Christina Aguilera & Chris Mann’s “The Blower’s Daughter”: Hear Their Ballad

Sam Lansky | October 22, 2012 10:31 am

The Voice contestant Chris Mann earned a lot of fans with his operatic style — not the least of whom was Christina Aguilera, who was taken enough with his impressive voice (and dashing good looks, no doubt) to contribute to his upcoming LP, Roads. The fruits of that collaboration surfaced today in the form of Mann’s cover of Damien Rice‘s devastating ballad “The Blower’s Daughter,” which marks a vocally impressive — albeit odd — entry in Lotustina’s oeuvre. Listen to the song after the jump.


Building tensely over spare piano and leading to symphonic heights, Mann tackles the song solo for the first three minutes, which works nicely. But when Aguilera appears on the bridge, wailing histrionically, it takes the subtlety of Mann’s emotion and raises it to a fevered climax. That’s not to say that she doesn’t sound good — Aguilera can always sang — but it does give the impression that she’s screaming over him in a wall of enormous vocal runs, weepy adlibs and melisma.

Then again, given the initial chart performance of “Your Body,” which debuted at #34 and currently sits at #58 on the Hot 100, we’ll forgive her for wanting to work out a little tension the best way she knows how: By singing through the pain. Hear the song below: