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Main >> News Listing >> April 2004 >> Article ID 5110
 Bad Dirrty Beautiful (Cosmopolitan AU Article Apr 2004) | Type: Magazine Article |
| | Bad Dirrty Beautiful | Apr 2004 | by Paul Morely
 She emerged from a traumatic childhood to become one of the greatest voices in the music industry. So why is Christina so obsessed with her rivals copying her?
The dressing-room door shuts behind me and I am no longer in the presence of Christina Aguilera. Soft, gentle and a little on the intense side, Christina is an all-American mall girl who thanks God a lot, and says "what-ever" even more. I've have 40 minutes with someone who gives her time to a stranger very rarely indeed.
Her politeness, as I asked the obvious, the difficult and the silly, was a demonstration of her pure professionalism. She's got a great way of saying, "Well, that's a little personal," out of the side of her mouth like some hip-hop Mae West when she's asked something she doesn't wan to answer about her private life.
Wherever the conversation went - or I wanted it to go - she would always pull it back to where she wanted it: to her album, Stripped. She wrote the song, she helped produce it, it's her life, in her words. The nitty-gritty of who she is, as she makes very clear.
But where does the voice come from? I had been talking to a little kitten. Her talking voice was a demonstrative little girl show-biz voice; a little singsong, but with no hint of her actual singing voice. The singing voice comes from something large and almost monstrous. The voice, perhaps, comes from her past. An all-American dysfunctional past involving divorced parents, an abusive father, and Christina's deep love for the film The Sound of Music.
The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical was the first music she ever loved. It saved her life, she says, took her out of herself, away from her arguing parents, her erratic, frightening father. She escaped into The Sound of Music. She would run up to her room, five years old, living in Japan where her army father was stationed, line up her cuddly toys as an audience, throw open the windows and sing. Sing like it could protect her from all the bad things around her. "In a way, I think God for those times, the hardship I suffered, because that's where my soul comes from. I don't regret anything really that happened with my father. It all made me stronger. It's my life. It's what I am," she says.
It was the middle of the '80s, and to be a pop star was already the biggest though in a young girl's like, to be a Michael Jackson, a Madonna; to feel wanted, to feel loved. By the age of seven, she was singing at neighbourhood parties. She became known as the little girl with the big voice. Suspicious locals thought that she was too good. They assumed she must be miming so a kid pulled out her microphone lead form the amplifier she was using. But her voice just kept on coming: big, cheerful, and full of need. This is a girl who has always been surrounded by jealousy and suspicion as well as admiration, and she's driven by the jealousy as much as the admiration.
As much she takes me through her teens describing how her voice, her ambition, took her further and further away from her violent father and messed-up childhood. It's constant drama. She hugs herself into her chair, and remembers when things were bad, and worse, and how she business showed her a way out ...and then whole new kinds of modern horror.
By 12, her voice as white as Julie Andrew, not yet as black as Etta James, and she was part of the revamped Mickey Mouse Club, having fun with other supertalented children. These other children had names like Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears. They wanted it so much: the American fame, the MTV excitement, the proof that you were worth something, the Judy Garland commitment to the absolute fury of success. "I was too young to go to the concerts, but I would see the concert specials on TV, and would see these massive crowds. The singer would be on stage and the spotlight would be on them and they were able to release all this emotion," Christina remembers.
"God, it looked so amazing to be able to share something you loved so much with so many people who would appreciate it," she continues. "It all seemed so beautiful. I would look at these singers in the spotlight and want it so bad. I wanted it so much and I would be moved so much I would cry. I really wanted it."
She got it. As we speak, fluffy, small pet dogs scamper about as an official indicator of her diva status. All the people hovering in her background - assistants and friends - are here because of her. Because she wanted it so bad. All the bouncers and protectors outside the door work for her, for the show, her business.
She had made it because at 16 she audition to sing the theme tune for the Disney film Mulan. It required the singer to hit the high E - something few singers can manage. Her entire career was about reaching this one note. She was ready and Christina sand the song on the soundtrack. Then she got a recording contract.
Her first single was Genine in a Bottle, an American pop classic that saw her instantly catch up with her rival Britney, who'd already made a digital orchestrated leap from child star to teen queen. She'd got it, she'd made it, she hated it. Her voice had created an escape from her father's world where she lacked control, right into the rotten heart of a recording industry that wanted to put in a very particular place. They just wanted her voice, her body; they didn't want to know who she really was. Her message to young kids who swt out to be singing stars: "Watch your back."
As she tells be her story, you can see that one of the things involved in her transformation from human to star is her anger, the way she fights it, uses it. She went platinum in four weeks with her debut album, then spent years reconvening from the rip-offs, backstabbing and grinding routine. "I realised quickly how much this is a business," Christina says. "I soon understood it's not about any kind of love for the music. People are singed because of the way they look, of how they dance, not because of the music. It is all so fake. And if you are doing something fake, you are surrounded by fake people, and I was so let down.
"I was betrayed by the people close to me," she continues. "That's why I had to be involved in my new album. To prove I wasn't fake. But I do think with Genie I got a foot in the door. You know, when I started, I was 17 - who was going to listen to me? I was just something to be marketed in a teen-pop way. So I did what I had to do, but as soon as I could change things, I did. I couldn't grow singing about genies in bottles. I told my record company they had the first album, I was going to have the second. I'd quit the business if I couldn't do it my way, I wasn't a robot."
