"I don't like pretty. Fuck the pretty."

Three years after her relatively innocent debut, the former Barbie-doll of the pop world spits this out to Rolling Stone when choosing pictures for the CD sleeve of her new release, Stripped.

It's not something you'd expect to hear from a former Mickey Mouse Club cast member, or for that matter, any blond-haired, blue-eyed, pink glitter nail polish-wearing bubblegum-pop princess. However, I did say "former Barbie-doll".

Although not the best move in highlighting her talent as a genuine singer, Christina Aguilera is not trying to shock or tell existing fans that appearing topless on an album cover (and almost nude in the Dirrty video) is the answer to reviving an almost stalled career in music.

But hey, no one really paid attention to her Spanish take on her debut, her Christmas album, or that freaky girl with the puffed-up hair on the cover of Just Be Free (a recent collection of old demos you wouldn't want to hear), so why not flaunt it this time around? I'd love to see what would happen if her diamond-studded pussy piercing was also pictured. Straight men would go ape shit to say the least.

"It's me stripped of all the hype, the gloss, the controversy, the rumors," she explains on why the title Stripped was chosen for the album, which took 18 months to record and runs close to an unusual 80 minutes. "You just don't want to sing fluffy. You just have more things to say about real life and real people and the bitterness that you get from people," she adds.

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It's ironic, however, to see that Dirrty (the only bad song in the album) was made the first single because the rest of the album has everyone comparing her to Mariah Carey, Alicia Keys, and Janet Jackson. Oh yeah, you've heard the single on the radio and in the queer bars�it's Christina screaming at the top of her lungs for no reason to the most irritating chorus lines of the year. Yup, that's the one.

Stripped impresses with a multitude of piano-heavy ballads and rock tunes not typical of the Genie In A Bottle Aguilera of yesteryear. In it you can find little surprises like the Alicia Keys-penned Impossible, the Latin-influenced Infatuation, the Marvin Gaye-ish Underappreciated, the Mariah-sounding The Voice Within, the 60s hippie-tinged Cruz, the poignant I'm OK, and Beautiful, an inspirational track that is reminiscent of a Carole King song of the same name.

Make Over offers something a little more interesting to Fiona Apple fans, who will instantly accuse it of butchering Fiona's Fast As You Can. I don't know if it's just me, but the track also sounds like it samples Overload by the Sugarbabes. And for those who live with the sole purpose of having clean, harmless sex with no strings attached (don't we all?), Get Mine Get Yours puts our thoughts into words.

Stripped hooks you in at first listen and will make you feel ashamed for ever uttering the blasphemous faux pas of comparing Aguilera with Britney Spears.

Voicing it out in the album intro she says, "So here it is / No hype, no gloss, no pretense / Just me / Stripped".