Christina Aguilera — “Beautiful”

Don’t you bring us down today, because it’s time to talk about Christina Aguilera. This week, Rob looks back on the superstar songwriters behind some of the biggest pop hits of ‘90s and 2000s before landing on how 4 Non Blondes’ Linda Perry penned “Beautiful,” one of Xtina’s signature songs. Aguilera’s powerhouse voice is what put her on the map, and landed her on a Disney soundtrack, but it’s her striking restraint that makes the song land that much harder. Later, Rob’s joined by ‘Mighty Real’ author Barry Walters to discuss Aguilera’s emergence from a crowded class of pop stars and how “Beautiful” became a major LGBTQ+ anthem. Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Barry Walters Producers: Julianna Ress, Chris Sutton, Justin Sayles, and Olivia Crerie CONNECT Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/60songsthatexplainthe90s TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@60songsthatexplainthe90s (00:00) Intro: Can you tell which famous songwriters wrote these pop hits? (24:50) This week’s song: “Beautiful” by Christina Aguilera (28:28) Christina’s Disney days and early vocal talent (39:50) “Genie in a Bottle” and why Christina’s debut album didn’t let her cook (49:36) Reintroducing herself with ‘Stripped’ (54:21) The “Beautiful” music video and Linda Perry’s influence (01:01:28) Interview with Barry Walters (01:33:41) Outro Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 1:44Speaker 01

  One time in high school, I was playing Super Nintendo with my younger brother. We were playing Tecmo Superbowl, the football game, and I pissed off my brother somehow. I ran for another touchdown as Bo Jackson, or I sacked him again as Lawrence Taylor, or I threw for another touchdown as QB Browns, or I just went ready, down, hut, hut, hut, hut, hut, hut for too long. And my brother gets super pissed and he calls me bitch nog. Out of nowhere, unprovoked, unprecedented bitch nog, like eggnog. But for bitches, I have never heard this term before in my life.

• 2:28Speaker 01

  I am stunned. I am flabbergasted and I'm like, really? And my brother's like, yeah, bitch nog, yo. And so of course this becomes a thing. Bitch nog, right? This becomes a recurring phrase in our household. It's an inside joke. It's a term of endearment. We get along great, actually, my younger brother and I. He respects me. So I graduate from high school in 1996. I go to college. He graduates from high school in 2002 and now I gotta get my brother a high school graduation present. So I go to Things Remembered in the mall. Are you familiar with Things Remembered?

• 3:11Speaker 01

  Sells precious keepsakes, jewelry boxes, pen sets, lighters, groomsman flasks, things of that nature, a lot of brass, a lot of crystal, offers in-store personalized engraving. I go to Things Remembered. I buy a pocket watch, a cheap brass pocket watch. I don't think it ever actually told the time. This thing was broken when I bought it and I had rehearsed the conversation I gotta have with whoever's working at Things Remembered. And I get in the store and there's a teenage girl behind the counter and I'm like, ah, shit.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  But it's too late to stop now, so I walk up to the counter and I'm like, yes, hello, young lady. I'd like to purchase this fine pocket watch. And the teenage girl goes, would you like that engraved, sir? And I go, why, yes, I would. And there's a written form for this. Mercifully, you don't just say out loud what you want engraved on a Things Remembered pocket watch. To avoid any confusion or spelling mishaps or company liability, the customer prints clearly on this handwritten form, the desired message with each individual letter in a little box.

• 4:33Speaker 01

  And so I write out as neatly as I can, what I'd like engraved on this pocket watch. And I hand a teenage girl this incriminating sheet of paper. And I start saying like, look, it's actually a hilarious story. One time I was playing Super Tecmo Bowl with my brother. She's not listening. She's already reading the paper. She's processing my request and she looks at the paper and she looks at me and I'm looking at the ceiling. I'm no longer making eye contact. I've turned completely in the other direction. I am disassociating entirely. This is 2002 and I am waiting for someone to invent whatever part of the internet will

• 5:16Speaker 01

  allow me to conduct this business transaction entirely online. I am mortified and I'm not convinced that I'm not going to get arrested, but we are doing this. The teenage girl looks at the paper again. She looks at me again and then she goes, all right. And she engraves bitch nog on the pocket watch. End of anecdote.

• 5:51Speaker 01

  In the year 2000, a beguiling, serene, bright orange haired new pop star named Vitamin C hits the top 40 with a song called Graduation parentheses Friends Forever, which appears on her 1999 self-titled debut album and which aims to do for high school commencement ceremonies, what Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas Is You does for Christmas. Vitamin C aims to dominate this specific life event. This song aims to become an eternal, universal standard. And indeed, there is a durable tension, a healthy, productive, intriguing tension

• 6:30Speaker 01

  between the attempted timelessness of this song and the Y2K ass aspects of this song. Dig Vitamin C in the Graduation Friends Forever video, purring the line, keep on thinking things will always be the same, over footage of high school boys playing hacky sack.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  Intriguing. This video basically has a devoted exposed belly button cam, which is another Y2K ass aspect of this operation. But intriguingly, there is also a pronounced late 17th century ass aspect of this operation. Because your ears do not deceive you, Graduation parentheses Friends Forever is very explicitly built on the foundation of Paco Bell's Canon in D.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  For a couple of years there, my oldest son, as a toddler, he would only go to sleep if Canon in D were playing. So I'll always remember Canon in D with an exhausted fondness. That's Johann Paco Bell, born in 1653, which copyright wise would make this a public domain situation, though it'd be pretty funny if this were a Rolling Stones Bittersweet Symphony deal and Vitamin C had to pay 100% of this song's royalties to Johann Paco Bell, or assuming he's dead, to Johann Paco Bell's estate. Who is this person? Vitamin C. She got the bright orange hair. She's got a soothing and ethereal and super earnest and appealingly odd vibe.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  Something about her total lack of cynicism makes it sound like English is her second language, as though she came from Venus or perhaps Europe. This song, Graduation, is graceful and bouncy and explicitly teenager coded, but it is also explicitly adult in its melancholic wistfulness. This song came out in 1999. Britney Spears walks among us. The Backstreet Boys and NSYNC walk among us in respective swaggering unison. The teen pop hostile takeover is on and Vitamin C, while still clearly thoughtfully engaged with teenage feelings, this lady is old enough to rent a car.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  She's almost 30 actually, which is not old at all, unless you're a teenager. And so the lyrical sentiment here ain't exactly schools out for summer, schools out forever. Vitamin C is just enough of an adult to know that there ain't no forever.

• 9:38Speaker 01

  She sounds so soothing, man. She sounds so legitimately thoughtful. "Will the Past Be a Shadow That Will Follow Us Round?" is a sneaky great line for a pop song. So is "And Suddenly It's Like We're Women and Men." Vitamin C's real name is Colleen Anne Fitzpatrick, and she was born not in Sweden, as I naturally first assumed, but in Old Bridge, New Jersey. And I swear that it is only because she was born in New Jersey that I'll point out that her song "Graduation" makes a fantastic, potent 1999 double shot with "Prom Theme" by the New Jersey-adjacent power pop band Fountains of Wayne.

• 10:35Speaker 01

  Amazing. "Soon We'll Say Goodbye, Then We'll Work Until We Die" is a less ethereal and bouncy version of the sentiment "And Suddenly It's Like We're Women and Men." Vitamin C's 1999 self-titled debut album also spawned an ethereal and bouncy and relentlessly cheerful top 20 hit called "Smile."

