A Stroke of Genie-us
September 04, 2002, 7:35 pm

There are some things in life that were never meant to go together: coffee and pickles, math and journals, purple flair pens and old teachers' eyes; then there are those things that were never meant to go together, but damn do they make sense.

Reese's broke the mold with the combination of peanut butter and chocolate. My Gaga made cream cheese and relish seem like the perfect combination on a bagel. Now we can finally say that Christina Aguilera is good for something.

That's right, I said Christina Aguilera.

Have you heard this song? It's the Strokes' "Hard to Explain" hard guitar riffs juxtaposed with Christina Aguilera's digitized warbling for "Genie in a Bottle." It's mad. It's unsettling. It's genius. Like so many things in life, it's so wrong, but feels so damn good.

On one hand you have Christina, representative of everything wrong with today's pop music prepackaging and marketing extravaganza; on the other hand you have the Stokes, who have arguably reset the level of music ingenuity in a post-pop princess world--together, they're a force to be reckoned with. A listenable oxymoron.

So my hat's off to you, Freelance Hellraiser, "A Stroke of Genie-us" is just that.

Now go and download it. And get "Smells Like Booty", too, and don't say I didn't warn you.