From MTV

 

 

Christina Aguilera Old Soul

— by Jennifer Vineyard, with additional reporting by John Norris and Luc Edwards

 

It didn't bother her until her wedding day, when she realized there was no one to give her away.

 

Christina Aguilera wasn't the sort of girl who had dreamed of the perfect dress for her wedding, or floral arrangements or songs for the first dance. So it also hadn't occurred to her that not inviting her estranged father to the ceremony last November also meant she'd be walking down the aisle alone.

 

"I was thinking, 'I'm a performer, I'll be fine, I can handle it on my own,' and I felt good about it," she recalls. "But then, all of a sudden, I was actually doing it and I just felt, 'Wow' — like, I finally got that whole 'daddy's girl' thing. It would have felt good to have that support right there next to you." She pauses, actually tearing up a little, then regains her composure. "I didn't think it was important before," she says.

 

There seems to be a new Christina Aguilera on view these days — especially on her new double album, Back to Basics. She may have showed a lot of skin in the past, but she didn't let many people get beneath the surface. "I'm very protective of how much I let people see," she says, citing trust issues that she traces back to childhood abuse and unsavory early business experiences.

 

So on her new album, she's finally breaking down the walls with a cycle of songs that actually deal with that childhood abuse ("Oh Mother"), lacking a father figure ("The Right Man"), and how true love can heal all wounds in the end. In fact, with tracks like "Understand," "Save Me From Myself," "Makes Me Wanna Pray," "On Our Way" and "Without You," Back to Basics is essentially a love letter to her new husband Jordan Bratman. Being with him, she says, has made it possible to "leave behind my past."

 

"I'm excited about my future with my new husband," she continues. "Everybody needs that one person that takes you to the right place to see all the positives in your life. At 25 years old, I feel happier than I've ever been."

 

She's still singing the blues, but because she wants to. The album's first disc, produced by DJ Premier, samples everything from songs by blues legend B.B. King and old-school New Orleans hitmaker Allen Toussaint to deeply obscure jazz tracks from the 1920s, '30s and '40s. Disc two, produced by Linda Perry (Pink, James Blunt, Christina's 2002 LP, Stripped), is different: It hardly has any samples, but a vintage sound was created with techniques like using vintage microphones muffled with cloth. These retrospective overtones — this interview even took place at Hollywood's historic Roosevelt Hotel, "the playground of luminaries including Clark Gable, Carole Lombard and Marilyn Monroe," according to its Web site — are more than just a new commercial strategy. For Christina, the past is a place in which she's found refuge before.

 

 

 

Ultimate Christina Aguilera

 

From Christina to Xtina and beyond — the definitive collection of music videos from the pop diva's entire career.

 

 

 

 

 

 

"I call it my fun music," she says of the unexpected sounds that crop up in her new songs. They date back to her childhood, when she was 7 or 8 years old and had just moved in with her grandmother to escape from her father, whom she claims was physically abusive. Grandma decided that little Christina needed some retail therapy, so together they made the rounds of Pittsburgh record stores, buying up vinyl albums by Etta James, Nina Simone, Otis Redding and Ray Charles. "I was just so drawn to that [kind of music], even at a very young age," Christina recalls. "Blues and soul and jazz music has so much pain, so much beauty of raw emotion and passion. It made me want to dance; it made me want to sing."

 

And sing she did. Christina started performing some of the songs her grandmother had exposed her to at local block parties, then graduated to singing the national anthem at Pittsburgh Pirates games, and then to "Star Search," which she calls "the 'American Idol' of my time." She was embarrassed to be called "the little girl with the big voice," but the proverbial shoe fit. "I just opened my mouth, and when it came from the heart, it just came out."

 

When she won a spot on the "Mickey Mouse Club" show — appearing alongside such other future stars as Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake and Keri Russell — she felt she was home at last: "Like, finally, kids that enjoy doing the same things that I like to do." The bad old days with her father began to recede, although they never disappeared from her memory.

