14 DAY TRIAL // Last Friday, Christina Aguilera finally premiered her first video for her first single off the “Bionic” album. The “Not Myself Tonight” was preceded by plenty of teasers and promo pics but, to put it mildly, nothing could have possibly prepared the world for the sauciness included in it. Some even questioned how appropriate the video might be, especially since Christina is also a mother – but that’s not something she bothers herself about.
In a recent interview cited by MTV News, the singer says that, just because she’s a mom, that doesn’t mean that she’s no longer in touch with her wilder side. On the contrary, she would say. Since she said earlier on that many songs on “Bionic” had been inspired by her son Max, the question of how appropriate her latest video was for him did pop. As it happens, Christina doesn’t quite see things that way, being the kind of mother that will actively encourage her son to express himself – in all matters.
“Mama still has to be me,” she says. But there is a clear distinction between Christina the mother and Christina the artist, and her son Max will just have to learn to make it. “I never claimed to be a cookie-cutter soccer mom. That’s all good for some people. Not for me. [Max] is going to grow up in a household where he knows mommy expresses herself artistically […]. He’s going to learn to respect the fact that women are allowed to express themselves and not feel shameful about their bodies,” Christina adds. Plus, Max already loves Rihanna so why shouldn’t he listen to his mother’s music, she asks.
Be that as it may, critics – and even many fans – did not appreciate the video, no matter how groundbreaking and controversial it aimed to be. With its obvious nods to Madonna and Lady Gaga, which Christina did on purpose, it is being said, it lacks originality and denotes that Aguilera may be trying too hard to catch up with today’s hottest pop artists and thus make up for lost time. This is how EW sees it, at least – though it does admit that the song itself is above average.
“The worst part about Xtina’s video, beyond the rather unabashed unoriginality of it, is the sad stink of I’ve-been-gone-forever-had-a-baby-and-now-want-to-be-relevant-again desperation. […] When watching, there’s wasn’t a moment where I didn’t feel like Aguilera was clawing for relevancy, in a crazy, far beyond, post-Aguilera world. True story: Aguilera has been gone for a long time. There’s a desperate need, sort of like when she blipped back for two seconds with ‘Keeps Gettin’ Better’ a couple years ago, for her to resuscitate her look and build it in the image of what’s relevant now. But maybe she should have gone in a totally different direction to avoid comparisons? Given us something totally different? The thing about Aguilera is that she’s used to zig when everyone else was zagging. And now, it seems like she decided to zag along with everyone else,” EW says in a review of the video.