Aguileratouille!

What happens when you screw up with your best asset in pop music business? Where budgets for music videos are so large in order to compensate the lack of delivery from a simple song. Well, like a previous video that we commented, you plain and simple get a ratatouille. Britney and Madonna are in the studio, Gaga is in a lawsuit and planning what other crustacean to put in her hair, Beyonce is continuing to bore with her enormous feet, so who’s left? Aha: some dirt, a kid, some glamour and jazz later and now a poor mix from those, here’s Christina Aguilera. Not Myself Tonight, much voice for nothing. Sadly we are here because of the video.

This is the era of image, where music videos can be masterpieces. Ahm, not for everybody. So Hype Williams, with a so impressive music videos resume (just names no image masterpieces there), dares to push it to the next level with a pop image video for Aguilera. The fact that throughout the video Aguilera is a big copy, no not a salute, of Mama Madonna or Gaga, is not that awful. But the music director seems incompetent enough to not select from different image ideas.

We have stylish makeup for a first shoot on white set but then she is dancing in a bluish room where the other dancers have actually better outfits. Then she’s in the rain, then on top of some stairs (so Madonna’s Express Yourself) then she’s in a house, foggy blue next to a chimney, a closet, a bed. Then she’s dancing in a church. Is the George Michael’s Freedom color palette the new theme set? No. We return to white where she resurrects (poorly) the shiny black leather and again to that awful red lingerie. Red lingerie on golden sheets?! So … limp dick. I mean if we are walking down the memory lane let’s clarify things. When Madonna did shiny leather she kept the whole video on white and George Michael kept all those supermodels in the same house, same light. Make-up as mentioned is good, red lips rule and she does it good, but hair – Gwen Stefani frindge, curly Mohawk, wet hair …

The pity in all the video is not the abundance of ideas (the Coco Chanel “Less is more” advice for anything) or the bad editing of those fast paced shots that you can’t even adjust your eye to. But rather that in all that ratatouille she had two great ideas from which, if chosen or not, would have nailed the video. White set with first Bionic makeup-up and Christina Aguilera in the church-like set with dancers. Wow! I mean stop a little to notice that church set. That idea alone is stylish, subtle and controversial. But why be that when you can be a glamorous peasant?