Christina Aguilera wants to be a new "old school" soul singer more than anything..

and 'ain't no other man' is one of the most thrillingly soulful vocal performances of the year, no question. she sounds like she's going to burst with the sheer joy of being in love!

They are often cringe worthy though, and I often find on this new album if I like a verse, she'll ruin it with an awful chorus, or a good beat will be ruined with terrible lyrics. To me she'll never be more than a pop singer with an above average voice, and that's not what she's aiming for with this new album.

(I've been painting the ceiling of my spare room today so I might be suffering slightly from paint fumeage)

ouch, man. just ouch.

On that level, she sounds pretty damn legit to me. Great song, and a perfectly respectable slice of retro-soul. Is it contrived? Hell, yeah, but that doesn't mean it isn't valid. I hear more feeling than rehashed pretense-of-feeling.

FWIW, despite of the talk about her "new image", she comes off exactly as slutty/sexy as ever, just a bit less desperate, and recontextualized for the charm sleaze seems to aquire when it becomes antique.

http://files.colonies.com/UserData/722559/BlogPhotos/candyman.jpg

Anyway i'm not comparing Christina to these classic singers, because she's not on the same level is she really? She must have got the wrong memo though because she seems pretty sure she is.

To me she'll never even be that.

bbby glssp has discovered ilx :(

The more I read your comment, the more I'm inclined to gouge my eyes out.

Dude, I don't think she's bothered with soul. It's like questioning Merzbow saying he's not Pop enough.

what the hell are you on about?

Aretha didn't. Same for, you know, most jazz singers.

and it often serves to mask the deficiencies of the voice behind the pretty face

...or something like that.

Well, I think the whole auto-tune aspect is a whole other topic that I don't think Aguliera is actually guilty of.

I hate to say it, but it wasn't until a few years ago when I began hearing various mash-ups, that I began to realize what an awesome singer X-tina is. It also made me realize what I don't like about most modern r&b production. For me, the super-clean backgound swallows the vocals and call way too much attention to itself. What I like about soul singers are the imperfections of their voices - the tears and distressed qualities. These qualities seem enhanced when set in context of other instruments full of tiny imperfections.

But maybe that's just me.

Like Otis' rasp? I agree with you.

Whew. Glad I figured out what was wrong with post-1960 Ray Charles and Dusty Springfield.

Anyway in terms of a kinda tribute to old school music, be it from slightly different eras, "Under Construction" is far far better at what it does, and there's enough rappers in Aguilera's new album to make that comparison reasonably valid.

I know saying anything remotely bad about Christina on this board is always a lynchable offense, I just thought i'd come on strong to get some interesting reactions, please have a listen to the new album yourselves and see what you think of it, and deconstruct the points i've made above or whatever.

Like I stated earlier, I think the girl has an amazing voice, but this isn't an amazing album.

I'll start with Jools Holland.

Neither Charles nor Dusty wrote their material.

Is she? Eh, I can't see Britney maintaining it like I can see Christina. Britney had a good thing going with the public image crossover from virginal teen queen from the South to lustful diva (and she milked these conflicting identities for all it was worth for about three or four years) but she seems incapable of coming back with anything else at this point (from an identity standpoint). Christina has shown herself capable of transforming herself into a number of identities, and more importantly, she seems to have a great sense of camp and irony (which Britney lacks and is of course a great asset in capturing a certain segment of the gay audience).

There's something a bit condescending about this kind of fandom actually. I think that drag queen culture - which is now as much about floundering ridiculousness as it is OTT homage - has a lot to do with it.

Does she write any of her own material? Easier to be a great soul singer if you really feel the things you sing about I would think? I do agree with darin that modern production often only serves to mask the real vocal qualities of the artist.

:oooo

But don't teh ghey love Madonna (someone very much in control of her own image, obv) though? I do agree about that attitude (if it exists) being somewhat condescending.

Yes but gay culture inherits its icons as well - Madonna has been an icon for longer than many young gay guys have been alive so she's just a fact of gay life for this generation.

Well. I do apologise. I wasn't here years ago, should I go and read the entire ilm archive before I dare express an opinion, or heaven help us, ask a question? I'm well fucking aware that there is a huge tradition of soul singers using other people's material. I was simply suggesting that the greater the emotional investment of the artist the more likely that the elusive quality of 'soul' might be present. Is that fucking obuse? I'll just go and shoot myself then.

