FEATURE:
Second Spin
Christina Aguilera – Stripped
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THERE have been few…
PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images
more drastic and noticeable transformation in Pop than Christina Aguilera’s change between 2001’s Just Be Free and 2002’s Stripped. From the clean-cut and casual look of the former, Stripped sees Aguilera provide a raunchier cover! The music changed between albums. Stripped is a much sexier, slicker, tougher and varied album than Just Be Free. The fourth studio album from Aguilera, it was released on 22nd October, 2002. Aguilera took creative control over Stripped - keen to move on from the teen image of her previous album. She established her alter ego, Xtina. As an executive producer, Aguilera enlisted many new collaborators for the album. I feel that a lot of the mixed and negative reviews for Stripped related to what else was happening in Pop. A raunchy, confident and fierce album, there is tenderness and consistency. It is an L.P. that should have got more respect. Almost two decades later, I feel Pop has become regressive and sanitised in a way. We do not have artists like Aguilera (in 2002) who produced music like we hear on Stripped. Maybe Charli XCX and Dua Lipa have elements of her bolder side, though it is quite pared-down and distilled. Aguilera actually recreated the Stripped cover recently. She has a lot of love for that album – as do her fans. Hitting number two in the U.S., it has been certified four-times platinum. It was a remarkable commercial success!
I wonder whether the critical reception of Stripped influenced the old-school Jazz and Soul inspirations behind 2004’s Back to Basics. Aguilera is still sexy and alluring, but it is a different sound, look and feel that we get compared to Stripped. I will come to a couple of articles that discuss the influence of Christina Aguilera’s 2002 album. I could not find many positive reviews of Stripped. This is what AllMusic wrote in their somewhat mixed review:
“According to Christina Aguilera, the title of her second album, Stripped, refers to her emotions and not her body, but the topless photograph of her on the cover suggests otherwise. Most things about Stripped suggest sex, actually, since Xtina -- as she calls herself in a handful of interviews accompanying the release of the album -- never hesitates to put her body, her piercings, and recently liberated sexual beliefs on display throughout her hyper-sexual, convoluted sophomore effort. Like any diva, Christina believes her trials and tribulations are inherently more fascinating than anybody else's and, like any diva, she has an inflated sense of self-importance, defiantly strutting on the "Stripped Intro" that she's "sorry you can't define me/sorry I break the mold." What she's referring to is anybody's guess, since she hasn't exactly defied expectations since her last album -- releasing a Christmas album and a Spanish-language record of your debut ain't exactly breaking the mold: it is the mold. Plus, Stripped clearly has its origins in the sound of two of Christina's teen pop contemporaries -- the teasing sexiness of Britney Spears and the wonderful, gonzo dance-rock confessionals of P!nk, who truly did break the mold with M!ssundaztood.
Since Aguilera spent so much time working on the album, tearing through a seemingly countless number of producers, she seems desperate to not just catch-up with these two, but surpass them in sex and confessions, breaking it down so they become the same thing, while adding a strong hip-hop undercurrent throughout all the songs. And the end result is utterly bizarre, surpassing Mariah Carey's Glitter as the modern-day standard for musical immolation while rivaling The Teaches of Peaches in its sheer carnality. Where Peaches is always in control of her sexuality, using it as a weapon and a joke in equal measures, Christina is overwhelmed by the reaction of others to her sexuality, putting it on equal ground with her voice, which remains a remarkably powerful instrument, especially since she's toned down the scale-running histrionics from her debut. If she's mastered her vocals, she's still desperately searching for her artistic voice, placing too much emphasis on club and street-level R&B, which fit her poorly (why "Dirrty," a non-song that requires less range, over the slinky sexiness of "I'm a Slave 4 U," the first single?), when she needs full-blown songs. There are some here, though, most notably the Linda Perry collaboration "Beautiful," which was rush-released as a second single, but the ceaseless 70-minute running time and seemingly endless 20 songs mean that individual moments are lost and the big picture remains. And that big picture is that of an artist who has grown up too fast, while the sound is that of an artist who's given too much freedom too early and hasn't yet figured out what to do with it”.
Stripped has inspired artists of today like Selena Gomez and Demi Lovato. One could see and feel artists following Aguilera post-2002: transitioning from a teen image and something quite bland with a more adult and appealing sound. In their feature from 2019, CRACK talked about the legacy of Stripped:
“The words “dirty”, “filthy” and “nasty” snarl like warnings from a guard dog over the image of a woman’s arse, barely covered by chaps and underwear emblazoned with an ‘X’. She straddles a motorbike and rips through an industrial building before being lowered, via a cage, into a wrestling ring. There are flashes of glossed lips, thick black eyeliner, a Medusa piercing, ratty black and blonde hair and an outfit the Fast & Furious franchise should probably be paying royalties to.
This was our re-introduction to Christina Aguilera on her own terms. After releasing four albums fresh out of The Mickey Mouse Club class of 94, this was an assertion of her own artistry. A statement of intent having switched management and wrestled creative control off RCA. Even though the reinvention had more in common with Britney Spears’ jump between Oops!… I Did It Again and Britney, this was essentially her “It’s Britney, bitch” moment. America’s pop sweetheart couldn’t come to the phone in 2002, so instead we got her alter ego: Xtina.
Dirrty is one of the most aggressive songs ever written about acting slutty in the club. From the lyrics to the choreography to the way she walks in the video as if she’s trying to pop a balloon with each step, everything about it exudes more bossery than the combined membership of The Wing.
