It seems like only yesterday that she was a teen-pop star, but Christina Aguilera turns 30 on Saturday, facing an uncertain commercial and personal future as a middle-aged "Dirrty" girl. How happy is this birthday for her?
She won't be spending it alone, at least. There's a new guy in the life of this suddenly single superstar, and if he weren't around to ease her through her divorce, she'd still have the paparazzi to keep her company. Still, there are other factors that might make the candles look a little dimmer as she faces her fourth decade:
* Burlesque, her debut as a movie star, is going down as a box-office bomb. It had a $55 million budget—before many millions more in marketing costs—making it the most expensive gamble in Screen Gems' history. After three weeks in theaters, the movie has edged up to a $34 million gross, only about half of which is headed back to the disappointed studio's coffers.
Reviews weren't much kinder to her performance than to the overall film, which got a 38% approval rating among the critics surveyed at Rottentomatoes.com. (Among "top critics," it was an even lower 26%.) USA Today called her "clearly not at ease in front of a camera." The New York Times said Aguilera is "a serviceable screen presence" who gives "a dutiful, stolid performance in a movie that quickly proves achingly dull." "Aguilera can dance like nobody's business," opined the New York Post, "but her acting debut isn't going to keep Anne Hathaway
awake at night."
* When Aguilera canceled her summer tour just after tickets went on sale last May, she cited the need to do interviews promoting Burlesque, among other factors. "With both the album press and film press I am booked the entire summer and need the time to focus on the work at hand... I realized there was not enough time to put together and rehearse for a proper show," she said in a statement. Which most people took as code for: I realized my dignity could not bear the sight of half-empty arenas.
* The album she was also supposedly canceling the tour to further promote, Bionic, was an unmitigated bust. It debuted on the Billboard chart at No. 3 with 110,000 copies sold, less than a third the opening-week total of her previous studio album. It dropped out of the top 20 after two weeks. That wasn't altogether surprising, given that lead single "Not Myself Tonight" had peaked at No. 23 on the Billboard Hot 100. Further singles did nothing to revive the album's fortunes. By the end of November, Bionic had sold a career-low 252,000 copies, and by December it had dropped off the list of the hundred best-selling albums of 2010.
* Amid all these career travails, there is the personal turmoil, of course. Aguilera filed for divorce from her husband of five years (and romantic interest since 2002), Jordan Bratman, in October. She subsequently revealed in interviews that they are not on the most amicable terms, which is particularly difficult for a couple with a 2-year-old child. Although she was the one who initiated the split, Aguilera spoke in interviews about "days when it feels impossible to even get out of bed, much less function as a mother."
But what if we were to look at the glass as one-third full?
Aguilera has enough still going for her that she's unlikely to fall into a George Bailey-like funk this Christmas. Consider these factors:
* That $34 million gross for Burlesque may look paltry weighted against the budget and other expectations. But how many other current music stars could drive even that many people into theaters, headlining their first movie? Given the reviews and generally derisive atmosphere into which it was released, it could have done a lot worse. And the fact that it was still No. 6 at the box office at the end of its fourth week says... well, it says something about the weakness of the Thanksgiving-time competition, but also speaks to how moviegoers didn't completely abandon the film after the first weekend.
* Moreover, a lot of those people who did see Burlesque liked it. Inexplicably, given the awfulness of its faux-Fosse-ness, but still... Cinemascore's exit polling produced a surprisingly favorable A- grade from opening-night attendees, and the approval rating from rank-and-file voters at Rottentomatoes.com is at an okay 77%. It's understood that this was a movie only for Girls 'n' Gays, but the representatives of those particular demographics apparently downed enough cosmopolitans before hitting the multiplex that they didn't hate it.
* Don't cry for her personal life, Argentina. Aguilera did not divorce her husband to live life as a spinster. She has gone public with new boyfriend Matt Rutler, a set assistant on Burlesque (saying she kept things platonic with him before the divorce filing). The singer-actress is likely to become much more a fixture of the tabloid press, now that she can be photographed alongside someone other than her former partner of nine years. And while she probably has no desire to fall into the "famous for being famous" camp, the interest in her as an icon and subject of gossip may not be much affected by how she is or isn't doing on the charts.
Can the Good Ship Xtina be turned around and put back on course?
Speaking just about her divorce, Aguilera told an interviewer, "Of course, it is impossible to redefine yourself, and your life, overnight." But redefinitions are just what Aguilera has specialized in over the years, professionally speaking. The question may be whether she has an indefinite number of reincarnations in her or, like a cat, only a finite number of lives.
When she appeared on the scene in the late '90s, Aguilera was a family-friendly teen star, and though she could be seen bristling at the idea that she needed to re-record the "rub me the right way" lyrics to get on Disney Radio, she played the part to get in the door. Album No. 2 (not counting a Christmas release) was the most serious reinvention, as she got as provocative as possible with the "Dirrty" video. That led to the kind of widespread "skank" jokes that might drive a less secure personality into hiding. Instead, she rebounded with "Beautiful," a ballad that established her as a still sexy but potentially deeper star.
That peak has been followed by still more reinventions, some of them less successful. Back to Basics was her bid to be taken seriously as a singer for (or at least influenced by) the ages, with its '40s and '50s jazz-R&B touches, though she wisely hedged her bets with some modernistic arrangements. After that, though, she went electro-pop, first with a couple of new tracks on a 2008 greatest-hits CD, then on the entirety of this year's Bionic.
Musically, going electro wasn't a bad direction for her. But it had the unfortunate effect of making her look like a follower—lagging behind Britney, her once and future Mouseketeer rival, and the suddenly far huger Lady Gaga. And if it comes down to a contest between Xtina and Gaga, as fans and the media have been prone to positioning things, then Aguilera is going to lose right now.
In strictly musical terms, she's done retro and she's done futuristic—so where can she go from there? In terms of personal image, she may also be stuck between a rock and a hard place. Aguilera has always projected steely resolve. That made her attempt in Burlesque to play a simple Midwestern gal who becomes a bumper-and-grinder with a heart of gold feel only about half-right: The dance moves totally worked, and the warmth and relatability didn't, quite. In her initial post-divorce interviews, it seemed as if Aguilera was trying to come off as vulnerable, but the quick rebound with a new beau kind of scotched the idea of her as anything other than queen bee.
It's unlikely we'll really be seeing—or hearing—the softer side of Aguilera any time soon. Can she continue to be that cool and brassy into her 30s and still captivate the public imagination through sheer force of will and siren-like voice? Or will the indomitable act ultimately make her... domitable? As the last of the true divas turns 30, we can only watch, and wait.
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