Christina Aguilera has landed the prestigious honor of covering the new issue of Billboard magazine . Along with the sexy cover comes an extensive accompanying article that discusses Christina’s new album, new sound and relevance in the music industry. In the article, Aguilera explains that despite some of the negative press that she has received over her debut single/video “Not Myself Tonight,” the fact that she’s provoking conversation says that she is quite “relevant”;
“At this point in my career, I’m over any and all weird comparisons or negativity.”
“I’m in it for the long haul, and a decade later in my career, I have nothing to prove. To anyone who wants to be negative, it’s like, ‘I’m obviously relevant enough to you for you to care and to talk and to evoke negative feelings inside of you.’ “
Aguilera made it clear to Billboard that while her first single “Not Myself Tonight” is more on the radio-friendly, “commercial” side of pop… Fans should not expect a completely commercial record because that simply was not what she was going for this time around;
“There’s some rebellion to it”
“I do have songs on there where I went into them saying, ‘OK, let’s make a more commercially driven record. That’s maybe where ‘Not Myself Tonight’ comes from. But I always have to have an integrity factor with it. There was actually a song that the label really wanted me to record, and I just said ‘no,’ because it didn’t fit on the album-it wasn’t creatively inspiring to me. They said, ‘It’s a hit, it’s a hit!’ And absolutely it’s a hit for someone. But it’s not for me, because when it jeopardizes my integrity too much I can’t do it. The hit thing . . . ‘Who Let the Dogs Out’ was a fucking hit, you know what I mean?”
Bionic finds Aguilera working with some of today’s hottest European electro-pop acts such as M.I.A., Le Tigre, Peaches and Switch. While some worry that Christina is taking a huge risk working on an album which fans and critics might perceive as “left-field,” Aguilera says the entire experience was rewarding and felt very natural for her;
“I get off on working with creative energy. That’s when I’m most at home and feel happiest. And all these people brought about new sides of me. It was a big collaboration-fest, and it felt so good and rewarding in the end, because I was just so happy with the work and the new territories that I ventured out to.”
Will this album be a commercial success…? Don’t know, don’t care! This is my most anticipating release of 2010 and I cannot wait to hear what kind of “left-field” music we get in this reincarnation of Aguilera