14 DAY TRIAL // After taking some time out to be a doting wife and loving mother, former wild child Christina Aguilera is back again in the media for other things than her personal life. The singer, once dubbed The Voice for obvious reasons, has a new album coming out in March this year and, as such, she already started promoting it via magazine interviews.
Christina Aguilera is the cover girl of the latest issue of Marie Claire magazine. In the interview accompanying the spread, the singer talks about issues that have been much debated in the past, though never so directly as now, like her growing up in the spotlight, maturing from a manufactured pop star into a talented artist with a voice of her own, and how motherhood has influenced her sound and style.
“In this crazy business, it’s so easy to build up a lot of walls and a lot of bitterness. And it’s just no way to be…” Christina says of having to grow up in the glaring eye of the media. However, once her journey from teen to woman was completed, this has also translated into a more mature sound, the singer says. “[I can now use softer tones] that maybe I’ve been afraid to do in the past, to allow myself to go to a place of ‘less singing.’ I’m more vulnerable and more strong at the same time,” the singer explains.
Looking back on the albums she released in the past, Aguilera feels no regrets. She knows now that she had to start somewhere so that she could move up on her own, which is why she can now smile at the thought she was once Britney Spears’ rival. “I had a really hard time being light before. I’d get a little weird about it being too cliché. My first record was very clichéd pop – what everyone else wanted. [My second album ‘Stripped’] inspired by a lot of pain. [My third, ‘Back to Basics,’] still had some sort of relation to my past. [My new album] is just about the future – my son in my life, motivating me to want to play and have fun,” she says.
“Bionic,” Aguilera’s fourth studio material, is out in March, as also noted above. The singer started work on it back in 2009, though she rarely spoke about it with the papers. According to ongoing reports, the first single off the album will be a hip-hop-heavy track called “Glam” produced by Tricky Stewart.