 

"I think going through what I went through at a young age — the abuse that went on in my household — did affect me a lot," Christina says. "Domestic violence is a topic that is very hush-hush in society. People don't really want to talk about it or get involved — 'Oh, that's personal family business,' they say. But really, children's lives, real lives, are at stake. If someone was drowning in a pool, wouldn't you try to reach in and help them?"

 

Christina realizes she was fortunate to be able to turn her internalized childhood trauma into music. "It's what's driven me," she says. "It's what made me stronger than I would be had I not gone through it. It gave me a purpose — to try to conquer whatever situation I'm in."

 

However, she did lack a father figure — someone she could trust for both personal and professional guidance. When she moved to New York to start her recording career — at 15, with "certain people kinda there as a guardian or whatnot," but essentially on her own — she hoped to find one. But she kept getting entangled with people who were intent mainly on exploiting her. "There's some really gross people out there," she says. "Guys who are supposed to be your caretaker and look out for you but are hitting on you when you're a minor — guys 20 years your senior — and you're like, 'What is this?' It makes you grow up real fast."

 

 

Behind The Scenes At Christina Aguilera's "Ain't No Other Man" Video Set

 

Christina Aguilera Performs In London, 07.20.2006

 

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Maybe that's one reason why '50s R&B singer Etta James, one of Christina's musical inspirations and now a friend, calls her an "old soul." Those hard times will always inform the person she is. On a new song called "Understand," Christina sings, "I used to think that happiness/ Could only be something that happened to somebody else."

 

Jordan Bratman changed all that. Had Bratman not entered Christina's life five years ago, "the lyrical content of the album would have been very different," she says. "Before I met Jordan, I felt that I was the only person who was really going to be there for me, besides maybe my immediate family. So I had to be strong, and I had all these walls up because I've been hurt so many times. And Jordan just came and swept that aside. He was seriously a breath of fresh air. He was so genuine, so sincere, so real."

 

At its bawdy best, Basics celebrates that discovery — "Candyman" and "Nasty Naughty Boy" are bright, brassy tributes to love and lust. It's happy music, and Christina's clearly having fun with it — mimicking the 1940s-era swing standard "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" and occasional burlesque club tunes before bringing in the strings for earnest expressions of her love.

 

And with a real love in her life, Christina was, for the first time, confronted with the difficulty of writing real love songs. Not exactly a fan of the form, she looked for ways to make her love songs distinct. So on "Save Me From Myself," for instance, she recorded her voice in a way she'd never done before: "No belting, no vocal gymnastics, nothing crazy — I just wanted to make it super-simple and really raw. There's no reverb — and I'm a reverb queen — and no effects. Everything's stripped clean, super dry, very softly sung, up-close on the mic." Add an acoustic guitar and a tasteful string quartet, and "that's it," she says. "That's the entire song."

 

Another new track, "The Right Man," is more orchestral and even includes a choir. Written from the perspective of herself about to walk down the aisle, it's a showstopper — half lament about the father who isn't there, half celebration of the man who is.

 

"I'm all made up today/ A veil upon my face

But no father stands beside me/ To give this bride away ...

Here I leave behind my past/ By taking a chance

I finally found the right man" ...

 

"I'm looking ahead at this man that I'm about to marry," Christina says of the song, "and realizing that by taking that step, I'm kind of breaking the cycle. My future daughter is not going to go through what I did. I'm mending my past by marrying this amazing man."

 

Now, she finally has the freedom to leave the past behind her. "Twenty-five years from now," she says, "there'll be a completely different me. But for now, I'm where I need to be. I'm definitely in a place where I feel good, I feel at peace. No drama — don't want any, don't need any. I can just look forward to the future and make it as bright as I can. I'm finding myself ...

 

"... and I'm not done."

 

 

LifeLight

Good articles, LifeLight! Thanks for posting these!