After six years of waiting and flooding Twitter with “When’s the album coming?” messages, fans can rest easy: Christina Aguilera has finally made her return to music. The pop star released her first single since 2012 on Thursday, May 3. Called “Accelerate,” it fits perfectly into top 40’s current landscape: sultry, chilled-out, a warm pop tune with R&B influence. In lieu of vocal gymnastics, Aguilera delivers the lines in “Accelerate” like she’s drinking cocktails on a beach. It’s very relaxed, easily danceable, and features two mood-setting features from Ty Dolla $ign and 2 Chainz.
It’s good—if this weren’t Aguilera’s first release in six years. We’ve waited eons for this moment, and Aguilera herself has been teasing new music for years now. So it’s unusual that Aguilera, who has a knack for consistently delivering dynamite first singles, chose “Accelerate” to be her debut back on the scene. Take 2012’s “Your Body,” for example. It’s a punchy pop masterpiece that features Aguilera’s catchiest chorus to date. “Not Myself Tonight” (2010), from the polarizing Bionic album, snaps and crackles with synth-pop flair. Then there’s “Ain’t No Other Man” (2006), a funkified ode to jazz that reached number six on Billboard‘s Hot 100 chart. Before that, of course, Aguilera released “Dirrty” (2002) and “Genie in a Bottle” (1999): two songs that defined Y2K pop.
All these songs are incredible and have one common thread: Aguilera’s up front and center on them. Despite the songs’ swirling productions, the spotlight stays consistently on X-Tina’s voice. That’s not to say she has to capital-S sing in order to have a hit record—”Not Myself Tonight” buries Aguilera’s vocals in techno trickery, and yet she still never pulls focus—or that she can’t have featured artists. (Redman raps on “Dirrty,” in case you forgot.)
There’s no denying these aforementioned hits are Christina Aguilera songs—and “Accelerate” doesn’t feel like a Christina Aguilera song, at least to me. It feels equally divided between herself, Ty Dolla $ign, and 2 Chainz. There just isn’t enough of her on it, which, again, would’ve been fine for a third or even fourth single from the album—but not the first. Certainly not a first single in six years. The shine isn’t just on Aguilera here, and it deserves to be.
Aguilera’s eighth studio album, Liberation, will drop on June 15. She released a promotional image for the record on Thursday, as well:
The album, interestingly, features a song with Demi Lovato called “Fall in Line.” “I have always looked up to Christina,” Lovato told Billboard magazine for its cover story about Aguilera. “I remember being at her concert and singing facing the crowd instead of the stage, knowing that that was exactly what I wanted to do in life.”
Let the countdown to Liberation begin.
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