The 26 Best Albums Of 2010: #17. Christina Aguilera – Bionic

Released June 4, 2010

1. Bionic
2. Not Myself Tonight
3. Woohoo ft. Nicki Minaj
4. Elastic Love
5. Desnudate
6. Love & Glamour (Intro)
7. Glam
8. Prima Donna
9. Morning Dessert (Intro)
10. Sex For Breakfast
11. Lift Me Up
12. My Heart (Intro)
13. All I Need
14. I Am
15. You Lost Me
16. I Hate Boys
17. My Girls ft. Peaches
18. Vanity
Deluxe edition bonus tracks
19. Monday Morning
20. Bobblehead
21. Birds Of Prey
22. Stronger Than Ever
23. I Am (Stripped)
iTunes bonus track
24. Little Dreamer

So how do we approach a year-end review of the Bionic era? Do we focus on the good or the bad? It wouldn’t be a fair assessment unless we looked at both sides of this hot mess of an album. The bad: it was a commercial disappointment (though it wasn’t as bad as some would have you believe, debuting at number one then falling out of the top twenty is still much better than never making the top twenty in the first place), the singles didn’t take off, Christina seemed to give up way too easily and move onto promotion for her film Burlesque. The good: buried in this overlong collection is an amazing album that could have been one of the biggest and very best of the year.

Remember how we were given the lyrics of ‘Not Myself Tonight’ on Christina’s website before we heard the song? I read the lyrics and thought they were crap, which led me to a clouded view of the song itself. It took me weeks and weeks to realise the song was actually really very good, just not quite a lyrical masterpiece. It’s a great song but not a great lead single: the two best remembered songs from Christina’s last two albums are the ballads ‘Hurt’ and ‘Beautiful’, it seemed obvious that she should have gone for at least a mid-tempo if not a full-on ballad. There are lots of songs here that could have been hit singles: ‘Elastic Love’, ‘Woohoo’, ‘You Lost Me’, ‘Lift Me Up’, but none of them were given a proper chance.

Gah, I wasn’t going to focus on the bad for this review – I really love this album, but I couldn’t for a second praise it for being coherent or tight or well thought out. It’s almost like it turned out so good by accident, no thanks to the people who chose to pack a ridiculous 24 songs onto it or those who chose to promote it badly. Maybe if the album had looked like this…

1. Bionic
2. Not Myself Tonight
3. Woohoo
4. Elastic Love
5. Desnudate
6. Lift Me Up
7. I Am
8. You Lost Me
9. Birds Of Prey

…with your choice of three or so of the other tracks to act as filler between those nine solid gold songs, we could be talking about Christina’s epic year. Instead we’ll just have to settle for an amazing, underrated album.