REVIEW : Keeps Gettin’ Better – A Decade Of Hits

For us, the test of a truly great greatest hits album lies in it’s tracklisting – just how many of the songs whacked together on the album were actually hits. Christina Aguilera’s ‘Keeps Gettin’ Better : A Decade Of Hits’ almost ticks all the boxes. After a little under ten years in the charts, Christina has helped herself to 14 top 40 solo hits in Australia, eleven of which hit the top ten. She also spent time at No.1 with her collaborative version of ‘Lady Marmalade’ from the Moulin Rouge soundtrack and hit the top ten with her Ricky Martin duet ‘Nobody Wants To Be Lonely’ and with her cover of ‘Car Wash’ with Missy Elliot. To tempt the fans into buying another Christina release, there are also four new recordings on this album and if these new tracks (including an updated, almost unrecognisable version of ‘Genie In A Bottle’) are anything to go by, expect Christina’s next album, due in 2009, to be an electro affair – she’s reportedly keen to work with Goldfrapp.
But for all the brilliant artwork and amazing hits this best-of has to offer, there are some startlingly questionable omissions. If it was a true ‘greatest hits’, where in the world is the Aussie No.5 hit ‘Can’t Hold Us Down’? Where is the Australian top ten hit ‘The Voice Within’? Where is Christina’s version of ‘Car Wash’ (a No.5 hit)? And if ‘I Turn To You’ can make the cut (it made No.40 in Australia), why in the world can’t ‘Slow Down Baby’ (No.21 Aussie chart hit)? We can perhaps forgive the omission of the latter and of ‘Car Wash’, but the fact that two of Christina’s biggest hits in ‘The Voice Within’ and ‘Can’t Hold Us Down’ are nowhere to be seen here lets us down greatly with this release. And that sticker on the front that claims ‘All Her Greatest Hits!’? Well that’s just not true.

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Christina Aguilera’s ‘Keeps Gettin’ Better – A Decade Of Hits’ is in-store now in both standard and CD/DVD editions.

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