“Accelerate,” on the other hand, is a peculiar hookup with Ty Dolla $ign and 2 Chainz meant to further establish her hip-hop bona fides - and it sure is a lot more fun, even if it’s by no means a hit, and even if she nearly gets lost in West’s fray. Take Kanye West’s two production contributions: “Maria” (which generously samples the 1971 Michael Jackson number of the same name) is a deeply personal, melodramatic, over-the-top scorcher about looking to reclaim the child inside (Maria being Aguilera’s middle name). It’s diffuse enough that when a producer makes a repeat appearance, the results tend to be pretty different from one to the next. The 15-track collection within, though, bears signs that Aguilera didn’t completely settle on what kind of album she wanted to make over the four years she recorded tracks for the project. Truth be told, though, Aguilera could have named almost any of her previous records “Liberation,” since she’s usually advancing a reactive narrative every time she releases an album, whether it’s freeing herself from innocent teen pop with “Stripped” or freeing herself from being seen as a rootless sexpot with “Back to Basics” or going electro with “Bionic” even 2012’s underwhelming “Lotus” was “a rebirth.” The gorgeous cover art for “Liberation” promises another kind of real-deal breakthrough, with the onetime “Naked” singer embracing nakedness in makeup and a freckles-and-all ethos. Deliverance from the patriarchy, for instance, is the theme of “Fall in Line,” the feminist duet with Demi Lovato that had its live premiere on the recent Billboard Music Awards show.

There are other titular connotations along the way. But it doesn’t take much reading between the lines to divine that this openly disenchanted ex-“Voice” jurist really has written one of the few breakup songs ever to celebrate splitting up with a TV show. … This ain’t a game to me.” The song title: “Sick of Sittin’.” Now, if it were any other star expressing an animus toward chairs, we might think she was speaking figuratively.

“It’s good pay,” she additionally points out, but “I can’t move with these chains on me / I had to get free. “I ain’t built for no fake shit,” she wails, almost gutturally, over rock guitars and faux crowd noise produced by Anderson.

What is Christina Aguilera feeling emancipated from? you may ask, digging into “Liberation,” her first album in close to six years.

Christina aguilera cd covers