• 11:08Speaker 01

  My wife recognized "Smile" immediately, and she is currently singing this chorus in another room of the house. I love it when that happens. So yeah, "Smile" is officially good. Dig Lady Saw, Jamaican dancehall star Lady Saw on the chorus there. Lady Saw, of course, later appeared in the 2001 no-doubt hit "Underneath It All." Vitamin C's "Smile" video is bubbly and ultra garish, color saturated, and it takes place in a giant CD store, which is to say that this video also is a super Y2K-ass operation. So I did not realize this at first. Maybe I should have. Maybe the last line

• 11:50Speaker 01

  of the chorus there, the Lady Saw "What you gonna do, what you gonna do?" part of "Smile", maybe that part should have tipped me off. What with the distorted guitars that kick in right there?

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  What with the blaring "Fire Engine" hook? I did not realize that I had definitely heard the "Put a Smile on Your Face" lady's voice before.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  Here we have the grungy, growly, screamy New York City rock band Eves Plum with a not very ethereal song called "I Want It All" off their 1993 debut album Envy. Eves Plum, featuring on lead vocals, a grungy, growly, screamy young lady from Old Bridge, New Jersey by the name of Colleen Anne Fitzpatrick. It's Vitamin C. What? There's the artist not yet known as Vitamin C screaming amidst a color-saturated burst of bright yellow foliage in the "I Want It All" video. This is a gloriously 1993-ass operation. I bought this CD. I owned

• 13:08Speaker 01

  this CD. I probably spent more on the Eves Plum CD than I spent on my brother's bitch-nog pocket watch. Back when I owned like 20 albums total, this was one of them. I listened to this CD not like hundreds of times. This isn't a melancholy and the infinite sadness situation, but I definitely listened to Envy dozens of times. This record also has a grungy, growly, screamy, suspiciously sugary tune called "Blue," which, I am delighted to inform you, did not escape Beavis and Butthead's notice.

• 13:54Speaker 01

  Well, okay, specifically, Colleen herself did not escape Beavis and Butthead's notice. I can't explain to you why "This chick is hot" is so funny to me, but it's extremely funny to me. My sense of humor now is virtually identical to my sense of humor in the original Beavis and Butthead era, if you want the truth. I keep thinking times will never change. Keep on thinking things will always be the same. Eves Plum put out one more album in 1995 called Cherry Dream, which I did not own on CD. And then the band broke up. Colleen and Eves Plum guitarist Michael Koch got married in 2004. That's nice. Colleen notably

• 14:35Speaker 01

  also has a modest film career. She co-starred in the 1998 John Waters film Hairspray as the on-screen daughter of Sonny Bono and Debbie Harry. Wow. And later, in the Vitamin C era, Colleen appeared in the year 2000 in the horror movie Dracula 2000, a film I was not familiar with. Oh, wow. That sounds awesome. Dracula 2000, starring a young Gerard Butler in the titular role of Dracula 2000. Vitamin C put out one more album in 2001 called More

• 15:16Speaker 01

  that alas did not yield any top 40 hits. And that's just about that, but she's got plenty of other stuff to do. Currently, Colleen Fitzpatrick works at Netflix. She works in music creative production at Netflix. She's on LinkedIn. Should I add her on LinkedIn? No. No, but Colleen Fitzpatrick's got some songwriting credits as well. She's worked with Miley Cyrus, with Demi Lovato and Selena Gomez. And also, there's this. I'm starting with the pre-chorus here. The pre-chorus is the best part.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  Here we have Emma Roberts, the actress from her 2005 Nickelodeon-affiliated album Unfabulous and More. This is Emma Roberts with a song called "We Are Gonna Happen." I could Google the exact further context for this, but I think you could smell the panic Googling on me even if I hadn't just mentioned the Googling. I was not and am not this song's target audience. That will suffice context-wise. That song was written by Colleen Anne Fitzpatrick, formerly of Eves Plum, otherwise known as Vitamin C. Can you tell? Can you tell that Vitamin C wrote that? Genuine question, no wrong answers.

• 16:50Speaker 01

  Does something about the slightly wistful teenage supernova idealism of that ascending pre-chorus, "You say I'm just an optimist, but we could be much more than that," does that scream Vitamin C? Does the sunny and wide-open and almost violent lack of cynicism serve as a great big blinking neon sign pointing directly back to "As we go on, we remember all the times we..." Can you tell? Do pop stars, or rock stars, or rock stars

• 17:28Speaker 01

  turned pop stars, do famous singers who become pop songwriters embed their physical voice in the songs they write? Can you tell? Can you hear the famous songwriter in the famous song even when they're not the singer anymore? Let's try it again. Genuine question, no wrong answers. Can you hear him?

• 18:07Speaker 01

  Here, of course, we have pop superstar Adele with her number-one smash "Someone Like You," which anecdotally was the only song released by anybody in the year 2011. In 2011, I worked for a music streaming service that got annihilated by Spotify. I wasn't even mad. I was just impressed, frankly. It was a sobering, instructive, cathartic experience. But yeah, according to our internal data, 85% of our customers were just streaming Adele's "Someone Like You" on repeat, and the other 15% didn't understand how to stream music at all. It was a different time, relatively new technology. "Someone Like You" was co-written

• 18:47Speaker 01

  and co-produced by Adele herself and a gentleman by the name of Dan Wilson. This gentleman by the name of Dan Wilson.

• 19:11Speaker 01

  Of course, that's Dan Wilson, leader of the phenomenal Minneapolis pop-rock band Semi-Sonic, best known, of course, for their 1998 "Capable of Making Grown Men Weep" in various contexts smash hit "Closing Time." But today, let's instead highlight another Semi-Sonic jam from 1998 called "Singing in My Sleep." That durable, little, explosive, descending melody there. "I can hear you singing to me in my sleep. Never mind, I'll find someone like you." Does the similarity between these two fantastic choruses indicate that there is a distinct,

• 19:50Speaker 01

  identifiable, foundational Dan Wilson melody, or hook, or vibe? Can you tell? Can you tell that Dan Wilson of Semi-Sonic played a part in "Someone Like You?" Or am I just retroactively galaxy-braining similarities between "Someone Like You" and "Singing in My Sleep" for the hell of it? I honestly don't know which side of the argument this will support, but in 2017, Dan Wilson did a whole album called Recovered, where he sang the songs he's written for other people, including the Chicks, Chris Stapleton, and Taylor Swift. And he did "Someone Like You" with a Kronos Quartet. And let me just say, Dan, I was not familiar

• 20:33Speaker 01

  with your game falsetto-wise.

• 20:51Speaker 01

  Seriously, I know Dan to be a deft and winsome singer, but I did not expect him to even attempt to hit, like, 40% of those notes, max. I stand corrected. Let's try another one. Here we have a 2002 Jennifer Love Hewitt song called "Bear Naked." One word, capital N. The pre-chorus intrigues me the most here. The juxtaposition of the fluttery loveliness of this pre-chorus and the truly bizarre lyrical sentiment of this pre-chorus.

