Christina Aguilera

DISC JOCKEY Aguilera hangs up her assless chaps.

Photograph: Ellen Von Unwerth

Back to Basics (RCA)

As a bluesy melody wafts from a record player, the frame zooms in on the backstage entrance of a 1920s jazz club. An obscured female figure in high heels climbs out of an old-fashioned car. When she steps onstage, we see that the performer is wearing classic red lipstick and a cocktail hat, and her platinum hair is done up in pin curls. It’s Christina Aguilera in the video for “Ain’t No Other Man,” the first single from her new double album, Back to Basics. The clip is an about-face from the one she filmed for “Dirrty,” the breakout song from her 2002 album, Stripped. While that video depicted a sweaty faux orgy in a grimy boxing ring, the new one announces her status as a one-man woman in a much more glamorous setting.

Now 25, Aguilera is casting off her young-rebel image. She claims her recent marriage hasn’t changed her view on sexuality—Back to Basics even has a track called “Still Dirrty”—but she has refocused her obsession with the subject. Stripped, her attempt to distinguish herself from the Britneys of the world, brought with it an aesthetically objectionable persona that eclipsed Aguilera’s vocal talent and undermined her very public desire to be taken seriously as an artist. Even some dedicated fans couldn’t help but shake their heads as she posed topless for her album cover, admitted to breaking dishes out of rage and bragged about having her nipple pierced. And then there were those chaps….

If Stripped was Aguilera’s way of telling the world she has sex, Back to Basics proves she has soul, and lots of it. She announces on “Intro (Back to Basics)” that her goal is to honor “the soul singers, the blues figures, the jazz makers.” On “Back in the Day,” she names Aretha Franklin, Etta James and Marvin Gaye. And there is evidence on these 23 tracks that one day she just might be worthy of standing beside her idols. Aguilera had left a string of tantalizing clues that she’s much more talented than a typical teen-pop singer: She sounded like a young Chaka Khan on “Underappreciated” (from Stripped), killed on her verse of the LaBelle classic “Lady Marmalade” (from the Moulin Rouge soundtrack) and turned the National Anthem into a fiery stream of vocal acrobatics at the 2004 NBA All-Star Game. A fearless live performer, she’s been known to utter a smug “hah” during a song’s intro, as if to say, “Watch me mash this thing.”

As its title suggests, Back to Basics reins in Aguilera’s overblown diva tendencies and highlights her powerful voice, taking her a step closer to the serious-singer category she longs to be part of. The first disc finds her standing up to fat, horn-heavy club tracks. On “Slow Down Baby,” she belts preachy verses over a Gladys Knight sample; “Still Dirrty” has a fast-looping funk hook; and “Here to Stay” builds on soul singer Candi Staton’s 1973 song “The Best Thing You Ever Had.” Aguilera even goes straight-up church on the gospel-tinged “Makes Me Wanna Pray.” At other times, her music is bogged down by the same personal problems that fuel her career ambitions: Her abusive father resurfaces on the mediocre “Oh, Mother” (we first met him on Stripped). And there’s an ill-advised interlude called “F.U.S.S.,” presumably aimed at star producer Scott Storch, who cowrote six tracks on Stripped but declined to work on Back to Basics.

Leaving most of her personal carping on disc one, Aguilera shines brilliantly thereafter. The second disc is a collection of exquisite originals—written with Stripped producer Linda Perry—that imitate early- to mid-20th-century American pop, displaying Aguilera’s remarkable versatility. The flirty, Andrews Sisters–style number “Candyman” leads into “Nasty Naughty Boy,” a lascivious burlesque bumper; “I Got Trouble” unleashes Aguilera’s spot-on Lady Day impression. The concluding wedding march, “The Right Man,” finds her soaring above a glorious choir with the realization that not all men are evil. If she stays this happy, her next album might be perfect.

Back to Basics is out Tuesday 15.