Aguilera's no prude and proud of it
PUSSSYKATT
-----------------------------
KNEEPADS, wet T-shirts and more gyrating than a porn star: Christina Aguilera
is back - and she's not the sweet, 17-year-old we once knew. Since the recent
MTV debut of the S&M-inspired video for her single "Dirrty" - paving the way
for Tuesday's release of her second album (on which she appears topless) - many
music executives are shaking their heads over the singer's raunchy rebirth.
"There's a huge risk of alienating your core audience when you take such a left
turn," says one high-ranking industry source.
"You can scare them when you make such a departure. If I were her label, I'd be
nervous."
Especially if your audience is the teenybopper crowd whose purse strings are
controlled by Mom.
Execs from Aguilera's own record label admit her new look is a huge gamble, but
say it will help sell her album, "Stripped."
"The best artists take the biggest risks," says RCA head of marketing David
Gottlieb.
"Madonna took risks. The Beatles took plenty. If an artist can explain
themselves and why they are doing something, RCA will kill for them."
They just might have to.
Where it really counts, on the Internet, message boards are filled with
anti-Aguilera postings.
"Christina's white trash," says one. "Since when did she become so ghetto?"
"She looks like a hooker," huffs another.
Others, though, stick up for her, saying, "Christina's hot!" and "U go, girl."
While the song, "Dirrty," is hovering around No. 20 on the charts - the video,
directed by photographer David LaChapelle, is burning up the MTV-waves.
It tops the list for "Total Request Live" - though many credit its sexual
content, not the music.
"Adolescent hormonal boys are watching it, sure," said one exec. "But what
about the 13-year-old girl whose parents won't buy it?"
Yet even Aguilera's critics agree that one thing puts her above Pink and
Britney: her powerful, multi-octave voice.
But will people hear it this time around?
"You don't want the image to overshadow the music," says a source.
"It seems as if Christina is trying to one-up Britney on the sex thing, when it
is her voice that she should be competing with."
In the current issue of Rolling Stone, Aguilera reveals her 11 piercings
include one "ornament" seen only by, well, intimate friends.
"I've gotten a lot of compliments on it," she says.
"I don't think anybody at her label is happy about something like that," says a
record honcho.
But they may have little choice - word is that RCA, and perhaps even members of
Aguilera's own camp, cannot control the pop tart.
"It's my way or the highway with her," says a source, who notes she's sued past
handlers who got in her way.
Her new image is resolutely her own, and that's made her an easy target for
late-night comedians and "Saturday Night Live" skits, and a punching bag for
fashionistas from Simon Doonan to Kelly Osbourne ("I've seen drag queens who
look better").
"It's like a train wreck," says stylist-to-the-stars Danna Weiss.
"You stare at it in disbelief. You'll catch people's eyes by showing off your
assets, but as a music artist, is that what you want to be known for?"
* * *
By JIM FARBER
NY DAILY NEWS FEATURE WRITER
Christina Aguilera would like to defend a heretofore unrecognized group of
oppressed figures in society - pretty young blonds.
"It's funny how society places such strict standards upon young blond females,"
says the singer who fits just that description. "We're supposed to play the
clean-cut view the public wants of us. But I am not your little cookie-cutter
virgin."
Aguilera has gone a long way to prove it. She titled her new album "Stripped"
and the album's first single "Dirrty." She allowed that song's guest rapper,
Redman, to lustfully describe her as "filthy." And she made a video for the
song that has been described by more than one critic as "skanky."
The exaggerated juiciness of all this hasn't escaped "Saturday Night Live,"
which last week satirized the video's hard-sell sexuality. It also played up
the worst public image of Aguilera. As portrayed by actress Sarah Michelle
Gellar, she's a vain and trashy tyrant who keeps yelling at the director of the
clip, "It's not skanky enough!!"
Aguilera says she was amused by the piece, but adds: "They could have done a
better job with it." Regardless, the send-up is giving Aguilera attention just
when she needs it most. "Dirrty" hasn't done so well on radio. According to
Sean Ross of the radio tipsheet Airplay Monitor, "Even though she hadn't shown
any decline in popularity, some program directors might have been resistant to
any act from the teen boom. [And] those who weren't wanted something more
similar to what she'd done before."
"Stripped's" second single, the more docile "Infatuation," is doing better. It
just surpassed Britney Spears' "Boys" as the most-"streamed" song over the
Internet source AOL Music. That should boost the album, which hits stores
Tuesday.
Ultimately, the set seems less like a follow-up to Aguilera's multiplatinum
debut than like a full-scale comeback attempt - which makes sense. Three years
have passed since the singer's self-titled album appeared, a stretch of time
during which her biggest competitors, from Britney to 'N Sync, long ago put out
their third recordings.
A number of factors held Aguilera up - everything from lawsuits to a broken
heart. But now she's returning with an album whose lyrical point of view is
nearly gladiatorial in its defensiveness. "Stripped" finds the singer directly
confronting her media image, the stars she sparred with and the friends she
says betrayed her.
"Sorry I ain't a diva/Sorry I'm not a virgin/Sorry I'm not a slut/I won't let
you break me," she sings in "Stripped Part 2."