• 21:43Speaker 01

  This is not a complaint. Bizarre is a tremendously positive quality in a pop song. Bizarre is memorable. Bizarre demands attention. And the line, "Sometimes I think I'm the only one whose day turned out unlike it had begun," demands attention. What does that mean, Jennifer? How precisely did your day turn out "unlike it had begun"? Did you wake one morning from uneasy dreams to find yourself transformed in your bed into a gigantic insect? The engrossing clunkiness of that series of words, mixed with the rad hummingbird swoop of that series

• 22:24Speaker 01

  of notes. "Sometimes I think I'm the only one..." That's the shit. We got four credited songwriters on this song, "Bear Naked," including Guy Arez, Emerson Swinford, and Jennifer Love Hewitt herself. But can you guess which 90s alt-rock hitmaker is in the mix as well? Can you tell? Is this just more galaxy-brained bullshit, or is there a faint subconscious signal when a pop song is a little bit of everything all rolled into one?

• 23:11Speaker 01

  There we have Meredith Brooks, Oregon's finest, with her brassy 1997 breakout hit, "Bitch." The pre-chorus slams into the chorus there with a similar note-and-word-spraying triumph. Meredith co-wrote "Bear Naked" and also played guitar on "Bear Naked," and also co-produced the whole Jennifer Love Hewitt record called "Bear Naked," with the dude from the New Radicals, but I can't even deal with that guy right now. Can you tell? Can you ever tell? Try one more. Did you immediately sense anybody else here? Did you sense yet another 90s alt-rock hitmaker guiding the machine-gun spray of notes and words and

• 23:56Speaker 01

  attitude here?

• 24:14Speaker 01

  I think we can all agree that Pink, the international delightful pugnacious pop star Pink, verily sings the bejesus out of her 2001 breakout top-five single, "Get the Party Started." Every scrappy syllable just so. Can you tell, though? Can you tell which 90s alt-rock hitmaker produced and wrote this song herself? Can you hear that songwriter and producer's giant jaunty hat, or do you only think you can hear it because you know it's there?

• 25:04Speaker 01

  Linda Perry. She of the San Francisco rock band Four Non Blondes. She of the grungy, growly, screamy 1992 Four Non Blondes blockbuster hit, "What's Up," a top-15 chart hit in the early 90s, but more importantly, a song with 1.5 billion Spotify plays today. That is an abnormal level of fairly recent streaming popularity, even for a sizable, era-defining, and gleefully polarizing 90s hit. And we have discussed before the peculiar gravity and pomposity and unimpeachable greatness of the "What's Up" melody, the agile stairwell

• 25:44Speaker 01

  tumble of "Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do," the yelps, the growls, the pinpoint volatility. Can you tell the same person wrote "What's Up" and "Get the Party Started"? Do pop singers turned pop songwriters have a signature, a silhouette, a verifiable presence, even in their physical absence? Linda Perry is an especially odd and vexing, and therefore deeply satisfying, case study in our ongoing quest to decide if this game of guess the songwriter is just galaxy-brained bullshit. Linda Perry specializes in monumental, shattering collisions of harmony and disharmony. For example, she didn't think she was beautiful when she

• 26:29Speaker 01

  wrote this one. That's why it took Linda so long to write it.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 57th episode of 60 Songs That Explain the 90s, Cole and the 2000s. And this week, we are discussing "Beautiful" by Christina Aguilera from her 2002 album, "Stripped." Talking to Rolling Stone in 2019 about writing "Beautiful," Linda Perry says, quote, "For some reason, I kept putting it off. There was something about the lyric that was troubling to me because it was so not what I felt. When the words 'I am beautiful' came out, it was so shocking to me to say that because I don't feel that way. I was still in denial about this positive message that I could possibly

• 27:26Speaker 01

  be saying," end quote. And so, the chorus shifts, and shifts in a way meant to convey that denial, that self-doubt. But somehow, triumphantly and harmoniously, self-doubt keeps mutating into monumental, inspirational self-belief.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  In Rolling Stone, Linda says, quote, "That's why I changed the second one to 'You are beautiful' and the third one to 'We are beautiful' because I couldn't bear to keep saying 'I am beautiful.'" Linda couldn't bear to keep saying it, even though it wouldn't even ultimately be her saying it. That is the pop star's job. That is Christina Aguilera's job here, to say it, to sell it. Now, lots of pop songs, historically, one might describe, perhaps with gritted teeth, as self-empowering. This is a tricky genre. An attempted self-empowering song can get cloying and condescending fast. It can easily ring false. It can easily feel

• 28:42Speaker 01

  overdone, oversold, overdetermined. I wouldn't say "Beautiful" nails it by accident, per se, but the songwriter's own insecurity here somehow turbocharges the whole enterprise, makes the sentiment real, makes it true. And over three choruses, "I" becomes "You" becomes "We."

• 29:19Speaker 01

  And that, I suppose, is how your day turns out "unlike it had begun." Ad break.

• 29:27Speaker 00

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• 31:01Speaker 01

  I was trying to figure out the second most memorable name I've ever been called after bitch nog, and I've decided that it's weak sauce. Weak sauce is the second most memorable name I've ever been called. My five-year-old daughter calls me weak sauce frequently now. She also calls me old man, and she always to talk about how I was, quote, "made in the eighties," end quote. I don't know where she's even getting that phrase. Made in the eighties? Let me find out. This is a YouTube thing. I don't have the heart to tell her I was actually made in the late seventies.

• 31:39Speaker 01

  So here's Christina Aguilera in 1994, at 13 years old, singing Think by Aretha Franklin on the Mickey Mouse Club with Britney Spears dancing in the background.

• 32:03Speaker 01

  Look, you don't want many 13-year-olds singing Aretha Franklin at any point in history, but Christina's delivery of "You better think," the lethal, ecstatic, gospel-powered Lazarus or the Undertaker, rising from the dead, upward lilt of that particular "think," that's the stuff. I believe Britney's the second backup dancer from the left, wearing the tie, but let's not let Britney loom in the background this whole time, even if Britney Spears is objectively looming in the background for anyone making pop music, starting in 1999. I gotta say, young Christina totally houses think in its entirety, but especially in

• 32:45Speaker 01

  a harbinger of bombastic greatness to come, the most important phrase young Christina sings here is "ho yeah."

• 33:08Speaker 01

  And this is my enduring and admiring, and also frankly, God-fearing perception of Christina Aguilera at all times. I think of her as a colossal, generational, benevolent weapon of mass destruction vocalist who does not so much sing to you or even at you so much as she sings through you. She sings as though she is attempting to break apart all the individual atoms in your body and then reconstruct them in a superior arrangement. You're welcome. I hear her voice in any context, or I even just hear her name in any context. And I think immediately about the galactic military force with which Christina Aguilera

• 33:52Speaker 01

  tends to sing the word "hey."

• 34:11Speaker 01

  That's Christina singing the word "hey" at the onset of her 2006 single Ain't No Other Man. I count somewhere between 15 and 25 syllables in the word "hey." DJ Premier co-produced that song, by the way. Christina Aguilera is born in the Ocean Breeze neighborhood of Staten Island, New York City, on December 18, 1980. Her father is an Ecuadorian immigrant and United States Army sergeant. Her mother, of German, Irish, Welsh, Dutch, and English descent, her mother played violin in the American Youth Symphony and worked as a Spanish translator. Christina has frequently talked about and sung about the abuse she says her mother suffered at the hands of her father.

• 34:56Speaker 01

  In a glamour cover story from 2024, it says, quote, "To cope, Christina says she'd look out windows and sing songs from the sound of music, envisioning a calmer, better life for herself and her mother," end quote. Christina also says, quote, "I don't know if I would be the singer or performer I am or have the success I do had I not been through my childhood. It gave me a real purpose of I'm going to fight my way through these feelings. I'm going to fight my way past someone that has wronged me," end quote. Christina's parents divorced when she was seven years old, and she grew up with her mother in the suburbs of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

• 35:39Speaker 01

  Young Christina joined the cast of the Mickey Mouse Club. Maybe you heard about it. And she also sang the National Anthem at a bunch of Pittsburgh Penguins hockey games. Maybe you heard about it if you were a Penguins fan.

