What A Girl Wants - singer Christina Aguilera discusses her career - Interview

Interview, April, 2000 by Evelyn McDonnell

What did it take for Christina Aguilera, an innocent kid from Pittsburgh, to morph herself into a pop-music phenomenon?

Christina Aguilera vexes those who want their babes on one side or the other of the vixen/virgin fence. When her record company asked her to change her name, the half-Ecuadorian, half-Irish singer stayed true to her raza roots. When It comes to hair color, though, Aguilera's blond is the genie from the bottle. As an opening act on one leg of TLC's world tour, Aguilera looked like Disco Barbie (complete with silver halter-top and hip-huggers), but her voice is a force to be reckoned with. Maybe, even, a supernatural force: When I tried to watch her performance at the American Music Awards, the tape not only jammed my VCR, it caused a surge of electricity that sent a glass ceiling light crashing to the floor. Over the course of two phone interviews, Aguilera was as candid as canned--unusually so, for a barely-grown-up child star. The nineteen-year-old has a charming tendency to emphasize feelings by saying "all my life," as if that were such a long time. Aguilera got her showbiz start on The Mickey Mouse Club, alongside Britney Spears and 'N Sync's Justin and J.C. Her 1999 self-titled debut spawned four Top 10 hits. A world tour, a Spanish album, and a Christmas album are in the works for 2000. Meanwhile, Aguilera keeps popping up everywhere, on floats and half-time shows, belting out note after note after note--a veritable nonstop aria of youthful energy.

EVELYN MCDONNELL: I know you started performing at a very young age. Was your mom steering you? CHRISTINA AGUILERA: My mom was definitely behind me 100 percent, but really it was my grandma who noticed something was different about me. When I played, I would spread towels on the floor as my stage and use my mom's old twirling baton as my microphone. If anything, I pushed my mom. Everything I've gotten just fell into my lap. I had no acting experience or vocal training when I auditioned for The Mickey Mouse Club.

EM: Have you stayed in touch with your former Mouseketeers?

CA: I would love to say that we have enough time to sit down and talk, but we don't. I did come up to Britney once. I was hearing a lot of bad press and I said, "Britney, you've got my support. I want you to know that in interviews I am always asked about you and I am always in your corner." The only time we really get to talk to each other is through the press.

EM: There have been a lot of attempts to pit you two against each other--in the media, online.

CA: It's really, really hurtful to me because Britney and I were close in the Mickey Mouse Club. We were the two little girls of the show, so we bonded.

EM: Do you have much contact with people your age in general?

CA: No. But it's been that way for a few years now. I had a few friends, but they would want to rant and rave and go off about boys, and I'd want to talk careers. You grow up so much faster in the business because you are surrounded by people twenty years your senior. It's a fairly male-dominated business, so it's really tough to be nineteen, to be female, and to go up against your record company heads, who have their own perception of what you should be, what you should like, what you should sound like. You have to be that much stronger than someone older. I feel like a 35-year-old businesswoman in a nineteen-year-old body.

EM: Adolescence is a time when a person is trying to develop her own identity, and you have so many people--your manager, your A&R person, your publicist, your mom, your stylist--trying to shape your identity for you.

CA: It's easy to lose yourself. You give all day to the press or the fans or the record label and then all of a sudden it's like, "Wow, I've got no time for me." I do have good support from my family and my friends back home. It wasn't like I was born in some glamorous place. I was brought up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, steel country.

EM: You're all over the place, at every major Americana event: The American Music Awards, the Miss U.S.A. Pageant, the Super Bowl, Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. You're the all-American girl! Is that a little pressure to be under?

CA: Whenever everyone wants to label you a role model, it's difficult to do normal nineteen-year-old girl things. Dennis Rodman gave me some good advice. I was talking about feeling like I'm under a microscope, so I can't just have fun because everybody wants to make such a big deal out of it. And he said, "Controversy never hurt anybody."

EM: He would know! You've had some differences with your record company about your Image.

CA: Right now, my label still wants to limit the amount of skin that I show, because they are adamant about me being seen as a vocalist and not just a body. People see one picture of you showing skin and it takes away respect.

EM: You don't want to be a puritan, but you want to be taken seriously, too.

CA: Right. My manager was giving me a hard time. He was like, "What was up with all the partying you did at such and such a place?" And I said, "What were you doing at nineteen years old? You were in college having your frat experiences. This is my college experience."