The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #155

#155: "Beautiful" (2002) - Christina Aguilera

Yeah, it's a sad sack song, and Aguilera uses her meliasmatic singing too much, and it's an easy song to dismiss as pop-ballad fluff because everyone's felt like this at one point and therefore the lyric is generic, but Aguilera's singing in the beginning of each chorus shows true vulnerability, and that vulnerability from so massive a voice is touching on a deep level; and her scream right before the final chorus (at 2:49) is as powerful a cry of both hope and desperation as I've ever heard. You've got to crank up the volume for the full effect of that cry, but beware, as it's the sound of a soul at its last gasp sounding out its barbaric yawp in order to verify its own existance in the face of denial from all visual evidence in physical reality, when people insult and demean and chastise what they consider gauche and unattractive. We've all been there before, right? I have been. And it hurts. It makes you feel worse than worthless; it makes you fell like a pox upon society. Your parents may refute those awful claims, but they're your parents, and they have to, if only because you're literally a reflection of them, so therefore their attempts to console matter none.

So what does? Don't know about others, but for me, it was always music. It wasn't this song, 'cause I believe Christina was probably in diapers when I was teenager being laughed at and scorned because of my presence. It could have been this song, though. I'm sure it is for others, and no matter how schlocky the production (and it's pretty schlocky, thank you very much Linda Perry), the song (and it's a great one, thank you very much Linda Perry) and the singer here (not just any singer, either, as this one's already been covered by artists ranging from Elvis Costello to Gloria Gaynor to the Lemonheads) elevate the listener, and the primary reason is because of Aguilera, because something in this song touched something in her, and she's talented enough to tap into that pain and insecurity and exorcise it as her performance exorcises the same demons in us.