"It's hard being such a powerful woman in the business. I'm known for not always being warm and fuzzy, because you'll just get bulldozed over." — Christina Aguilera

You cannot only sort of listen to Christina Aguilera. You are either inside the Aguileran maelstrom — deep lungs inflating the cartoonish cleavage as a blonde hair-cape whips all around you and melismas rain down like a hail of bullets — or you are not. Christina does not play the background. On Lotus — her first album since 2010's flop Bionic and the decent-but-far-from-stellar reception to her musical Burlesque — Aguilera strives to reclaim her title as the heavyweight vocal champion in a post-Adele world.