It was widely recognized that Christina Aguilera needed her latest album Lotus to be a hit after the lukewarm reception to 2010's Bionic.
That's not to say her previous record was a complete disaster - it charted in the top ten almost everywhere - but a glance at its sales (less than 1 million) and critics' reviews revealed a star that had suddenly fallen out of favor.
As such, the performance of Lotus seemed crucial to get the singer back on track, so entering in the UK charts last week at 28 with less than 10,000 copies sold and debuting with her lowest first-week sales ever in the US will surely be a major blow to her camp.
But how and why has this happened to Christina Aguilera? We've examined some possible reasons below.
She doesn't have the right material. The biggest complaint about Bionic was the lack of obvious chart hits as well as its constant genre-hopping, which included everything from R&B and hip-hop to electro-rock and synthpop. She attempted to rectify this on Lotus by trailing it with 'Your Body'; a thumping, anthemic pop number helmed by Max Martin that sounded like an easy hit, but it still failed to connect to a wider audience (its highest peak was in the UK at number 16).
The album itself has a similar overall sound and includes duets with fellow Voice coaches Cee Lo Green and Blake Shelton as well as an impressive list of songwriters and producers, which on paper should have proved more popular with the music-buying masses.
She's better known as a TV star than a popstar. This could be a fairly sizeable factor, given the huge popularity of The Voice in the US. While many artists use these sorts of shows as a promotional tool for their music, Christina's major TV interviews just weeks (even days) before the album's release often focused more around the series than the album. Her decision to leave the show after its current run could be a reminder to everyone that she in fact a popstar, or it could simply see her presence diminish even further.
She didn't promote Lotus enough. An easy excuse often wheeled out by superfans, but in this case the argument holds weight. Christina's own push behind the album appeared to be minimal, with a few last-minute appearances in the US and zero promotion across Europe. This in part explains its dismal showing in the UK (it entered at number 28 with sales of 9,422 and has since dropped to 102 in today's midweek chart), but even Britney Spears - who didn't push Femme Fatale abroad - managed to reach number eight with over 30,000 sales in March last year.
She's unlikeable. It's a popular X Factor-ism, but Christina isn't exactly known for being personable. Unfortunately, most people like "nice" popstars these days, which is probably half the reason why Olly Murs is number one at the moment.
So what should she do next? We think the main problem with Christina Aguilera is that in 2002's Stripped, she created an unbeatable album. An album that was too good. Follow-up Back to Basics was a smart move as it zagged where its former zigged, while Lotus wheels out the same "be yourself" message we've heard from every other female artist in the last two years. Christina is best when she commits to a complete image overhaul, which is what we'd suggest when/if there is an album six.
Christina Aguilera is supposedly “fuming with jealousy over Lady Gaga’s new perfume, Fame,” reports Star magazine.
According to a so-called “insider” for the magazine, “Christina is threatened by any successful woman, but Gaga really gets under her skin.”
“Christina’s fragrance line is her baby, and she’s extremely territorial — especially since her album sales have tanked,” explains the Star source.
The outlet alleges that Aguilera is calling her fellow singer a “beast.”
“When Gaga first arrived on the scene, Christina predicted she’d be a one-hit wonder,” says the mag’s source. “It drives her crazy that she was so wrong.”
What’s more, the tabloid says there could be an actual confrontation between the two stars looming.
“Christina can be really low-class and has been saying she wants to kick Gaga’s ass!” declares the Star insider, adding, “They could easily end up at the same party, especially with the holidays coming up. Things could really get out of hand.”
Oh, my!
So are Aguilera and Gaga really close to rumbling at an upcoming Christmas soiree, asStar suggests?
NO.
It turns out the tabloid that’s recently run some ridiculous stories about both singers is flat out WRONG here, too.
A source close to Aguilera tells Gossip Cop “it’s not true” that she and Gaga have any beef, adding, “they actually really like each other.”
Christina Aguilera recently revealed that she’s embracing her womanly curves.
Yet The Voice coach has today found herself at the centre of a Photoshop scandal, after an advert for her new perfume was released.
