Christina Aguilera’s ‘Bionic’ Album Turns 5: Stan & Deliver

Bianca Gracie | June 4, 2015 6:30 am

Stan & Deliver gives fans an opportunity to shake, cry and sing the praises of the albums they love from their faves.

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Five years ago today (June 4), Christina Aguilera shook the pop world when she released her fourth studio album — Bionic. Any fan of the belting artist would agree this LP was ahead of its time, yet it still does not receive the praise it deserves.

Back in 2012, we wrote an article defending Bionic just as Lotus was prepping its release. A year later, we highlighted the movement known as #JusticeForBionic — but that obviously was not enough. Bionic was a fierce and powerful record with a strong underlying feminist theme that many of her counterparts never dared to explore during that time.

Not to mention the bevy of A-list producers from spanning genres (Ester Dean, Detail, Polow Da Don, Le Tigre, Linda Perry, Sia, Tricky Stewart) that brought out the “Xtina” persona, which found The Voice judge leaping far outside her sonic comfort zone. She put her predictable soulful essence aside and exchanged it for an icy, hyper-electronic sexbot who did not take no for an answer. It is a shame the charts failed to mirror the true brilliance of the album, as it struggled to stay on the charts, did not even make RIAA’s Gold certification and ended in a failed tour.

In her 2012 Billboard cover story, Christina stated this: “I can proudly say it was ahead of its time, to be honest. It wasn’t so commercialized. You had to really be a music lover, be a true fan of music and the love of being open to really appreciate that record.” She was definitely on to something, because the fans agree!

As a massive retrospective of Bionic, Idolator readers (as well as some of us editors) look back at why the album created such a pop tug o’ war in our track-by-track review. Note: the intros and deluxe edition songs were not included as Xtina likes for her tracklists to read as divatastic encyclopedias, and ain’t nobody got time for that.

So let’s get things started as we blast off on our supersonic rockets, shall we? Woohoo!