By Erica Russell
An eponymous album marks a serious second in an artist’s profession. For girls, proudly owning one’s work, physique, and artistry could be particularly highly effective, even political. All through Ladies’s Historical past Month, MTV Information is highlighting a few of these iconic statements from among the largest artists on the globe. That is Self-Titled.
A lot has been mentioned about Christina Aguilera’s voice over the previous two-plus many years. She’s fairly actually been touted as “The Voice of a Era” — by followers, fashion designers, and awards shows alike. She was even tapped as a coach for the primary three seasons of the aptly titled TV competitors The Voice, a testomony to her inimitable four-octave prowess. Any pop fan would seemingly agree that Aguilera’s singing belongs snugly within the higher echelons of contemporary divadom, subsequent to Whitney, Mariah, and Adele. However the artist sometimes called Xtina has at all times had the range, and never simply when it comes to her vocal skills.
Very like her pop contemporaries (and a few Mickey Mouse Membership friends), Aguilera was initially marketed as a shiny star with bubblegum pop songs to match. Shortly following the discharge of “Reflection,” Aguilera’s career-launching theme music for Disney’s 1998 animated movie Mulan, Aguilera flew to Los Angeles to file her debut album. When her eponymous file dropped in August 1999, it was packaged within the squeaky clear shrinkwrap of the late Nineteen Nineties system and propped up in opposition to the likes of Britney Spears’s …Child One Extra Time, Jessica Simpson’s Candy Kisses, and Mandy Moore’s So Actual, all of which got here out inside the similar yr.
Christina Aguilera’s radio-primed lead single “Genie in a Bottle” sealed the teen-pop deal tighter than, effectively, a genie in a bottle. Immediately catchy, oozing innuendo, and constructed round a throbbing, saccharine-yet-suggestive hook, the monitor captured the then-taboo hormonal agony of teenagedom from a lady’s perspective. Controversial upon its launch because of its provocative lyrics associated to intercourse and self-respect — although hardly the final Aguilera monitor to draw the ire of simply outraged mother and father and curmudgeonly critics the world over — it was however a success for the star, notching No. 1 on each the U.S. Billboard Scorching 100 and Prime 40 charts.
The shiny pop album marked a profitable and profitable debut, and even nabbed the performer a coveted Greatest New Artist Grammy, but it surely wasn’t every part Aguilera had wished for. Although the melismatic energy of her literal voice was evident all through the tracklist, her inner voice — comprising her true perspective and creative preferences — wasn’t essentially being heard. Impressed by artists reminiscent of Etta James and Mariah Carey in her youth, Aguilera had a pure affinity for R&B and soul music. Sadly, her place then as a comparatively unknown and freshly signed expertise, not to mention a younger girl, didn’t afford her a lot say over her sound and picture, particularly within the slim mainstream musical panorama of the late ’90s.
“I used to be held again so much from doing extra R&B ad-libbing,” Aguilera instructed The Washington Post in 2000. “They clearly needed to make a fresh-sounding younger pop file and that is not at all times the course I needed to go in. Generally they did not get it, did not wish to hear me out due to my age, and that was just a little bit irritating. Since all of the success, it is just a little simpler to get my opinions throughout.”
Although the 18-year-old RCA signee didn’t have a hand in writing her debut album — a fast scan of the file’s personnel sees the performer credited solely for vocals and a few vocal association — it was the conviction in her singing that wholeheartedly offered the tracks as her personal. She claimed possession of the songs on Christina Aguilera — written by the likes of pop heavyweights Diane Warren, Steve Kipner, and Shelly Peiken — merely by the facility of her voice, which harassed an pressing sense of autonomy that may solely grow to be extra obvious and absolutely realized on later albums lyrically, musically, and stylistically.
In flip, Christina Aguilera laid the muse for Aguilera’s versatility and foreshadowed her need to experiment. It additionally launched a dynamism she’s embraced over the course of her profession. Spanning bubblegum, dance-pop, R&B, soul, ballads, and hip-hop, the album allowed the singer to dip into numerous genres and kinds she’d later discover on her personal phrases, even inspiring some alter egos within the course of.
Christina Aguilera‘s funky, assured follow-up single “What a Girl Wants,” one other Billboard Prime 40 and Scorching 100 chart-topper, double-downed on the teen-pop fare whereas additionally dabbling in R&B and mid-tempo electro, components Aguilera would later lean into on her 2002 album Stripped and 2010 album Bionic, respectively. It additionally hinted on the themes of independence and feminine empowerment that may comply with Aguilera by her profession, notably on Stripped all the way up to 2018’s Liberation.
Equally, her dance-pop single “Come On Over (All I Need Is You)” — the radio model of which featured an attractive new rap verse from the newly minted pop star — was steeped in hip-hop components, a style she’d discover on Stripped with tracks reminiscent of her and Lil’ Kim’s feminist anthem, “Can’t Hold Us Down.” In the meantime, the soulful “So Emotional” and “Somebody’s Somebody” supplied a touch on the formational gospel inspirations to which Aguilera would later commit on songs reminiscent of “Understand” and “Mercy on Me” off 2006’s Again to Fundamentals, an idea album that noticed the star rework right into a retro-pop pinup queen.
After which, after all, there have been the ballads: “Reflection,” “Obvious,” and “I Turn To You,” the latter a glowing karaoke basic for the ages. Balladry would grow to be a signature for the powerhouse vocalist, in addition to a staple in her elastic discography, with a lot of her most sweeping songs — “Beautiful,” “Hurt,” “You Lost Me,” “Bound to You,” “Blank Page,” “Twice” — incomes important acclaim and solidifying Aguilera as a contemporary diva, at the same time as she shifted seamlessly between sonic and aesthetic evolutions.
Ever since dropping her namesake debut album, Aguilera has solely expanded upon her chameleon-like musical and stylistic expression, metamorphosing right into a stripped-down fighter, a basic Hollywood starlet, a membership queen, a burlesque star, a lotus in bloom, and a liberated pop warrior. Christina Aguilera preceded and even perhaps afforded her that house to blossom artistically by proving her chops early within the sport.
In Aguilera’s personal phrases to Cosmopolitan: “I hope I paved the best way and helped set the bottom guidelines that ladies could be any model of themselves they wanna be… and pleased with it.” It doesn’t matter what model of herself Christina Aguilera needs to be, she’s confirmed she actually has the vary to realize it.