Posing in a dusky-pink ballgown with a black bow on the shoot, Christina looked suspiciously like she’d been slimmed-down and bizarrely had her limbs bent at weird angles.
The singer, who perches cross-legged on a shabby-chic inspired armchair for one shot, also appears to have had her wrist retouched to anatomically-incorrect proportions.
In fact, her arm looks too long for her body in the pose – as she pulls a sultry gaze for the camera.
The Photoshop fail didn’t stop there either as website Jezebel noted, with the shadowing on her other arm giving her the illusion of two elbows.
The star's knee also looks off, with a bizarre indentation visible on the side of her knee cap.
The image is of stark contrast to recent pictures of Christina, who has been flaunting a more curvaceous shape of late.
Christina Aguilera's Keynote Q&A today (Oct. 25) at the Billboard/Hollywood Reporter Film & TV Conference was as colorful as her two-toned blonde/bright red hair: She dropped some f-bombs, spoke plainly about her career, and even belted out a bit of a classic tune.
"Now everyone is a critic," she said with a smile, on the subject of the tabloid press and online bloggers. "I don't read blogs. It's just God-knows-who in Buttf--- wherever writing hate sh--. You can't take it seriously. I'm sure you've all been hated on at some point by buttf--- people."
"It's real talk today," she said at one point to applause.
Bill Werde, Billboard's Editorial Director, joined the singer on a couch in front of a meeting room full of conference attendees at The W Hotel in Hollywood. "Ooh, cozy with Christina!" the singer joked as Werde moved closer to her on the couch, setting the lively and fun tone.
The five-time Grammy winner, whose Max Martin-produced "Your Body" is currently on Billboard's Hot 100, was reflective when answering questions about her nearly lifelong career in music, film and television.
"Sometimes you just know what you're placed on this earth to do," she said of her early days. "Through my childhood I had sort of a chaotic past and upbringing. Music came as a sort of release and escape. Inevitably, you're going to stray toward that path. I started out as a wedding singer singing at block parties at 6, 7 years old. Then came Star Search. That was my first big break at 7 years old. Ed McMahon couldn't say my name right."
She lost Star Search but ended up on The Mickey Mouse Club by age 12, the same program that of course helped launch Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears and Ryan Gosling. "Great casting agent," Aguilera said by way of understatement. "I think his name was Mike Casella." (She's correct).
She talked about auditioning for then-A&R man Ron Fair (now a special consultant at Front Line Management) in his office. The pair are still friends. "Our kids go to the same pre-school," she noted. "I walked into his office and he was like, 'Sing for me.' I whipped out Whitney Houston's Preacher's Wife gospel songs. That stayed in his mind."
Later, she said she taped herself in her bathroom singing Houston's "I Want to Run With You." She landed her first record deal and the "Mulan" soundtrack the same week.
She's still got the acting bug. She credited Cher with helping her hone her chops on 2010's Burlesque, though she admitted the film wasn't without its cliches. "Cher taught me about how, for your off-camera scenes, [you should] be just as good if not more of an actor [for] the person you're in the scene with. It's going to make the whole thing better -- to really be a giving actor. It makes for an amazing scene. You start to understand and appreciate the beauty of film and the passion, the love and the craft that goes into the whole process. It was a wonderful learning experience."
She and Cher had plenty to bond over, from the highs to the lows of careers in music and film.
"It's hard being such a powerful woman in the business. I'm known for not always being warm and fuzzy, because you'll just get bulldozed over. You learn to put up this little protective shield, but it's because of something. In my music, I come off as being very open about being insecure, vulnerable and sensitive sometimes. Then I'll go onstage and be this powerhouse force to be reckoned with." It's all about that balance, she added.
Part of the way she maintains that balance, she said, is by avoiding the tabloids. "I'm a mother. I'm a businesswoman. I have a zillion and one things going on in my head, on my plate, creatively. I put my son to bed then I go right into my backyard, which is my studio house. It's a lot. I really truly don't have time for the static noise. It's just not real. They're not real magazines. It's trash. It's rumors."
