All Music: Try as she may to sound like a classic singer from the '40s, she really seems to have learned all of her moves from Madonna in Dick Tracy; whether she's shaking her hips to a canned brass section or breathing heavily into a microphone, every move seems to have been copped from Breathless Mahoney -- and that's not just on the campily retro "Candyman" (which sounds like a rewrite of "Hanky Panky"), but it's also true on the deliberately modern numbers like "Ain't No Other Man," whose stabs of sampled brass sound straight out of early-'90s jazz-rap. Acá.
Blog Critics: the super-fast and funky "Ain't No Other Man" acá.
CANOE: The best of the lot is the irresistible Lady Marmalade upgrade Ain't No Other Man, but the similarly Aretha-inspired Makes Me Wanna Pray, the wah-wah funk of Back in the Day, the piano-pop ballad Understand and the sexy grinder Slow Down Baby suggest Aguilera has been kicking it old-school. Acá.
EW: Aguilera's husband of nearly a year, but even in her most lovey moments, she's still a diva. The exhilarating Ain't No Other Man whizzes past at such a furious pace, you might miss the threats that mingle with pledges of devotion: So tell your mother, your brother.../Tell the others, your lovers/Better not be present tense/'Cause I want everyone to know that you are mine and no one else's.acá.
Rolling Stone: At the top of the list of Disc One's killers is "Ain't No Other Man" -- a zoot-suit riot of a song that, like all the best stuff on Disc One, was produced by DJ Premier. acá.