• 36:04Speaker 01

  I believe Christina is 11 years old here, and that is not the soul-deep confidence with which your typical 11-year-old handles the sneaky, dangerous low notes of the National Anthem, the "our flag was still there," crop dusting swoop there. But note also in this footage that Christina's microphone is much larger than her head. The singer appears tinier than her microphone. The hockey arena appears tinier than the singer's voice. In the mid 90s, when she's 14 years old, Christina records a bunch of dance-pop type demos that you can find now on streaming services as a putative, early-lost Christina

• 36:49Speaker 01

  Aguilera album called Just Be Free, though Christina herself tried to legally prevent this from coming out. And yeah, this ain't canon, I don't think, but I do appreciate the grit in Christina's voice when she sings the words "move it to the rhythm."

• 37:13Speaker 01

  No, I've got nothing against moving your feet to the rhythm, per se, but this ain't quite the move for young Christina. It turns out the real move for young Christina is to practice singing in the bathroom until you kick so much ass singing a Whitney Houston song that Disney lets you sing the big monster ballad on the Mulan soundtrack.

• 37:51Speaker 01

  All right, so here we got Whitney Houston's Run To You from the Bodyguard soundtrack in 1992. This is like the third or fourth biggest song on the Bodyguard soundtrack, which is a profound testament to the world historical dominance of both Whitney Houston and the Bodyguard soundtrack. If you are not familiar with the excellent podcast Pop Pantheon, hosted by DJ and scholar and friend of the show DJ Louis XIV, they did a fabulous and thorough, career-spanning Christina Aguilera episode of Pop Pantheon back in 2022, where they talked about how young Christina learned to sing this song, Run To You, and specifically, she learned

• 38:32Speaker 01

  to nail the absolute highest notes of this song, and that high note served functionally as young Christina's audition to Disney for the Mulan thing. I gotta think the high note in question can be found amid Whitney's angelic "hoo hoo's" there. Sorry. "I wanna run to you, hoo hoo." That doesn't sound so hard. Uh, wait, shit. Run To You is a key change. Never mind. This sounds impossible.

• 39:16Speaker 01

  Yikes. Yikes to all nine or 10 who's there. Anyway, young Christina proves she can sing that. And so now she gets to sing this.

• 39:49Speaker 01

  And so Christina Aguilera first breaks out to the wider world via the gargantuan ballad "Reflection," first released in 1998 on the soundtrack to the animated Disney film Mulan. Christina turns 18 years old in 1998, but she never quite logically scans as a teen pop singer, given the immediate volcanic and emphatically adult combustive force of her voice, her uncanny adolescent ability to convincingly channel Aretha Franklin, or Whitney Houston, or say Toni Braxton. Neither word of teen pop works particularly well to describe Christina's whole deal. Even when she's a literal teenager, her

• 40:34Speaker 01

  voice conveys more R&B than it does pop, and she's as much a classic elegant old soul mid 20th century diva as she is a brassy bubbly early 21st century teen pop diva. But most importantly, "Reflection" works magnificently as a lyrical, as a personal, as a universal manifesto. Who is that girl I see staring straight back at me? The Disney animated film Mulan, as you might recall, is about a brave Chinese girl posing as a male soldier to save her father and repel the Han invasion. My five year old daughter, who calls me weak sauce, she loves Mulan. But goodness gracious, when

• 41:17Speaker 01

  will my reflection show who I am inside? That sentiment, that lament, that slow burning, self empowering manifesto could just as easily apply to, say, a monster R&B belter who's about to be marketed as a teen pop queen. But far more importantly, what that great Pop Pantheon episode on Christina really drives home is that, starting right with "Reflection," and then fully igniting with "Beautiful," and the "Beautiful" video especially, Christina Aguilera is a legitimate LGBTQ icon. It is the subtle but cataclysmic

• 41:56Speaker 01

  shift here on this song "Reflection," from "When will my reflection show who I am inside?" to "Why must we all conceal what we think and how we feel?" I becomes we. This is a Disney song. This is no longer only merely a Disney song.

• 42:38Speaker 01

  Christina nails all the high notes there also. Of course she does, just like Whitney would have. But "Must there be a secret me I'm forced to hide?" is the true towering crescendo moment here. I don't want to oversell "Must there be a secret me I'm forced to hide," but I don't think it's possible to undersell it either, you know? Anyway, here's "Wonderwall."

• 43:15Speaker 01

  It is 1999. Britney Spears walks among us. The most powerful producers and songwriters in global pop reside in Sweden. And it's not that these dudes seem Swedish, but they're actually from New Jersey. No, these dudes are legit, like ultra Swedish. Yeah, the teen pop hostile takeover is on. And here comes Christina Aguilera with her undeniable smash hit "Genie in a Bottle," which spends five weeks as the number one song in America and anchors her chart topping 1999 self titled debut album, which has now sold nine million copies in America. "My body saying let's go, but my heart is saying no." That means

• 43:59Speaker 01

  at least two different, specific things. Talking to Glamour in 2024 about this first album, Christina says, quote, "I didn't love the bubble gum thing, where you had to play a virgin but not act like one," end quote. Yeah, okay, that's the first thing it means.

• 44:29Speaker 01

  And it couldn't be less complicated, could it? The enormous enduring mass appeal of "Genie in a Bottle," the nervous skittering drums, the nervous tinkling descending piano line, the brazen single entendre of "You gotta rub me the right way." "Genie in a Bottle" was written by David Frank, American, Boston area, Steve Kipner, Australian, and Pamela Shane, New Zealand, and produced by David and Steve. Can you tell? Can you tell that this song and the whole first Christina Aguilera album, can you tell this is not the product of the vaunted Max Martin ultra Swedish machine? What with its arena rock

• 45:12Speaker 01

  inspired maximalism, and its melodic math, and its WTF lyrical malapropisms on the order of "I want it that way," or "Hit me, baby, one more time?" Does "Genie in a Bottle" immediately establish Christina Aguilera as different? And different how precisely?

• 45:45Speaker 01

  It's the muted, filtered, compressed telephone speaker quality of this hook that really strikes me. The sense that Christina is singing from within the titular bottle, that she is indeed trapped, that "Come on and let me out" is her way of saying, "Let me sing like Whitney Houston." Listen, I love Britney Spears as a singer, and I especially love, say, Janet Jackson as a singer, but Janet and Britney are singers with delightfully, strategically, iconically, smaller voices, wilyer approaches, whereas it's Christina Aguilera's job to pack 25 syllables and 400 tons of plutonium into the word "hey."

• 46:27Speaker 01

  One could, if one were so inclined, interpret "Genie in a Bottle" as a cry of repression, or music industry suppression. It is perfectly clear throughout Christina Aguilera's debut album that we're dealing with an uncommonly mega talented, super diva vocal talent here. But for now, anyway, she's stuck singing monster hit songs that nonetheless don't quite let her cook.

• 47:10Speaker 01

  "What a Girl Wants" will always be the one for me. It's the gleaming Mobius strip, the perfect seamless loop, the locked groove of the chorus, as it goes, "And I'm thanking you for knowing exactly what a girl wants," and then it's starting over. Perfect chorus. "What a Girl Wants" should just be the chorus for 15 minutes. I was not, and I am not, that song's target audience either, obviously, but this is different.

