give the girl a media outlet...
she's going to have something to say!
Christina Maria Aguilera (born December 18, 1980) is a four-time Grammy Award-winning American pop singer and songwriter.
She's 26!
She was signed to RCA Records after recording "Reflection" for the film Mulan, and her bubblegum pop-oriented debut album Christina Aguilera (1999) was a critical and commercial success: it produced four hit singles, including "Genie in a Bottle", and helped Aguilera win a Grammy Award for Best New Artist in 2000. A Latin Pop album Mi Reflejo which won a 2001 Latin Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Album and a Christmas album My Kind of Christmas released during this period also sold strongly. In 2001, she participated in collaboration projects for Ricky Martin's Sound Loaded album and the Moulin Rouge!
soundtrack, which she won another Grammy Award for "Lady Marmalade" in the category Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals in 2002.
Aguilera took creative control over her second studio album Stripped (2002), which produced the hip-hop-influenced "Dirrty" and the award-winning (including the 2004 Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance) "Beautiful". It received mixed reviews, and Aguilera's increasingly sexual image during its promotion became the subject of criticism, controversy and ridicule.
She contributed to several other artists' songs in 2004 and 2005 and married record executive Jordan Bratman. Her third studio album Back to Basics (2006), which was preceded by the hit single "Ain't No Other Man", included elements of soul, jazz and blues music and was released to good sales and positive critical reception. She earned two more Grammy nominations, Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for "Ain't No Other Man".
sergeant, and Shelly Loraine Fidler, a Spanish teacher. Aguilera's father was born in Guayaquil, and Aguilera was born in Staten Island, New York to Fausto Wagner Xavier Aguilera, a U.S.
ArmyEcuador, while her mother, a Newfoundlander, is a Canadian that has German, English, IrishDutch ancestry. Aguilera's parents met while her father, Fausto, was serving at Earnest Harmon Air Force Base in Stephenville, Newfoundland, Canada. They were both Catholics.
Her parents married when her mother was 20 years old and her father 31. Aguilera lived with her father and mother until she was 6 or 7 years old. When her parents divorced her mother took her and her younger sister Rachel to her grandmother's home in Rochester, Pennsylvania, a blue-collar suburb of Pittsburgh.
According to Aguilera and Fidler, her father was very controlling, as well as physically and emotionally abusive, which was reflected in her songs, "I'm OK" in Stripped, and "Oh Mother" in Back to Basics. Since then, Fidler has married a paramedic named Jim Kearns, and has changed her name to Shelly Kearns. She attended North Allegheny School District.
Aguilera made her first recording as a fourteen-year-old on a duet with Japanese singer Keizo Nakanishi. That song, All I Wanna Do, became successful in Japan.
Aguilera's grandmother was the first person to recognize her vocal skills.
Since Aguilera was a small child, she aspired to be a singer. She grew up admiring artists such as Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Etta James, Judy Garland, Lena Horne, Barbra Streisand, Otis Redding, Madonna, Minnie Riperton, Bessie Smith, Anita Baker, Janis Joplin, Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Janet Jackson, Stevie Wonder, and Aretha Franklin. As a child she performed at block parties and in talent competitions, where she defeated her opponents.
Aguilera soon gained media attention, and was known as "the little girl with the big voice".
According to VH1's Driven, this label eventually backfired on her. When competitors learned they would be up against her in any given week, they immediately backed out, prompting insiders to claim it was "like sending a lamb to the slaughter.
" Her peers soon became jealous of her and would frequently subject her to ridicule, ostracism, and, in one gym class, attempted assault. Acts of vandalism around her house included the slashing of the tires on the family car. Eventually the family relocated and, by her own order, swore to secrecy about her talent lest another backlash occur.
On March 15, 1990, she appeared on Star Search singing Etta James's "A Sunday Kind of Love", but failed to win. Soon after losing on Star Search, she returned home and appeared on Pittsburgh's KDKA-TV's Wake Up with Larry Richert to perform the same song again. People remarked that the then 10-year-old "sounded 20".
Throughout her youth in Pittsburgh, Aguilera sang "The Star-Spangled Banner" before Pittsburgh Penguins Hockey games, Pittsburgh Steelers football and Pittsburgh Pirates baseball games. Her first major role in entertainment came in 1993 when she joined the Disney Channel's variety show The New Mickey Mouse Club. Her co-stars included Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, JC Chasez, Rhona Bennett (who later became a member of En Vogue), Ryan Gosling, and Keri Russell.
According to the documentary Driven, Aguilera's Mickey Mouse Club co-stars called her "the Diva". One of her most notable performances was of Whitney Houston's "I Have Nothing". When the show ended in 1994, Aguilera began recording demos in an attempt to get signed to a record label.
In 1997 she represented the United States at the "Golden Stag" International Festival with a two-song set which included a Sheryl Crow and Diana Ross song.
In the MTV special All Eyes on Christina, John Norris said that Aguilera "has a four octave range." Aguilera has been noted to possess the ability to hit notes in the whistle register.
A review in an Entertainment Weekly article mentions her "tackling that dog-whistle high note" at the 3:20 mark in the song "Soar" from the album Stripped. If you go to a piano and find the middle F, and go two more octaves above it, that is the note that Aguilera hits. However, Christina doesn't use the whistle register much [even though she has the ability to hit those] but prefers to use melisma [which is when you stretch out a note about an octave or two].
A clear example is right in the beginning of Ain't No Other Man when we first hear her, and she begins descending down.
Other December 18th Birthdays:
Keith Richards-Guitarist/Rolling Stones 63
Steven Spielberg-Director 60
Ray Liotta-Actor 51
Brad Pitt-Actor 43
Rachel Griffiths-Actress/Six Feet Under 38
DMX-Rapper 36
Katie Holmes-Actress 28
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