"If my son has a cute picture of him playing soccer one day, I'll be like, 'Oh, forward me that,' but my publicist will tell you, I don't want to hear the good or the bad," she added. "I don't want to believe my own hype. I want to stay hungry and stay eager and be the best that I can be."
Working on The Voice renewed her own hunger as a singer, she said. She credited the experience with her desire to get back out there with her new album, Lotus.
"These 6-year-olds weren't around when I had 'Genie in a Bottle' and 'Fighter,' " she said. "They are watching me in this big red chair giving advice. There's a lot of auto tune going on now and that's all great, it's an art form. But what's great about The Voice [is that] it's just raw, real talent."
Aguilera confessed she hasn't seen much of any of the singing competition shows -- including her own. "I've not actually seen a full episode of any of the other music shows. I saw the commercials early on of American Idol of Simon being a dick. I was like, 'Man, that's not what it's about!' I didn't want to treat people like that. I wanted to do The Voice to show that we can be positive. We don't have to knock people down." Which isn't to say she was knocking American Idol altogether.
"Jennifer Hudson came from American Idol and went on to do Dreamgirls and won an Oscar," she pointed out. "I know we all have different formats. I don't even watch my own show: I tape it, I'm out. Time to be mommy and time to work on my record and of course invest time in my team, picking songs. I juggle a lot."
Christina said she's formed a great friendship with all of her fellow judges. "We've got a chemistry like a family. Everyone knows me and Adam [Levine] can bicker and get on each other's case. Cee-Lo is just cool, he comes from a real artistic value place. Blake [Shelton] is just a good old time. He's become my big bro." Aguilera and Shelton duet on "Just a Fool," one of the new tracks from Lotus.
The album is full of songs with meaning, something she's consciously steered toward for some time now. "I'm a message girl at the end of the day. Songs like 'Beautiful,' songs like 'Fighter.' They're very introverted and can be very vulnerable but empowering. I was tired of singing about fluff and candy and Genie in a Bottle." She noted that she went to people like DJ Premier, Ladytron, Le Tigre and a pre-fame Nicki Minaj at different points in her career. She was also quick to "thank God" for "Genie in a Bottle" and similar songs, because "they gave me the creative freedom that I have now."
"Beautiful" of course remains a staple Aguilera track and she treated the audience to the song's first few lines while telling the story of its creation. "Linda Perry is raw, she's real and she intimidates a lot of grown men. She's amazing. I was having a really bad day. I came into her studio. It was at her house at the time. I was working with her on a bunch of stuff. She just kind of sat down at her piano in her dining room and started singing."
The audience applauded, then Christina went on to explain that Perry discouraged her from doing all of the showy vocal stuff." 'Don't do all that Mariah sh-' -- that was her, not me, I love that sh--!" Aguilera clarified. "But she was like 'don't be doing all that acrobatic sh--, just sing!'"
Perry is a colorful personality on Twitter -- Werde suggested Aguilera start following her. "I was really late to [Twitter]," she admitted. "To me it was presented as like, 'this is what I'm having for breakfast this morning.' I was like, 'Really? Who cares.'" But now she's gotten the hang of what it can be. "I said something the other day on Twitter and I was like, 'Oh, this is what you can use Twitter for!' I might have opened up a whole new can of worms and a new appreciation for it. I just didn't want to be generic. Some people use it in a frivolous way."
There's nothing frivolous about her approach to her new record, which she summarized thusly:
"It's embracing the woman that I've grown to be and embracing myself, full circle, as a pop star. Being on The Voice has made me realize it. And being face to face with my superstar little popstar team on The Voice has been inspiring and inspires me. It's made me come full circle and appreciate the journey of the last decade-plus. I chose Lotus because it represents the unbreakable flower that stands the test of time."
And even more to the point: "Sh-- happens, man. This is the business. It's not going to be all cute and pretty and tied up in a little bow."