• 47:46Speaker 01

  Pretty incredible first eight seconds of a song right there. The finger snaps, the bonging ascending piano line, the Whitney Houston "I wanna dance with somebody" type ultra hooky, ultra joyousness. "Come on over," parentheses, "all I want is you" should just be the first eight seconds for 15 minutes. They should have just let me executive produce the first Christina Aguilera record. I would have turned it into a Steve Reich style minimalist masterpiece. Anyway, those are the hits on the first Christina Aguilera record, which frees her up to spend the rest of the record singing exquisite grown and sexy R&B.

• 48:41Speaker 01

  That song's called "Love for All Seasons," and I love the way Christina glides through the verses. A lot of righteous Mariah Carey action happening here. The swoops, the dips, the harmonies, the cascades of woes and so forth. But Mariah Carey's debut album, "Let Her Cook," man. Think the melisma barrage at the end of "Vision of Love," when Mariah sings the word "all," but it comes out "ohhhhh." Think the stratospheric, crystal-shattering thunderbolt at the end of "Someday." Someday. Whereas Christina Aguilera's first record never quite shakes that feeling of calculated restraint,

• 49:23Speaker 01

  of suppression, of teen pop hostile takeover market calculation. The genie never gets out of the bottle. Talking to Glamour in 2024, Christina Aguilera says, quote, "When I was performing 'Genie' and 'What a Girl Wants' and 'Come on Over,' I got bored easily. Creatively, it was one-dimensional," end quote. And so Christina starts branching out immediately. She experiments. She diversifies. Recall that Britney Spears blows up with her cataclysmic 1999 debut album, Baby, One More Time, and then Britney's right back at it the next year in 2000 with Oops! I Did It Again, another record full of planet-conquering

• 50:08Speaker 01

  ultra-Swedish maximalism. But Christina Aguilera is not an Oops! I Did It Again sort of person. Christina actually does put out two records in the year 2000, but she opts for a Christmas album, My Kind of Christmas, not Mariah, but not bad, and a Spanish-language album called Mi Reflejo, which, as the title indicates, features Spanish versions of her biggest hits. Rudy Perez, the main producer on Mi Reflejo, Rudy told Billboard in 2000 that since Christina wasn't totally fluent in Spanish, he wrote out all her lyrics phonetically,

• 50:48Speaker 01

  and he also devised some sort of system to help her roll her Rs. Can you tell?

• 51:10Speaker 01

  That song's called "Pero Me acuerdo de ti." That's "But I Remember You," first recorded by the Puerto Rican singer Lourdes Robles in 1991. And this version is expertly sung, but not quite bombastically sung. Yes, we have not yet begun to let Christina Aguilera cook. You know when we finally begin to let Christina cook? 2001. A defiantly unsuppressed little film called Moulin Rouge, a triumphantly flamboyant all-star remake of La Belle's lascivious 1974 hit, Lady Marmalade, now starring Maya Pink, Lil Kim, Missy Elliott,

• 51:53Speaker 01

  and guess who else singing Guess Her Favorite Word?

• 52:10Speaker 01

  There she is. There's young, bombastic, mega-talented pop superstar Christina Aguilera, now boldly exploring previously unimaginable physical dimensions of the word "hey," and now using at least 85% of her volcanic, combative, octave-scaling voice as opposed to 15% of her voice. Remember when that six-year-old's poem about the tiger went viral? The tiger. He destroyed his cage. Yes. Yes. The tiger is out. The next big Christina Aguilera record is released in 2002 and is called Stripped. She basically treats it

• 52:54Speaker 01

  like her actual debut album. I get it.

• 53:09Speaker 01

  That's your opening track, called "Stripped Intro." "Meet the Real Me," says Christina Aguilera at the onset of what is technically her fourth album. In this "allow me to reintroduce myself" business, this is a classic pop star move, right? Think of Janet Jackson on her 1986 masterpiece, Control. Janet announcing immediately that she's got lots of control. Stripped, per the double entendre in the title, is also a radical image overhaul album. And that, too, is a classic foundational, necessary pop star move. But starting now, Christina Aguilera is going to change up her audiovisual style. She's going to jump

• 53:50Speaker 01

  to all-new eras with just a little more intensity than you might be used to. For example, the first single off this Stripped album is called Dirty, with two Rs.

• 54:23Speaker 01

  It's about time for my arrival. That's a double entendre as well. Dig Redman, rap superstar Redman murmuring libidinously in the background. My editor's going to get real mad if I don't mention Redman. This was reasonably scandalous in real time. In 2002, this was not quite a Miley Cyrus twerking-at-the-VMA's level of moral panic, but Dirty with two Rs is up there in the all-time pantheon of PG-13 pop makeovers. Folks, we ain't doing teen pop anymore, or we ain't doing 20th-century, plausible-deniability, quasi-chaste teen

• 55:01Speaker 01

  pop anymore. Dig the impressively sweaty, grimy, nasty, dirty-with-23-rs sheen of the Dirty video, which at a bare minimum will immediately make you want to vacuum your living room. Christina Aguilera gets to let it rip vocally way more on the Stripped album. Alicia Keys wrote this song. Can you tell?

• 55:37Speaker 01

  Yes. Yes, I do believe you can totally tell that Alicia Keys wrote that. The slow-motion strut of "it's impossible," the gilded piano stabs, the Grammy-bait old soul doing classic soul opulence of "impossible." Various strains of modern and proudly less-modern R&B are fueling Christina Aguilera on this record. You can hear some Jill Scott neo-soul. You can hear some Mary J. Blige hip-hop soul. You can hear pre-evanescence hard-rock soul. The word "enough" here has got eight to 10 syllables, I think.

• 56:32Speaker 01

  Dave Navarro on guitar there, living mass. This song is called Fighter, and the super-goth video features lots of all-black fashion schemes and shattering glass and giant insect pins repurposed as spears and whatnot. A lot of Smashing Pumpkins energy visually. Christina's got some feuds to litigate on this Stripped album, primarily against Fred Durst and Eminem, but to hell with those guys right now. This record is 20 tracks and almost 80 minutes long. It is sprawling and vulnerable and confrontational and overwhelming and not guaranteed to succeed. By 2002, Christina Aguilera's already got four number-one

• 57:17Speaker 01

  hit singles, counting Lady Marmalade. But Dirty, with two Rs, as the all-important lead single off Stripped, that song doesn't even make the top 40, even if it does convince lots of people to wash their cars. But this record only needs one bonkers hit single to make it a success. And that, my friends, is what Linda Perry is for.

• 58:06Speaker 01

  The beautiful video is vitally important here. The other people in the beautiful video, the two men kissing in public, an image captured 13 years before same-sex marriage is legal in all of America. The young people struggling with body image issues, with bullying. The trans woman with her makeup, her dress, her wig. Meanwhile, can you tell that Linda Perry wrote Beautiful? Does something about the raw melodic tumble there? The spiky high note on "wonderful" and the vulnerable swooning low notes thereafter? Does that connect subliminally to Linda Perry, to "What's Up",

• 58:50Speaker 01

  to fraught 90s alt-rock stardom? Linda Perry is a decidedly adult and openly gay rock star and pop star songwriter, who has written in Beautiful, the signature song for a straight, super-mainstream, post-teen pop superstar. Is that dissonance audible? Or is the genuine connection, the shared understanding between Linda and Christina, that's audible? And listen, I appreciate a city-block-incinerating 30-syllable "hey" as much as the next guy, but to my mind, it's the relative bracing calm,

• 59:29Speaker 01

  the stoic gravity, the stripped-in-the-not-lewd-sense minimalism that puts Beautiful over. It's a fairly simple, but quietly sublime piano ballad. And technically, lots of other pop stars could have sung it. Pink heard Linda Perry play an early version, and Pink got a little salty in public when Linda Perry started working with Christina Aguilera instead, in part because Pink and Christina apparently did not get along on the set of the Lady Marmalade video. I would stay out of all that if I were you. But I do think you want an active volcano belter like Christina Aguilera, singing this particular song.