Her reaction to her original sweet-natured image was one of a fascinating troublemaker. No longer a child star trying to impress the adults around her, the teen rebel burst through. The belly-button-revealing coyness of early Christina exploded into a new kind of creature in the video for Lady Marmalade: the prom queen had become the porn queen, sucking the whole idea of the pop-sex scarlet inside the fruity inverted commas. She romped with her hip-hop friends. Her voice hadn't totally set her free, but her body had. "It was shocking to me that the world was to shocked. Hello! I have to grow - I'm not 17 anymore," she reports.
By the time she got to the video Dirrty, she was caught up in a crazy pop fantasy, and the leap form the lingerie lewdness of Lady Marmalade was as great as the initial leap from Genie. Dirrty is possibly the rudest video ever made. "Well, whether you loved it or hated it, it got your attention," she says. "And in the end, it's just a party song, and in the video we were having a party. We were having a laugh as we made it about whether people might not be ready for it...and wow, they were not ready for it! But it's just a video, and I'm just an entertainer. I have a sexual side. I'm comfortable with my body, and I'm going to explore that even more! If it makes other people uncomfortable, I think that's their problem; I think they're uncomfortable with themselves."
The video has helped Christina suffer from a kind of demonisation, sure. She has also demonstrated her independence, but has it perhaps created new problems for her? Will she regret it later? "I think it's great that I'm a female and doing it for myself, and I’m strong enough to go up against all of the double standards there are in this business. If a man does this kind of thing, he's allowed to get away with it. If a woman does it, she's labelled as slut or whatever," Christina laments. "That's not going to stop me. I'm going to show that it's the wrong way of thinking. This is what I want to do as an entertainer. I want to do the unexpected, I want to surprise people. It's me growing up. It's me still learning. And how can you regret anything if you learn from it?"
I ask her what the difference is between a male industry dictating her moves based on sexual selling of pop, and what she is doing. "How do I not be exploited whilst selling my sexuality?" she asks in return. "Well, for me it's all just a matter of opinion about how far is too far. I'm not bothered if some people get upset by what I wear. God, it's just freakin' clothes. And with my videos and the pictures of me, I an not an object. I am in control. I'm in the power position. I decide who I am, and it's too bad if you don't get it ... or want it."
Christina in her own words:
ON HER MUSIC... * "Before last year I suffered in life. I'd been hurt a hell of a lot. It was the year I finally grew into myself and became an adult. Stripped was about me taking the reins and assuming full control over my career. I'm an artist. * "I have no apologies and I see nothing wrong with what I'm doing. In fact, I think about my record, if you listen to it, it has a lot of extremely positive messages in it, especially for women. I think it's great. And it takes some people time to get used to new ideas or something they can't, or aren't open enough to want to understand." * "It [Dirrty] is a message that everyone should be able to relate to. And whether you loved, hated, despised, choked on or liked it, it got everyone to realise I've grown up, whether you like it or not."
ON HER IMAGE... * "I like to shock, love to play and experiment, to be as tame or as outlandish as I happen to feel on any given day." * "I'm not great at faking my way through trying to live up to the perfect American virginal sweetheart kind of thing. I just have to be me. I have to do my own thing." * "There always has to be the good girl and the troublemaking bad girl and it's easier for the media to paint me as the latter." * "I like the clothes I wear! I don't care what people think. I wouldn't feel right if I wore clothes covering my whole body. I liked the idea of chaps without trousers. Hot!"
ON HER RIVALS... * "Look at the people like Beyoncé or Britney. They're desperate to come across as sweet, good little girls, but then when you see them in photo shoots that are extremely sexual. So why do they try to be virginal in interviews? Com on girls, stop contradicting yourselves! If you want to do those magazine covers and those videos, more power to you. But don't revert to innocence afterward." * I was up for kissing Britney [at the MTV Video Music Awards, aka the Madonna/Britney kiss], but Britney wasn't. She seems to me like as lost little girl, someone who desperately needs guidance." * "When has pink not been copying me?" * "Sharing the stage with Madonna was one of the most interesting things I have ever done. She's the artist I admire the most in the whole world. And I can now say that I have kissed Madonna! I like being a part of a controversial artist's world." * "She [Kelly Osbourne] must have a crush on me or something because every five minutes she's talking about me. I asked her what her problem what me was, and she had nothing to say. I just don't have time for stuff like that. If you're going to talk crap about me, do it to my face, otherwise you're just talking out of your arse basically." * "I don't think everyone needs 20 bodyguards. I ran into Eminem once and he had so many people with him - about 15. Maybe because he talks so much shit about people he needs all that."
ON LIFE... * "I believe I'm much stronger than I look. I've learnt that anger can give me incredible strength. Energy often comes out of dark periods. * I've been too trusting and it's really bitten me in the arse."
ON BEING A GIRL.. * "I will not hide behind anything, ever. I am a sexually strong female and I'm proud to be one. If anyone has a problem with that, tough." * "I'm so happy to be a female, we're such sensual beings. That's why the thought of two women together on a broad scale is way sexier than two men." |
 Source: Cosmopolitan AU | |
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