ILM - such welcoming friendly place.

but it comes back to wilde on accuracy vs feeling.

as far as the thrust of the original question, it proves a very unoriginal line of thought, as NRQ alludes. in today's guardian dorian lyskey calls "ain't no other man" "brassy and brilliant", says "understand" is comparable to gladys knight with its "lush southern soul", admires the "low-riding cop-show funk" of "slow down baby", and says it's all "fun music, indeed." with the balland "mercy on me", lyskey says "it sounds like she means it" when she confesses to weakness, and "save me from myself" "cracks open the super diva to reveal something like a real person inside" in a "warm voice that sounds ... like it's aimed at one human ear" (the right one or the left one???) but --

"it isn't enough," says lyskey. why wouldn't this be enough, one wonders. i, like many others i would suspect, will go ahead and get an album if it's got at least three tracks i really like on it. because, says, lyskey, in closing, "she's no billie holiday." well i'm glad we've got that straight.

xpost

xpost: but performers aren't primarily writers, either! which is where YOUR point falls down! anyway, assuming that we're only talking about stuff that's GOOD as opposed to stuff that's CRAP, why do you like singer-songwriters more than performers who don't write their own music?

the reverse point that there is indeed no useful connection is commonly held here.

This is a point --> .

You might have missed it.

Kennedy dies and it all goes to hell!

unpack

Also, I think Xtina does have writing/arranging credits on most of her songs starting from Stripped; if that's true, then the other half of this argument is also moot and careening dangerously towards fucking-stupid territory.

to play or to sing?

would daft punk be better, for example, if other people wrote the tracks?

Having an entire genre of music called Soul doesn't really help things sometimes.

Sorry, I'm so shit at this - that was me accepting the prize, no-one else -

*lexurian accepts second prize for lifetime achievements in the field of stupidity, and promptly stumbles off the edge of the stage*

I really wanted to ask the question 'what is Soul?', as mr Shepard person took issue with my thoughts on the subject,^ but was too scared to for fear of getting my ass kicked again.

Problem is that Soul, as a musical genre, is semi-definable and well-understood.

But "soul" as a quality of feeling is completely subjective, and so freighted with chimerical notions of race, class, history, "athenticity", and artistic/personal worth that it's flat-out impossible to talk sensibly about. And it's been talked to death, anyway.

History will judge Xtina's place in the pantheon. For the moment, all we can do is talk about how she sings, what she means, and whether or not we like any of it.

do you mean me?? i was saying you didn't seem to have much of a point thus far. wouldn't say i was taking issue with your thoughts in general, unless that was about it. you carry on.

perhaps you were joking, I'm past caring really. This is going nowhere.

no matter what you possibly do in here, i still the link you put in the recent zeppelin thread is phenomenal.

Much like the Lawrence Oliver story of his encounter backstage with a bit player in one of Shakespeare's plays who had just run round Time Square to 'authentically' perform the part of an exhausted messenger. "But why don't you try acting dear boy?"

Well, my opinion's slightly different, I think it's all a bit more complex than that article suggests anyway. But as it is a tired subject that has clearly been done to death here; nuff said. It's only a personal opinion after all. Sorry for digging up corpses.

PS Cheers mr Grizzle.

"Beyound the retro instrumentation however, it's unclear what Aguilera has really learned from her idols. Aretha Franklin didn't build her reputation on songs about being Aretha Franklin, yet this album sinks under the weight of Aguilera's self obsession."

would daft punk be better, for example, if other people wrote the tracks?"

What, like "Robot Rock" or "Harder Better Faster Stronger"?

Srsly though, the rules are going to be different for every performer, so there's no point trying to come up with a rule - about all you can do is reverse engineer from a particular example and decide whether authoring one's own material matters in a particular case.

I for one am glad that Joni Mitchell wrote and performed her material, but it's basically because she is a good writer and a good performer, so the world would have missed out on something if she had sidelined one gift (and in fact that almost happened - she had much more success initially in writing songs for others than in performing them for herself). More practically, she might have had some difficulty convincing anyone else to perform some of her material after a certain point, as the songs became more unpredictable and filled with specific lyrical details. On the other hand, where she did write "standards", her own interpretation wasn't necessarily the best - I've heard far superior versions of "A Case Of You" for example.

There's a thread dominated by Frank Kogan that deals with this issue quite interestingly. I'll see if I can dig it up.

Ain't no other man is a stone cold classic.

First post in this thread is a little wtf

idk i did feel that back to basics was a bit heavy-handed with the concept and not executed particularly well on most tracks