Foolishly, I bought the new Christina Aguilera CD on the strength of the lead single, "Dirrty," which, while a bit more controversial than her other hit songs, is still a pretty good dance song. I had read articles claiming that her record company chided Christina for choosing it as the first single, and assumed that meant that the rest of the album was BETTER than the single, or at least more radio friendly.

Me, RCA, Entertainment Weekly...the whole world was wrong.

The major problem with Stripped is an ironic one. Even though Miss Thang is supposed to be more "real," more "bare," girlfriend covers every genre of music she can on this album. It's like listening to a Columbia House ad. Skank arena rock comes out in "Fighter," which meets J-Lo's latin throwaway track "Infatuation" on the very next track. She thinks she's Fiona Apple on "Walk Away," Courtney Love on "Make Over" and Kelly Clarkson and Pink on virtually everything else. It's almost as if Pink and Kelly Clarkson were a lesbian couple, Pink got impregnated, regretted the decision and opted for an abortion. Now place Christina as a paparazzi keeping the remains.

That may be a crude analogy, but so is this album. Every track involves Christina attempting to channel some other performer with B-rate material. None of the songs, minus "Dirrty" and "Beautiful" (written by 4-Non Blondes leader turned Official Teen Pop Star Contributor Linda Perry), are worth the napkin they were written on. And even guest appearances by Lil Kim and Redman, in attempts to diversify Christina's audience (read: make black people think Christina is credible or at least kinda' cool) fail miserably. Christina's message about "being true to yourself" and "staying real" was done better by Pink on her most recent album. The only person that Christina is fooling is herself.