• 1:00:09Speaker 01

  Because a crucial part of Beautiful is that you know Christina's holding back. You can sense the suppression, the insecurity, the restraint. But now, it's deliberate, cathartic restraint. It is Christina Aguilera herself, breaking herself down and then building herself back up. She does get to kick some ass on the bridge, though.

• 1:00:46Speaker 01

  In the video now, we're burning magazines, we're putting on the wig, we're riding the bus with a giant mohawk. The bombast of the bridge, the wailing, the palpable sense that the tiger is out. Right here is maybe where you can hear Linda Perry most clearly. The beauty of the "What's Up" melody, crossed with the snarly ferocity of the way Linda Perry sang the "What's Up" melody. Christina starts kicking so much ass on the bridge that I had never actually registered the lines, "were the song inside the tune, full of beautiful mistakes. I becomes you, becomes we." In 2022, Christina wrote a piece in People Magazine

• 1:01:31Speaker 01

  about what it means to be an ally to the LGBTQ+ community, as the subhead put it. And Christina says, quote, "When I came onto the scene with songs like 'Genie in a Bottle' and 'What a Girl Wants' in 1999, I had a hard time feeling like I had to look and act a certain way to fit into the pop star mold. But I did not want to be this safe, conventionally pretty, precious thing." She also talks about how stripped is, quote, "the first album where I told stories that I really believed in. Stories about my own personal struggles and the domestic abuse I witnessed in my family growing up."

• 1:02:14Speaker 01

  And she says, "I was also proud to put a spotlight on the LGBTQ+ community with my Beautiful music video, which features a gay couple as well as a trans woman. I wasn't thinking too much about it beyond wanting to show people owning who they are. It was somehow taboo at the time, but it represented something so true. I still hear stories about how that video has helped people, and it means everything to me." End quote. What other lines from the bridge have I never even noticed before?

• 1:03:03Speaker 01

  We're punching the mirror in the video at this point, naturally. "And everywhere we go, the sun will always shine, and tomorrow we might wake on the other side." I'd never really noticed any of that on account of all the ass-kicking. I hear Linda Perry so clearly in those lines. The 90s alt-rock star who survived the Beavis and Butthead era and emerged on the other side as a pop star whisperer. Except what makes Linda great is she doesn't do much whispering. Beautiful peaks at number two on the Billboard Hot 100, beaten out only by the song "Bump, Bump, Bump",

• 1:03:47Speaker 01

  by B2K and P. Diddy. Oh, well. And every subsequent weird, sprawling, unexpected Christina Aguilera album reasserts her desire to avoid being a safe, conventional, precious little pop star. Pop stars are always doing this, of course. Whoever we're talking about, each new album, each new era, is an allegedly unexpected and unprecedented glimpse at the real me, for real this time. But Beautiful, in its radical, gorgeous, stripped-down austerity, Beautiful is convincing. Christina is convincing, and that sincerity radiates outward,

• 1:04:28Speaker 01

  from the real her, to the real you, to the real us. You can just tell.

• 1:04:38Speaker 01

  We are so honored to welcome Barry Walters, the phenomenal rock critic who's written for The Village Voice, Rolling Stone, Spin, The Advocate, Out magazine, and tons of other places. He is the author of the really fantastic new book, Mighty Real: A History of LGBTQ Music, 1969 to 2000. Barry, thank you so much for being here.

• 1:05:01Speaker 02

  Oh, it's my pleasure, Rob. Thank you.

• 1:05:03Speaker 01

  You're the best-dressed guest we've ever had, I think it's safe to say, and you have the most visible albums of any guest we've ever had. And I think congratulations to you on both of those honors as well.

• 1:05:15Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:05:17Speaker 01

  I understand completely why you stopped this book at the year 2000, that you just capped it at the 20th century. But just to start off, I wonder what you make of pop music, like mainstream pop music, you know, at the turn of the century? You know, maybe starting in 1999 with Britney? Like, are you a boy bands guy? Are you a Britney guy? Are you a Max Martin, sort of Swedish machine guy? Or like, all of those, or none of those?

• 1:05:43Speaker 02

  I think selectively, all of those. I was a fan of the studio and the team of remixers and producers that Max Martin grew out of. There was a very queer group, Army of Lovers, out of Sweden that I was a big fan of. And I love liner notes, I love credits, I love to, I pay attention to... If you like dance music, you pay attention to remixing credits, production credits, all those things. So I was aware of Max Martin. I was a fan of his early work with Robyn.

• 1:06:27Speaker 02

  And, you know, I love a lot of alternative music as well. I don't want the audience to feel as though I'm just a pop guy. But I will say, late 90s alternative music was so watered down, so macho. It was like Limp Bizkit and the rap-rock stuff that I just thought was awful. And when the pop stuff came in, it was so like, oh, these are the kind of melodies that I like. They're coming back again. They're in a new form.

• 1:07:09Speaker 02

  It's not, I know it's not aimed at my age group, but I don't care. I mean, I was on a trip in Europe and heard Backstreet Boys quit playing Games With My Heart over and over on MTV before it was released in America. And I thought, okay, this is like really marketed stuff, clearly meaning to be another New Kids on the Block. But the song, the catchiness, the production, top-notch. And then I learned, oh, it's this Max Martin guy who's done some of the other things I already like. And so, I was an early fan of Britney.

• 1:07:54Speaker 02

  You asked me about that. I saw one of her very first performances of "Baby, One More Time" in San Francisco, before the album came out. Maybe it was in the first week or two of the single. And she was in this really goofy, like, orange...

• 1:08:16Speaker 02

  Ah, it was, it might have been a mall, it might have been like an old movie theater. It was not a stadium. And there were, you know, maybe a couple hundred girls that had probably gotten tickets from some giveaway. I think it was a radio station thing. And I loved it because it had that, it was, it was really pop, but it was a little, a little like, a little challenging, but it was really fun and inspired. And I felt the same way about Genie in a Bottle.

• 1:08:57Speaker 01

  Did you immediately think of Christina as part of the teen pop machine? And sort of, you know, she wasn't working with Max Martin, you know, she was a little separate. And I think she was very eager immediately to separate herself, you know, from the teen pop boy band universe. Did you immediately think of her as something else, Christina?

• 1:09:17Speaker 02

  No, I knew that it was basically Britney meets Mariah. But you can't hear the Mariah-ness so much on Genie in a Bottle. You have a stronger singer. She's a stronger singer than Britney. Britney has presence and she has character and she approaches, I think, her music as an actor. And Christina really is a genuine singer. And it was co-written, it had striking people behind it. Dave Frank, he was a part of The System, which was sort of an electro funk band.

