Artist Research - Christina Aguilera

Christina Aguilera first started to achieve worldwide success back in 1999 with her singles “Genie in a bottle” but has been in the media spot light since she was a child appearing in programs such as The New Mickey Mouse Club with star of today such as Justine Timberlake and Britney Spare. From a early age Christina knew she was destine to become a star and this didn’t come true until she released her first album under RCA records called “Christina Aguilera” on August 24, 1999. After doing this album Christina gained a huge fan based many filled with teen age girls.
The reason why Christina gained such a huge fan base became can be found in the lyrical content of her album. In her first chart topping single/video “Genie in a bottle” she is portrayed as a sexually repressed young girl who is waiting for a sexual release. This conclusion came from the line “locked up tight for a century of lonely nights”. She later see a young boys who arouses her to the point where she says “My body’s saying let’s go”, even though she is a teenager who is shown to be a girl who can’t control her emotions she later says “my heart is saying no”. But instead of walking away from the situation she later goes back to the boy only to let her hormones control her, we know this because she said, "If you wanna be with me, baby there's a price to pay, I'm a genie in a bottle, You gotta rub me the right way".
This song alone shows themes that the album had to offer and they are sexual repression, teenage emotions and teenage rash thinking. Christina wasn’t a clear role model for girls but with song lyric that are very metaphorically based around sex it is obvious how she was able to appear to her target audiences.
Christina wasn’t happy with the control that RCA records had over her and wanted to change her image which wasn’t later seen until her second album “Stripped”. In this album Christina gain total over her image and how she wanted to be represented as an artist and as a person. This was possible because she had the status and money behind her to leave and go to another record label. She no long wanted to appeal to suburban American she wanted to become more then a pop star know wanted to appeal to wider market such as fans of rhythm and blues, gospel, soul, pop rock, and hip hop.
Christina dramatic change was seen in the song “Dirty” feature Hip-Hop arctic Redman. This song is the perfect example of Christina change in musical direction. The video was Christina first video where she had creative control of what was said and done. This video was responsible for the for the destruction of her “girl next door” image with this video focusing sexuality in an explicit way with showing various sexual fetishes, from mud wrestling to her bum checks on show due to two holes in the back of her trouser .
Even thought this song didn’t receive commercial success in America (getting to position number 48 on billboards 100) where it received mixed messages, outside of America this song again more success for example in the UK this song was number 1 for 3 weeks. Even though she was changing her image she was still able to appeal to the main stream audiences.
Aguilera changed from being a shy girl who didn’t fully know how to express herself to a sexually confident woman. Aguilera shows women as strong and not dependent on males, this is shown in her song "Can't Hold Us Down". In this song Aguilera creates a female empowerment anthem, showing her disgust with the double standards in modern day society. She feels that male stars are respected and worshipped for bragging about their sex lives, but when women like Aguilera try to express their sexuality, they get labelled as hoes.
Aguilera’s influences included Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, Nina Simone, Gladys Knight & the Pips and her most inspirational influences was Etta James. Aguilera grew up listening to James since the age of 7 and is the reason behind her passion for vintage jazz and soul music. Aguilera strength as a musical arctic came from watch Madonna and Janet Jackson. Both women are huge international arctic who produce music of what they like and don’t care what the press opinion on them. When performing Christina inspiration came from actors and actress involved in the “Golden age of Hollywood”. These included Julie Andrews form “The Sound of Music" and Marlene Dietrich, Marilyn Monroe, Carole Lombard, Greta Garbo, Veronica Lake. She said she was inspired by their performance due to it having power to leave a person” breathless”. Fashion has also been important to Aguilera and this could been seen back in 2003 where she public expressed an interest in Donateel Versace, later in the following year Versace was involved in the designing of her tour . Aguilera is also a fan of Roberto Cavalli, John Galliano, Marc Jacobs, and Alexander McQueen who have designed dresses that she has worn throughout her career.