints about this product, and a "product" it is, for I could hardly suggest that I was overtaken by any impressions that the music on this compact disc was any sort of "manifesto" of ideas, philosophies, emotions, grand passions, yearnings or abstract and attractive musical structures. This CD is a unit - to be sold, and, hopefully, sell as many as possible.
My first complaint is that this CD does not contain music which could be described as effective or successful "Pop", or Rock or Jazz or Latin or anything in particular. The songs tend to wander around aimlessly for a few minutes and then stop. Christina Aguilera's vocal style on this CD is rather one dimensional, lacking dynamics and "affected". Ms Aguilera's vocal affectations are further confused and made illogical by the overdubbing of her own voice into the songs in an apparently very ad hoc manner. The melodic lines are obscured, where they exist at all, by editing, and the vocalisations, which litter the songs, seriously detract from any sense of the contour, logic and rhetoric of the melodic line and the superstructure of each song. In fact, the songs all tend to sound very similar - this wouldn't be so bad if the model was excellent in the first place. However, the vision from the artist and her musicians and producers of what constitutes "a good song" on this album clearly seems to be a particularly confused and prosaic one. The most successful idea communicated most of the time is some sort of tedious "randy pretentiousness" - musical "soft-core porn" manqué. I got the vague impression that Ms Aguilera is trying to display her libido on this disc and she does that in a very shallow, embarrassing and ultimately phoney way.
I also feel that most of the material presented on this CD doesn't represent completed songs at all, rather, they are sketches or first drafts of songs - before a rigorous "weeding out" process, "tough decisions", intellectual discipline and some filtering would be normally applied to such material. What went onto the CD was messy, pretentious and poorly conceived, in my opinion. Was no one in the recording studio brave enough to humbly submit to Ms Aguilera that the songs could do with a little "tweaking" and rationalisation? One may suspect as much!
Ms Aguilera's voice rarely, if ever, seems to venture further than a single octave on this disc. I don't mind a limited tessitura IF the singer has a beautiful voice and/or can deliver a song with great pizzazz, "moment", beauty, style, emotion or intelligence. Christina Aguilera's voice lacks light and shade and she does not do anything interesting with the various registers of her voice. She "sits" on her voice a lot and has a slightly nasal timbre and frequently "squeezed" quality that a good singing teacher would endeavour to correct. The voice is also mixed way too high in the recording for my tastes. Again, it does tend to lead one to the conclusion that Ms Aguilera may have wanted the instrumental aspects of her album to be a very distant second to her voice. If she had the voice of Chaka Khan or Aretha Franklin, I would be willing to excuse that, however! ....
Christina Aguilera seems to want to be some sort of "pop" coloratura soprano, I suppose. However, with daring, sexy, adventurous, intelligent, qualified, wild, wildly talented and beautiful singers like Patricia Petibon, Véronique Gens, Rosemary Joshua, Carolyn Sampson, Maria Bayo and Sandrine Piau out there making CDs, the efforts of pop singers like Christina Aguilera sound rather dreary, third rate and amateurish.
This album has clearly had a lot of money spent on it and its presentation, marketing. We see some very attractive photos of the singer on the cover. Yet, I cannot help but think that it would have been better if Ms Aguilera posed for the photographers and she let someone else be brought in to sing the songs (such as they are). Remember how Audrey Hepburn acted in My Fair Lady and someone else sang her character's songs? Well, perhaps Christine Aguilera should consider that strategy next time?
Back to Basics is all show and no substance, filled with aimless sounding melodic lines. I am unmoved by the supposed beauty of this singer and her reputation. This is the first Christina Aguilera album I have heard in any thorough way and, until proof of improvement (vis-à-vis songwriting, vocal technique and lyrics) is presented to me, I hope it is the last.
A good vocalist controls the voice, something Christina is incapable of August 21, 2006
26 out of 62 found this review helpful
Like most of my reviews, I do not feel the need to review each and every song in depth. All I need to do is tell you what I think, then let you decide whether or not I'm right. Recently, I have been bombarded with "praise" for Christina's return to music. Critics claiming her to be the best vocalist in America, and the majority of people considering this legitimate, worthwhile music.
