Who's your daddy, or your momma? Christina Aguilera had a lot of answers to those questions Sunday, as she filled the Air Canada Centre with a flashy road show dedicated in part to advancing the artistic pedigree she claims on her recent double album, She left no doubt who she had in mind, flashing images of Billie Holiday, James Brown and Ella Fitzgerald across a screen early in the show, as well as of Miles Davis and John Coltrane. For once, the over-used word icon seemed just right for these photos of musicians who might have been mystified to find a singer of Ms.
Aguilera's type invoking their example.
Far from going back anywhere, Ms. Aguilera's latest music keeps her pretty much where she has always been, in an elite class of R B singers with powerful pipes and an ultra florid style.
Her lineage goes way beyond Fitzgerald, back to 19th century opera divas like Maria Malibran, for whom elaborate coloratura was the natural sound of a conquering heroine.
Ms. Aguilera is a conqueror by nature.
She arrived at her own show posed like a statue at the top of a slowly gliding staircase. Whatever the lyrics, everything she sang was about overcoming something mdash; the song, the room and the usual standards of how intricate a melody can become before collapsing under its own weight. She isn't the kind of singer you look to for relaxation.
She was a restless presence on the stage, even when singing a down-tempo ballad, which she inevitably filled up with ornament. Every song or two, she darted down a stairway or stage elevator for a change into a new costume.
Unlike stars who save their latest hits for last, she hit the crowd right at the start with her high-energy hit, Ain't No Other Man.
She moved in tight formation with her posse of eight dancers, in a routine so athletic you had to wonder how the voice could stay so focused and strong.
Visually, the show felt like a Broadway fantasia on themes from the thirties, with references to the steamy vigour of the Savoy Ballroom, to the white-clad elegance of the Cotton Club, and to the risqu e pantomime of Clara Bow and Louise Brooks (both impersonated by Ms. Aguilera in videos made to look like silent films).
A montage of tabloid front pages rolling off an old printing press projected Ms. Aguilera (the subject of every headline) into the period's media machinery, while she sang about how women need to defeat double standards.
Just before I had to leave to meet a deadline, a seedy fairground waltz pulled the show toward a vintage-looking circus scene, with Ms.
Aguilera making yet another spectacular entrance on a knife-thrower's target board.
The most telling link between sound and image, however, occurred when she was all alone, singing in a white maillot-style outfit with a huge flowing skirt that left her sensational gams (as Florenz Ziegfeld might have said) visible at the front mdash; but not quite visible enough for her. She kept flipping the tail of the skirt back, a bird-like gesture of display that was perfectly suited to the intricate roulades coming out of her mouth.
In the end, this very entertaining show seemed less about connecting the dots between her music and that of her heroes, or of matching them in seriousness, than of making a claim to equal eminence as a performer. She has a point, however crassly she sometimes made it. Much of the music is still fluff, and she almost never knows when enough is enough, but Ms.
Aguilera remains a champion.
Christina Aguilera performs at Ottawa's Scotiabank Place Monday, the Bell Centre in Montreal on March 28 and the Air Canada Centre in Toronto on April 23.
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