"I'm ready to fight/I don't need nobody to make me over," she shrieks with
Avril Lavigne-like punk fervor in "Make Over."
Aguilera sees these statements as "empowering" rather than defensive. "It's a
positive, uplifting record," she insists.
At the very least, the creatively diverse album offers a striking contrast to
the more constrained way Aguilera was first presented to the public. Now 21,
the singer has written all the album's lyrics and executive-produced the
project. On "Stripped," she tackles every genre short of polka - from '60s soul
to surf-rock to Mariah Carey-style bloated ballads.
"People now say, 'What is she trying to do?'" Aguilera sighs. "But they should
be asking, 'What was she trying to do before?' This is the real me."
At her commercial start, says the singer, her record company's image-makers
were just exploiting the teen-pop boom. "The image started really upsetting me.
I wanted more attention on my vocals and to be seen as a daring artist, like
Madonna. [But] I couldn't say, 'I'm doing my own thing.' I was hungry for
success. So I played their little game."
That wasn't the only thing upsetting Aguilera at the time. She had run-ins with
fellow stars, most famously with Eminem, who put her down on record, and Limp
Bizkit's Fred Durst, who did so in print. In the new song "Can't Hold Us Down,"
Aguilera retorts: "When a female fires back/You don't know what to do/So here's
what a little boy will do/Make up a few false rumors or two ... You must talk
so big to make up for smaller things."
The singer denies that these lines refer to either of her famous male nemeses -
though she did, in fact, accuse Durst of making up rumors about her at the
time. Regardless, Aguilera says they've all made peace. She says she had the
chance to talk things over with Eminem at the recent MTV Video Music Awards.
"We ended up in a hug," she says.
Aguilera isn't so forgiving of some in her inner circle, whom she feels either
stole money from her or snitched to the tabloids. "Some of these people I
trusted like family," she says.
A key member of her actual family treated her worse. One new song, "I'm Okay,"
refers to her father, whom she accuses of physically abusing both her mother
and herself. (Her parents divorced when Aguilera was just 6 years old.)
Aguilera says she hasn't heard from her dad about the song. "I'm sure he wishes
I hadn't done it," she says. "But he's a big boy."
In a more pressing way, Aguilera also had to deal this past year with the
breakup of her first love relationship - a pain so deep it wound up holding up
work on the album. Yet few new songs reflect it. Mainly, she deals with work
concerns. "I've always been more focused on my career," she admits.
That obsession goes back to childhood, when Aguilera first experienced the
relationship between success and misunderstanding. "It hit hard in elementary
school," the singer recalls. "Kids would ask me to sing. If I said okay, they'd
say, 'She's showing off.' If I didn't do it, they'd say, 'She's so
big-headed.'"
Aguilera says the jealousies she faced as a child were writ on a global scale
once she achieved fame. "It was preparation," she says. "People want to knock
someone who's different."
She says her "difference" is the reason she has ended up on just about every
worst-dressed list in the free world. Aguilera finds her fashion sense "daring.
I like to stir things up. What they love is ball gowns. Come on! I'm not going
[out] in some damn ball gown. I want to be my age."
Aguilera also feels she's reflecting her age by singing so frankly about sex.
In the song "Get Mine, Get Yours," she talks about the joys of purely physical
relationships. She feels some still aren't ready for this. "In Ricky Martin's
video, he's having an orgy, and that's fine. But when a female does it, they
call you every name in the book."
Regardless of all these controversies, Aguilera is dipping back into the pop
pool at an opportune time. Spears recently announced a hiatus. Even better for
Aguilera, the time away allowed the public to forget what she calls "the old
me. Now I can make a fresh start."
Or at least a dirtier one.
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CliffB
agcgoss...@aol.com wrote on 10/24/02 10:37 AM:
> NY POST/By JOSEPH STEUER
> -----------------------------
> KNEEPADS, wet T-shirts and more gyrating than a porn star: Christina Aguilera
> is back - and she's not the sweet, 17-year-old we once knew. Since the recent
> MTV debut of the S&M-inspired video for her single "Dirrty" - paving the way
> for Tuesday's release of her second album (on which she appears topless) -
> many
> music executives are shaking their heads over the singer's raunchy rebirth.
>
> "There's a huge risk of alienating your core audience when you take such a
> left
> turn," says one high-ranking industry source.
>
> "You can scare them when you make such a departure. If I were her label, I'd
> be
> nervous."
>
> Especially if your audience is the teenybopper crowd whose purse strings are
> controlled by Mom.
>
> Execs from Aguilera's own record label admit her new look is a huge gamble,
> but
> say it will help sell her album, "Stripped."
>
> "The best artists take the biggest risks," says RCA head of marketing David
> Gottlieb.
Yes, publicly simulating a flava-gang bang with oneself as the central
character is certainly taking a risk. Another revolutionary pop artiste.
in first scanning that line, i mis-read it as "...I am not your little
cock-sucker virgin."
This is an odd version of therapy for her; methinks she is being derivative
again (riffing on Alanis Morrisette's "You Oughta Know").