1. Lotus 2. Army Of Me 3. Red Hot Kinda Love 4. Make The World Move (feat. CeeLo Green) 5. Let's Find Out 6. Your Body 7. Let There Be Love 8. Sing For Me 9. Blank Page 10. Cease Fire 11. Around The World 12. Circles 13. Best Of Me 14. Shut Up 15. Just A Fool (feat. Blake Shelton) 16. Empty Words 17. Light Up The Sky 18. Your Body
Christina Aguilera is insanely talented, mind-bogglingly famous and totally not freaking out about it.
Sarah Miller Robert Erdmann Eleanor Strauss
In the four minutes I spend waiting on the sidewalk outside Christina Aguilera’s Beverly Hills mansion, I get a sense of why being an international superstar might suck. No fewer than seven celebrity star tour vehicles pass by the well-polished gates. “Is this Christina Aguilera’s house?” someone shouts. Two parties on foot want to know the same thing. “I don’t know,” I say.
Eventually, a young man in cargo shorts ushers me into the cool, high-ceilinged foyer. An enormous red crystal chandelier hovers, oddly reminiscent of the spaceship in Independence Day. Underfoot, a lush patterned rug proclaims “CA & JB.” Since Aguilera and music executive Jordan Bratman split in 2011, it is the decor equivalent of a tattoo, and I wonder if it could somehow be rewoven to read, I don’t know, “Cats Get the Job Done!” à la Johnny Depp’s “Wino Forever.”
I’m examining a framed photo of her four-year-old son, Max, atop a black lacquer table—one where his dimpled smile is particularly adorable—when Aguilera appears. As a judge/coach on The Voice she’s routinely red-lipped, coiffed and either very fashionable (peplum jacket, fishnets) or mega-fashionable (studded hot pants). Here, she’s barefaced, in black leggings and a red sweatshirt, her platinum hair apparently towel-dried. She looks cute, like a college junior about to curl up with her statistics book. “Hi, I’m Christina,” she says. The “Hi, I’m … ” part of the greeting, like her handshake, is light and sweet, very ex-Mouseketeer. But the “Christina” part has a sultriness to it that seems less an overt attempt to be sexy than it is just the natural grain of her voice. I abandon the intelligent professional thing I was going to say in favor of crying out: “Me and a bunch of friends dressed up and went to see you and Cher in Burlesque on opening night at a mall in rural Pennsylvania.”
“That’s cute,” she says. “Awww.” She will issue this response every time I compliment her. We move into another emphatically red room—red rug, red patterned wallpaper, tan velvet couch with red tassels—with a movie screen at one end and a grand piano and bar at the other. I’m directed to a silk brocade chair in easy reach of a glass jar of lollipops. “And the song "Fighter" is incredibly important to me,” I say. “I listen to it when—well … I feel bad about myself and I want to persevere instead of just, uh, die.”
“Awww. That’s why I wrote ‘Fighter,’ ” she says. “I have that need in me to help people. I am all about the underdog.” And then Aguilera sits in the corner of the velvet couch farthest from me, and I’m tempted to say, “Hey, I’m an underdog! Why don’t you want to sit near the underdog?” Then I remember the hordes of people outside, all wanting a piece of her, and resolve not to take it personally.
As we talk, her actual dogs—the papillons Chewy and Stinky and the pint-size mutt Nugget—scramble over the couch, alighting on Aguilera as if she were a station on their doggy interval-training course. Nugget slaloms around the enormous mug of coffee Aguilera has left on the table and vaults off her lap. “Nugget!” she shouts. “Stop.”
Nugget’s behavior only devolves, but Aguilera seems okay with that. She exudes a calm, almost imperturbable presence and intense star power. She does giggle a fair amount, but once she stops, she looks expectant, almost arch. Should I ask about her upcoming fragrance, Red Sin; her charity work with World Hunger Relief; or the Alexander Wang tracksuit dress she wore to a recent dinner with her boyfriend, Matt Rutler? I cut to the chase: “Was there a day when you realized: ‘Oh my God, this is it. I am going to be huge’?”