• 1:10:03Speaker 02

  Robert Palmer had a hit covering their song, You Are in My System. And also, one of the guys who co-wrote Physical for Olivia Newton-John. So that's an odd combo for a teen star. So, but it really worked. And I love the wordless

• 1:10:29Speaker 02

  That part is very appealing. The whole construction of it is much more advanced than the typical teen pop, as it was beginning to be called then, song. So I was in her corner. I was disappointed with the rest of the album. I did review it. I reviewed Britney's first album for Rolling Stone. I reviewed Christina Aguilera's first album for Rolling Stone. So I was very, that was very much part of my beat while I was reviewing, you know, Bjork and whatnot.

• 1:11:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. One thing I really love about your book is you talk so much about the diva, about the importance of the diva, of these huge bombastive, like ultra expressive voices and personalities in pop, you know, Donna Summer, or Bette Midler, or Whitney Houston. Like, did you immediately think of Christina Aguilera as a diva scale pop star?

• 1:11:35Speaker 02

  No, no. I think part of the appeal of Genie in a Bottle was that the melody and the whole, the whole package, it's, it's really strong. She doesn't have to sing all the melisma and belt it in order to make it work. It's somewhat over understated. And I think the sexual innuendo there is certainly there, but it's also, it's, it's sort of, it's a woman, a young woman saying, I'm bottled up. You need to treat me right before I can reveal my true self and be truly comfortable with you.

• 1:12:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, because I think from the beginning Christina Aguilera, while clearly part of the teen pop machine, like she felt like an old soul to a lot of people, right? Like, she's a teenager, but she's got this huge voice. And she's at least, you know, trying to reach the heights of like a Whitney Houston and Etta James. You know, as a historical expert on pop, did Christina Aguilera feel like a specifically 1999 sort of proposition to you? Or did she have, you know, immediately a more timeless sort of classic feel?

• 1:12:53Speaker 02

  I would say she was more inspired by the classic stuff than Britney. But I still feel at first with the first album, she was very much put in the formula of, of Britney meets Mariah. And, and, you know, R.C.A., who had Christina, they also were the distributing label for Jive, which had Britney, which had Backstreet Boys, which had N'Sync. So that, they really became the empire of teen pop

• 1:13:38Speaker 02

  for that, for almost a decade, solid. They, they were really, they just knew what they were doing in that regard. But I do think that with Beautiful, she proved that she was able to sing a wide variety of material and, and make it hers.

• 1:14:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think for me with Beautiful, there's a huge divide between Beautiful the song and Beautiful the video, which feels like its own phenomenon and statement. The video, like as a song, you know, this is a stripped down piano ballad, you know, that's written by Linda Perry and sort of carries that sort of alt-rock sort of feel to it, maybe. Like, did Beautiful, just as a song, strike you as like a really striking new direction for her? For Christina?

• 1:14:31Speaker 02

  Well, I think that it's a, I feel that it's an extremely singular song.

• 1:14:40Speaker 02

  I, I, you asked me about Linda Perry and I, the band told me, the bassist of Four Non Blondes told me, she came to my wedding, I'm wearing my wedding suit. And she said, your review of Four Non Blondes were a local band. They, they performed for a primarily female, primarily lesbian audience. There's no secret about that. And Linda Perry was very striking from the get-go. She had, she had a striking look. She had a striking talent. You could tell that,

• 1:15:23Speaker 02

  I mean, she was, they were definitely in the 90s alt-rock thing, but with influences far beyond it. And so I thought, yeah, I thought that, I mean, thinking back, Four Non Blondes had this massive international hit. The album was successful, went platinum. And then they split up. That's not normal. That's not normal. Someone, someone at their record company or their management messed up

• 1:16:00Speaker 02

  to let that group destruct. And part of it was that Linda Perry was an out lesbian. But that was a difficult time still to be that and to have the pressure, have that not be the sole thing that people focus on.

• 1:16:24Speaker 02

  And what I want to say about the, the connection between Beautiful the song and Beautiful the video, so I think that an LGBTQ person could only have written that song. We are told we are not beautiful in so many ways. We have

• 1:16:48Speaker 02

  We have higher rates of homelessness, of teen homelessness, because many of us were thrown out of our homes as teens. We have higher suicide rates. We have higher drug addiction rates. There was also the AIDS crisis that wiped out much of my generation, and the lesbians of my generation stepped up and took care of us when families rejected us, hospitals

• 1:17:24Speaker 02

  rejected us. And so, we really have to work on our self-esteem. There are plenty, I'm not saying all of us, but many of us who've been bullied, you know, psychologically, physically abused, we have to say that we're beautiful, because society tells us we're not. Or it says, oh, yes, you are, you know, a comic relief for us. You're a diversion. You're

• 1:18:07Speaker 02

  the Paul Lynn or Charles Nelson Riley. They were the gay men of my generation that I saw on TV all the time. They were very clever with comic comments on game shows. And they were the face of gay life when I was young. But, yeah, so, Jonas, I think it's Jonas Akerlund, also a Swede, he directed the video for Beautiful. And even though it deals

• 1:18:48Speaker 02

  with anorexia, kids who feel that they don't look right, they don't, they're not muscular, boys who aren't muscular enough, girls who aren't feminine enough, with braces, who are bullied by other girls. There's a lot of that, but it's all in the, it's a kind of queerness, a kind of, you don't belong, you don't fit what society deems as beautiful, and you have to really say to yourself that we are beautiful in every single way, and

• 1:19:26Speaker 02

  you can't put us down. And I think that's a very powerful song for everyone who feels that they're not beautiful, but also those who, like us, who faced a lot of adversity and have self-esteem issues as a result.

• 1:19:48Speaker 01

  Right. When I watch that video now, I try and put myself in a 2002 mindset, right? Like a video in 2002 on MTV with like men kissing, you know, and this is years and years before gay marriage is legal, like the trans woman. Like you and I are talking the morning after the midterm election, where I live in Ohio, and I have seen transgender people in ads, political ads, nonstop for the last, you know, three months. You know, I'm trying to decide how different the landscape is for this kind of imagery in 2002 versus now, in terms of LGBTQ issues. Like, is this, is the Beautiful video transmitting from

• 1:20:31Speaker 01

  a totally different universe back in 2002, culturally and politically, or has less changed between then and now than we think?

• 1:20:40Speaker 02

  Well, I think, when you say trans people in political ads, meaning they're being scapegoated, correct?

• 1:20:48Speaker 01

  Yes, a hundred percent of the time, yes.

• 1:20:51Speaker 02

  Okay. The gay people, we managed to pass into the kingdom of the protected, at least on a legal level, right? Gay people, lesbian people, bisexual people. But the trans people, they became the scapegoat. And so, that, back in 2002, I think trans people were still pretty much under the radar of the average person who lives outside

• 1:21:29Speaker 02

  of, say, San Francisco or New York. They probably hadn't seen trans people, or hadn't noticed. And now, they're very much in the news because we've been scapegoated. And so, I think the video, and also, I mean, just the goth kid, and the whole thing, I feel like those people are still punching bags, you know. I used to be a fan of Louis

• 1:22:05Speaker 02

  CK, and now he's gone back because of his whole scandal. He's really lowered his bar, and he's now, like, sort of, like Morrissey in a sense, like siding, well, I would say siding with the oppressor, and doing jokes, doing AIDS jokes, doing trans jokes, in not a good way. And he's smart enough to know better, and he's done better. But that just shows where things are now. You know, on SNL this season, it's, SNL used to be the

• 1:22:50Speaker 02

  home of progressive comedy, and they had Shane Gillis humiliating women, saying that if they're dressed to the, dressed to work out, they're dressed like a slut, which is, we all know is bullshit. How is that green-lighted on SNL? I don't know. So, all this stuff, I think it's, even though the country is fed up with what we've been enduring, I'm

• 1:23:24Speaker 02

  amazed right now at how many kids, young people, identify as somewhere on the LGBTQ spectrum. That, it's such a profound shift. I don't know what the numbers are exactly, but it's way higher than the 10% that I grew up with, thinking that, well, we're maybe 10%, even though maybe there's only 1% of us who are out.

