37-year-old pop music diva Christina Aguilera is back with her eighth album in 20 years, sixth when excluding her 2000 Christmas album and the Spanish language Mi Reflejo record from the same year which contained recycled material from her bestselling 1999 self-titled debut. For the better part of a decade now Aguilera has been struggling to maintain interest in her music career while striving to remain relevant in the fickle youth obsessed dollars driven world of high stakes super powered commercial pop music. Her two previous records Bionic (2010) and Lotus (2012) failed to achieve the level of success Aguilera experienced throughout the previous decade while in her 20’s. With her latest, Liberation, Aguilera has left nothing to chance. In her capacity as Executive Producer, Aguilera enlisted nothing short of 12 additional record producers along with over twice as many contributing songwriters to help ensure Liberation’s success. And does it? Succeed? Out of the park. With a production history dating back four years to early 2014 Aguilera took the time to expertly lay the ground work for a potentially flawless pop record. Liberation’s sequencing is exquisite, of particular note is the album’s powerful opening, a haunting piece of orchestral music composed and performed by Nicholas Brittel. An unexpected segue into Rodgers & Hammerstein culminates in a full on Kanye West produced Motown meltdown featuring the exhilarating talents of a 12-year-old Michael Jackson singing his heart out to “Maria (You Were The Only One) from his 1972 solo debut album Got To Be There. Powerful stuff indeed. Aguilera’s Liberation exhibits a delightfully broad range displaying a full spectrum of style including anthemic rocker (Sick Of Sittin’), empowering inspirational sound collage (Dreamers/Fall In Line), reggae dancehall (Right Moves), sparse electro chillout (Like I Do/Deserve/Pipe), Kate Bush inspired piano balladry (Twice), straight up EDM (Accelerate) 90s style power ballad (Masochist) and a brand new wedding song (Unless It’s With You). A truly moving listening experience, in more ways than one.
Rating: 8.9/10
Star Rating: 4/5
2018 Song Of The Day Club Album Review 22/52