Now Aguilera full-on laughs—like it’s either funny that people think of her as that famous or funny that I would ask her about it—and tells me a story about one pivotal day in 1997 when she got two phone calls, one offering her a record contract and one offering her a song in the movie Mulan. Within two years (is there anyone left in the world who hasn’t heard "Genie in a Bottle"?), Aguilera was a big star, but her rise was far from idyllic.
“When you’re young, it’s so easy to get bulldozed,” she says. She was surrounded by people trying to control what she said, what she sang and what she wore. “There were these two ladies who worked at the record label who always wanted to come to fittings and dress me up like a Barbie doll. It was disgusting.”
But two years later, she’d freed herself of every stifling influence and in Stripped offered songs truly worthy of her talent. “I am beautiful, you are beautiful, we are beautiful,” she sang, and we believed her. In the video for “Fighter,” she burst out of a glass cage singing, “Thanks for making me a fighter,” and we all decided, about those ex-boyfriends, -bosses and -BFFs, “Hey, it’s actually good you were a jerk, because that motivated me to walk away from your sorry ass.” Madonna might have given us girl power, but Aguilera let us cry, get angry and have empowerment for dessert, all with a voice that made her contemporaries sound like they were practicing scales. Recalling the staggering success of Stripped, Aguilera doesn’t even shift on her velvet perch, only runs a hand down Nugget’s spine and says, “I was 21 and fearless. It was a really great turning point for me to be the artist I’d always wanted to be.”
That same steadiness allows her to stay grounded during setbacks. Her 2010 album, Bionic, underperformed, Burlesque was savaged by critics, she flubbed the national anthem at some Supposedly Important Football Game. Aguilera remains philosophical. “Difficult moments in life can either get you down or they can inspire you.” In the next few months, she'll drop a new album. “If you love ‘Fighter,’ ” she says, “you’re going to love my new album. As a 30-year-old woman, I’ve been uncovering my independence, and it’s been really fun to explore in the new songs.”
The Voice is just about the most perfect place Aguilera could find inspiration at this time in her life. (Cliffs Notes to the show’s format: Singers audition, judges listen with their backs turned. If they like the singer, they swing the chair around. Crying and competition ensue.) The only woman alongside CeeLo Green, Adam Levine of Maroon 5 and country singer Blake Shelton, Aguilera is sassy and not to be messed with. “You’re one-dimensional,” she informed one contestant, and another time, when Levine gave her some of his trademark pushback, she cut him off midsentence and just laughed. But she also dispenses lots of snuggly hugs and gushing tearful words of praise. As she talks about the show, a glow comes into her delicate, pale face. “It’s a big responsibility to help someone express themselves as an artist. I take it seriously,” she says.
An added bonus of The Voice is how its signature swivel chair—voilà!—allows for high-impact Aguilera fashion moments. Highlights have included a L’Agence silk maxi dress, a yellow Roland Mouret cocktail dress with sly bustline cutouts and an Alexander McQueen skull T-shirt. “I have always loved dressing up, being theatrical.”
She says she’s totally unrepentant about the way her clothes advertise her assets. “Actually, the challenge I’ve always had is being too thin, so I love that now I have a booty, and obviously I love showing my cleavage.” Her advice for her curvy sisters? “Hey, if you can work it and you can own it, that confidence is going to shine through.”
When she hugs me goodbye, I feel the melancholy of missed opportunity. I so wanted to come face to face with the Aguilera who unleashes such explosive and unguarded feeling in her music—in a way few musicians do. And as I exit, it occurs to me that all these people dying to get into this inner sanctum should know that as red as it is, it’s not the place to find the secret to her heart, which is, however, available on iTunes for $1.29.
Outside, the tour buses are still coming and going. “Hey,” someone asks. “Is that where Christina Aguilera lives?”
“I don’t think so,” I say.
The guy looks crestfallen. “I really want to meet Christina Aguilera.”
“Awww.”
“Hey,” he says, hopeful again. “Are you famous?”
“No.” Then I get in my car and drive home, “Bound to You” playing loud, on repeat.
