And if you don't like it...

Xtina Aguilera's current album campaign, all things considering, is not doing 'too well'. Her first single, "Not Myself Tonight" has only gone top ten in one half of Belgium and there is more negative buzz surrounding the entire project, than you can stake a spangly, S&M stick at. The naysayers are claiming this is the beginning of the end for Aguilera, and perhaps they're right. There comes a point in any internationally-successful popstar's career when the hits stop coming as easily, album sales begin to decline and touring has to either become so sporadic it's in huge demand or (in the case of Madonna) so regular and ruthless, its the main source of profit.

So perhaps this is the beginning of the end for Xtina, but then again, perhaps not. Even Madonna has gone through phases of struggling for a hit (although never on this scale) and let us not forget that P!nk and Britney's third album eras (Try This and Britney, respectively) did so comparatively dreadfully in America - neither managed to scrape anything resembling a top 10 hit there - that at the time, people feared things were beyond repair. So, from another point of view, perhaps this is an ill-advised blip, and perhaps, one hopes, Xtina can learn from this - that she has to try a little harder to come up with a coherent album campaign, one that doesn't smell of record label intervention. We'll have to wait and see.

So on to Bionic itself. What is it like, we hear you ask? Well, surprisingly good, if terribly organised. It features a few of Xtina's trademark and catastrophically misjudged 'interludes' (here labelled 'Intro' in brackets, despite introducing not very much at all), but of course, in this iTunes age you are totally free to delete or ignore them, and, in a way, it wouldn't be an Aguilera album without them. The songs themselves are varied, both in style and in quality. Let's face it, Xtina was never going to release a concept album full of futuristic and aggressively styled robopop anthems, was she? This is, after all, the woman who made a 'Forces' Sweetheart' style song called "Candyman" all about her vagina. So, yes, it was never going to be 'classy', but it was also never going to be anything as wild or audacious as Janelle Monáe's recent retrofuturist The ArchAndroid. Ms. Aguilera, after all, has always been a mainstream popstar (albeit a very good one), not an innovator. From the vitriol directed at it, though, you would expect an hour of unlistenable tosh, but in fact there's plenty to enjoy, love, and best of all, be surprised at.

It opens with "Bionic", the kind of balls-out, wibbling-synth, scream-fest everyone expected Chrissy Ag to start the campaign with. We think it's ace (despite, yes, its obvious Santigold influence) and don't understand peoples indifference to it (maybe we simply follow too many Britney fans on Twitter to get a well-rounded view of other people's opinions on it). It's exactly the kind of risk-taking, in-yer-face track Xtina has made a habit of starting campaigns with, from "Dirrty" and then "Ain't No Other Man". Let's hope it's the next proper single.

Then follows a series of uptempos. "Woohoo" is another ode to the good lady's vagina with an unfairly sick beat and guest verse from S&N-fave, Nicki Minaj. "Elastic Love" is an M.I.A.-style sing-song synth-spaz-out about staples and paper clips that talks, rather postmodernly (*insert knowing look here*) about how the song itself is an analogy/metaphor. "Desnudate" features an ace, schoolmarmish chorus where Xtina sounds like she's exasperatedly yet nonchalantly instructing a class on the fine art of Japanese rope bondage. Even the more bog-standard "Glam" and "Prima Donna" have little points of interest - the former's see-sawing riff is incessant and fun, and the latter has a brief bass figure that sounds like both Madonna's "4 Minutes" and this masterpiece.

There's a dreary midtempo number next called "Sex for Breakfast" in which we get a Janet Jackson-style description of coitus so frank and explicit, you're in danger of vomming up your French toast. It represents the album's first major misstep and thank god it only lasts an intro and one track. Next come the ballads, and cor blimey they're lovely. Helped along by Linda Perry and Sia they remind us Ms. A can still do pretty and contemporary pop balladry better than any of her... er... contemporaries, and they are ace and lovely.

The album finishes on a bizarrely puerile note - the triple whammy of the well-intentioned but lyrically tiresome, sarcastic "I Hate Boys", the actually rather-brill Peaches-featuring "My Girls" and "Vanity", a song with lyrics so brashly arrogant one doesn't know whether to laugh, grin, dance or cry. Needless to say we did all four of those things at once. And then that's it. You're left with all the components of a potentially great pop album - some exhilarating and unusual synthy uptempos, a set of heartbreaking ballads and some fluffy escapism - yet it's so clumsily put together and has been so marred by the not-quite-good-enough "Not Myself Tonight" that you're left with a strange taste in your mouth.

Let's hope that for Xtina fans everywhere, this is at least the jolt that her mythically enormous ego needs in order for her to step up her game. At least in the mean time we can all get busy rearranging the tracklist into the perfect 12 track album. Or is that too sad?