Christina Aguilera’s Stripped retrospectively reviewed: The most drastic, effective reinvention in pop

Christina Aguilera (Image: RCA)

At the turn of the millennium, teen pop was dominating the charts like never before. The sugary-sweet sounds of hits like Britney Spears’s ‘Oops!… I Did It Again’ and *NSYNC’s ‘Bye Bye Bye’ were in. It was bubblegum pop with added E numbers. Christina Aguilera’s 1999 self-titled debut was an example of this, launching the Disney alumnus onto the world stage with ‘Genie in a Bottle’ and ‘What a Girl Wants’. She established herself among the likes of Jessica Simpson and Mandy Moore as a new teen idol, all of whom were being moulded to Britney’s girl-next-door image. It was these comparisons that made Aguilera want to break away from her contemporaries and showcase her true identity on Stripped. 

It was Aguilera’s fourth overall studio

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