Bionic

Originally called Light & Darkness, the sixth album took its direction from Aguilera's taste for electronic music. She contacted collaborators herself, among them Sia and Samuel Dixon and Daniel Hunt and Reuben Wu of Ladytron, and Polow da Don produced two of the four singles. She said her son had pushed her to experiment, to go to a place of less singing. The cover by D*Face shows half her face and half a robot. The singles were Not Myself Tonight, Woohoo with Nicki Minaj, You Lost Me and I Hate Boys. A tour was planned and then cancelled.

Metacritic averages 56 from 21 reviews. It entered the Billboard 200 at number three with 110,000 copies, went to number one in Britain and was later certified gold in the United States. Ten years on Billboard's Glenn Rowley called it something of a cult favorite, and in 2018 Pitchfork's Claire Lobenfeld wrote that its sound was perhaps too forward-thinking.