As a result, it was instantly venerated by women and gays, and completely terrifying to straight men. It copped a lot of flack at the time for its sexualised imagery, but if you actually tried to shag to it, you’d probably kill the person. Dirrty isn’t representative of the sound of Stripped as a whole, but it is the perfect choice of lead single for an album whose theme, above all else, is defiance.
Listed as an executive producer, Stripped was the first project Aguilera had autonomy over. Previously fobbed off as another cookie-cutter pop star whose vocal style was overdone and lyrical content weightless, Aguilera pushed back with a broad album of full-bodied pop bangers, personal guitar ballads and soul songs centred on themes of feminism, self-respect and LGBTQ+ rights – going sextuple Platinum in the UK and being honoured at the GLAAD Media Awards in the process.
This newfound freedom led her to some unexpected places in terms of sound. While the singles – Dirrty, Can’t Hold Us Down, Beautiful, Fighter and The Voice Within – are the most modern sounding and ideologically blatant, the majority of Stripped strikes out in various other directions. There’s an affinity with the sprawling, auteur approach that’s become increasingly common in today’s market.
Think: Kesha’s Rainbow, Taylor Swift’s Reputation or Ariana Grande’s Sweetener – albums whose material may be scattershot but is always held together by the artist. Incidentally, a fighting spirit runs through all those albums as well. Stripped saw a virtuoso emerge from the confines of pop stardom; a move that has no doubt been influential on the artists who followed.
Stripped was met with mixed reviews, but that’s hardly surprising. After all, 2002 was a long way off legacy publications even entertaining the idea that mainstream pop music could have real value, and most critics chose to focus on her raunchy rebrand above anything else. Still, Stripped is best measured by its cultural impact on those it was always intended for – a mass audience of young people who, in the US and the UK at least, had spent much of the late 90s and early 00s being patronised by an industry that served them dynamic but spiritually void bubblegum pop washed down with empowerment slogans from the Spice Girls. Xtina coming through with an ambitious album that had no clear sound, a look that can best be described as “Boomtown: day four” and a thesis of sisterly empowerment akin to a drunk but supportive stranger in the women’s toilets, was, in hindsight, far more subversive than we gave it credit for”.
One of my favourite things about Stripped is the sheer variety of sounds! It is such a fascinating album that covers a huge amount of ground. I do not think that Stripped loses focus with so much packed together. Billboard revisited Stripped on its fifteenth anniversary in 2017. They were keen to explore its influence:
“One of the most fascinatingly jarring parts about Stripped wasn't the topless cover, but the wide range of music it covered. While Christina's rivals stuck to a signature sound (Britney Spears' dance-pop helped define an era) or awkwardly tried to hop genres (Jessica Simpson and Mandy Moore's flips from bubblegum to sultry pop felt more like a label push than artistic renaissance), Christina was set on showcasing her span of influences and sounds for Album No. 2 after firmly establishing herself in top 40 world. That range was consistent throughout the 20 tracks as she embraced elements of...and take a breath here...Latin-pop and flamenco ("Infatuation"), neo-soul ("Loving Me 4 Me"), jazz and funk ("Impossible," "Underappreciated"), rock ("Fighter"), gospel ("Soar," "Keep on Singing My Song") and beyond. And she sold each and every performance, bringing in the right guests like Linda Perry, Lil' Kim, Dave Navarro, Alicia Keys, Redman and more to help her vision.
Despite introducing the record with a turned-up club jam, Aguilera flipped everyone on their head by following up with a ballad as classic as they come with "Beautiful." Rihanna instantly comes to mind as another musical shapeshifter, able to seamlessly showcase all her different influences throughout albums. But Ariana Grande's latest LPs My Everything and Dangerous Woman also show a huge range of genres and influences (compare "Side to Side" to "Into You"), as did Miley Cyrus on Bangerz, which jumped from its sassy, Salt-N-Pepa-inspired title track to a gut-wrenching ballad, "Maybe You're Right."
With edgier makeup, outfits, and hair choices, Christina was visually marking her evolution, rocking jet-black hair for half her era, infamously using piercings as a way to cope with trauma, and taking more fashion risks than ever with bold dresses, cheeky pins and lots of see-through. Of recent, Rihanna may have most famously made this artistic jump during her Rated R era that saw her taking a noticeably darker turn (see the songs "Russian Roulette," "Mad House") and her look growing more provocative (with an asymmetrical pixie cut and showing lots more skin), and being more frank about who she was at the time (specifically requesting more somber music).
But today's stars have a much more sex-positive environment and won't have Saturday Night Live making a judgey (and unfortunately quite unfunny) skit, Entertainment Weekly calling them "desperate and shrill," Time referring to them as "hookers," or continuous hatred from other celebrities (did Kelly Osbourne really have a crush on Xtina?). Songs like "Get Mine, Get Yours" talk of Xtina's affinity for casual sex, while "Can't Hold Us Down" includes lines like, "The guy gets all the glory the more he can score / While the girl can do the same yet you call her a whore." Who else was talking like that and owning it with an equally open and sexually positive image in 2002?”.
Christina Aguilera’s Stripped is an album that is underrated and got some harsh press in 2002. In the years since, it has been re-evaluated, as many artists have taken influence from it. I would advise and urge anyone to listen to it. Alongside hits like Dirrty, Beautiful and Fighter are lesser-spun gems like Walk Away and Impossible. It is one song on the album whose title seems to sum up the reaction to Stripped…
AND that is Underappreciated.