First of all, as for Christina being the best vocalist in America, I disagree. Not one of the tracks on this CD has a single moment in which Christina actually has control over her voice. Even the shortest phrases are filled with a more than plentiful amount of vibrato. No note is left unsuspended, and if you're looking for any attempt at sounding soulful, sighful, or inspired, then you won't find it; unless your definition of any of the above words happens to be a WHITE woman belting out minute long vocal solos as if she were Aretha Franklin or Gladys Knight.
And trust me, while I am not a real fan of singers such as Knight or Franklin, there is a degree of professionalism and more than anything, vocal ability that sets them apart from any other in their class. Singers such as Aretha find their power in being able to control their voice, you never feel as if they are using every last breath, or as if they're trying to show you how wide their vocal range is. Perhaps another good example of this would be Frank Sinatra, he is not the most impressive singer in technical terms, but the way he knows his voice, the way he can work around his limited range and still sing any song perfectly, and the sheer power that comes from the control he has over his voice made him who he is. The fact is, opera singers [professional ones, at least] can control their voice to a 1/32 difference in notes, allowing for the inflections and rich tapestry that is opera. They aren't belting, they're not pushing their voice to their limit, they're simply reading a sheet of music and reproducing it accordingly.
Likewise, I will say Christina Aguilera's voice will not send shivers down your spine unless you simply don't know anything about music. This album is quite the extreme opposite of Norah Jones, while Norah seems to sing every single song as if she is half asleep and dead bored, Christina seems to turn even a sweet love ballad into a loud, angry, "Look, I can sing three octaves above middle C" scream fest, to the point that Aguilera should give up pop and become the lead vocalist of a heavy metal/screamo band.
If you are truly interested in young performers, I suggest you listen to Mandy Moore's self titled third album. As far as modern 20th/21st century vocalists, she is a much better example of what a voice should be like. Mandy Moore has incredible control over her voice, and her range, while not able to go as high as say, Mariah Carey's [not that I think she is a good vocalist either] is a lot more varied and definitely capable of more inflections and feeling coming out through pop songs and light ballads.
More than anything, don't let the hype get to you. Visit your local community college, even an average vocalist can belt for 2 minutes like Christina can. "Stripped" wasn't "genius" or "sheer perfection" like some people here would want you to believe. The same applies to "BACK TO BASICS", there will always be a music snob telling you how great Christina Aguilera is, and trust me, they're not right.
And for the people who actually want jazz or blues, I HIGHLY suggest you listen to the backcatalogs of Sarah Vaughn and Ella Fitzgerald, in fact, I'd even suggest you listen to Mahalia Jackson, and even Yolanda Adams. If you truly want gospel, R&B, and blues, don't turn to an ex "Mickey Mouse Club" member, turn to someone who actually understands what it means to sing the blues, to someone who can actually sing "His Eye Is On The Sparrow" and make grown men cry, not to someone whose previous opus was a rather uninspired raunch fest whose main gimmick was "SHE'S NAKED ON THE COVER!!!!!"
 It's time now to call her out August 16, 2006
22 out of 30 found this review helpful
I've been following Xtina's career for a while because vocally, she is the best of the pop singers. As a TRUE fan of old soul, funk, jazz, blues, gospel and (to a lesser extent) modern R&B, I have heard her straining to incorporate these styles into her music. I have chalked it up to her young age and to the people in the business who were exploiting her and never took the time to properly critique her. But it was my hope that with her maturing age and working with more seasoned musicians that she would show some growth stylistically. Boy was I wrong!
This CD - a supposed shout out to the soul legends of days gone by, is really just a shout out to a twentysomething wannabe who is a talented singer but not a talented artist. Like her fellow wannabe, Mariah Carey, she never veers far enough from her self-absorption and obessession with the sound of her own voice to connect with the music and lyrics and truly deliver. She seems more to be inviting us to sit quietly and be impressed by what her voice can do than to include us in an interactive give and take of artist, art, and audience. Her music does not move nor does it inspire. And the arrogance it takes to put herself in the company of greats is amazing. She is NO Aretha. She is NO Marvin Gaye. She is NO Ella Fitgerald. She is a shark in a pond of guppies that calls itself a whale. In fact she is not a true representative of soul music at all - screaming, running every note, and oversinging does not make one a real soul singer any more than a dress, high heels, and too much makeup make a drag queen a real woman. This is what she is - a drag singer referencing a genre that she will NEVER truly occupy.
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