• 1:23:59Speaker 01

  I did want to ask, Beautiful, I think, has always been seen as a, like a self-empowering anthem, you know? And this is a very tricky thing. Like, I think that we get warier, and warier as pop music goes on, of people who are trying to do this, it can be forced, like, I don't want to name any names, but like, I love the Spice Girls, but like, girl power as like a genuine force, and girl power as like a marketing slogan, right? Like, those are two totally different things. And so, I guess, did Beautiful in 2002, did it strike you immediately, as, I guess the word is authentic, right, for lack of a better word? Like, did you feel that it was honest, you know, and it came naturally by this idea of trying to be encouraging and empowering?

• 1:24:44Speaker 02

  Yes. I think that is one of its rare achievements. It's a very sophisticated melody and arrangement, the way the chords relate to the melody. And Linda Perry writes her lyrics as she writes the melody and does the chords. And I think there's a synchronicity to the music that's very sophisticated. It has elements that, it's like the old...

• 1:25:23Speaker 02

  The old rock critics stand by Beatlesque. It has some really Beatlesque elements to it. Uh, the melody and the chords that is not, she's not Diane. Linda Perry is not Diane Warren, someone who I think is epitomizes the music for money, music to like, let's replicate what is popular. Let's just do that ad infinitum. I, I think that if I knew more, I know in my, in my head that there's, there are things

• 1:26:07Speaker 02

  that are very unique about that song. I can't explain it the way I want to, but they're there. And I think people, if they don't know that, they feel it. And I feel that that is part of what makes the song so genuine. It is, it's beautiful in not a formulaic way. If it were formulaic, it would not be beautiful. It would be, because that's the standard. You know, that's the beauty, the formula is the beauty standard of pop music.

• 1:26:47Speaker 02

  And there's the whole story of, of Linda Perry saying, um, you know, that, that, what's on the, on the record is essentially an orchestrated version of the demo and that Christina wanted to re-sing it. Linda Perry said, nope, no, you're going to ruin it. And finally she relented. They went into the studio and Christina's Mariah Carey-isms, the melisma took over and she caught herself.

• 1:27:24Speaker 02

  Christina knew that, uh, the way Linda Perry tells it, Christina shut it down before Linda even said it, had to say anything because she was adding those things that we think of as beautiful songs, beautiful singing.

• 1:27:45Speaker 01

  Right. You need a rawness. Yeah. I, that's, that's really, that's really striking. I really like that a lot as a way of thinking about it. Christina Aguilera is talked about so much now as, you know, an LGBTQ plus icon, you know, an ally, you know? She's written about this herself. Other people have written about her, you know? And I was reading your book, like reading about Donna Summer, you know, and sort of the tumultuous path that she's had as like a diva. And I, I just wonder from your perspective, how that happens, how a pop star or even a legitimate, you know, pop superstar sort of earns that honor, that title of an icon or an ally. Like, that's not something you can just say you are.

• 1:28:29Speaker 01

  That's something you have to be and have sort of conferred on you from the outside. Like, how does that process work? And do you see people sort of fail to, to conceive of themselves in that way?

• 1:28:42Speaker 02

  I think it has reached a point where it can often be extremely calculated. I think of Jessie Ware, uh, someone who's probably under the radar of, of top 40 listeners, but in England, I guess she's more mainstream, but, uh, she is someone who does it very well.

• 1:29:07Speaker 01

  She does. I love Jessie.

• 1:29:09Speaker 02

  I, I think part of it is that you have to be chosen by, by people like me, by the community. You have to be chosen. And I think one of the reasons we choose certain singers is that we can, we can sense that they've been through, that they've faced similar challenges. I think, um, you know, we, I haven't mentioned the whole Disney aspect of, of the, the late

• 1:29:45Speaker 02

  1990s, early 2000s element where all these Brittany, Christina, uh, Ryan Gosling even, uh, Justin Timberlake, they all were like musketeers, basically. And they were Disney contract players. And in, in my book, I talk about Grease and Olivia Newton-John and how Grease is really sort of the ur text of pop music, but also of LGBTQ experience because many of us, we

• 1:30:24Speaker 02

  sense that we're different and we sense that there are things about us that people wouldn't like if they knew. So many of us try to be really like good little boys and girls. And then we reach a breaking point and then we can really go the other way. And I think that's part of why many LGBTQ people end up with a drinking problem or a drug problem, uh, that they rebel against this. I mean, many of us become priests and nuns, right? That was where, historically, that was where LGBTQ people went.

• 1:31:06Speaker 02

  That, that they, they couldn't exist in the real world, so they had to devote themselves to God, to spirituality and live in a community of like-minded people. And so going back to, to Brittany and Christina and all those people, they have a similar trajectory as goody goodies who always, they always prove how bad they are. And I had forgotten about Dirty. And you wanted to know how I felt about that. And I am, you know, the largest chapter in my book is about Madonna. I really identify with her strongly.

• 1:31:46Speaker 02

  I was in New York during the same time, for many reasons, I, I identify strongly with Madonna. And, but Dirty, it went like Madonna, Madonna, for me, she always seems like she's in control of what she's doing. I, I feel like there's an authorial presence. She's an auteur, if you understand what that means. In cinema, it's like an author of cinema, like, um, uh, Wes Anderson would be a perfect example because everything he does, looks, feels, it's all Wes Anderson. It brings you into his world.

• 1:32:31Speaker 01

  Madonna is in control.

• 1:32:33Speaker 02

  Madonna has that. Well, Dirty feels like the sex erotica element of Madonna, but out of control. Like, it really, I thought it was hilarious and sort of scandalous because, you know, as a, a gay guy who's lived in New York City and in San Francisco, I've been to, you know, uh, let's say orgy rooms or, or, you know, where there's a free for all sexually going on. And that's really the vibe of this record and the video.

• 1:33:13Speaker 02

  It's been done by David LaChapelle, who of course is gay and, and has done some really playful, fun stuff. But this one, I mean, when the furries come in and the, and the girls are doing the, the dancing by the urinals as if, I know that the water is coming from the top, but it feels like they're dancing in puddles of pee.

• 1:33:43Speaker 01

  It's not sanitary, Barry. It really is.

• 1:33:45Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 1:33:47Speaker 01

  It's dirty. It's dirty what you are.

• 1:33:49Speaker 02

  It is dirty in, in a, in a not good way. And so when, when that came out, I and my friends, we just thought it was hilarious. But then she proved how serious she was going to be with, with Beautiful. And I think Fighter is a great song too. Much of that album is really, it's, I think it's outstanding. But Christina has a, a quality about her where I think she, sometimes she's really on target and sometimes she misses the mark.

• 1:34:29Speaker 02

  And, but sometimes when people miss the mark, it's more fascinating when they're right on point because it exposes something about humanity. Like when we're really trying too hard to do something, it can come across stilted.

• 1:34:51Speaker 02

  Maya Rudolph does an amazing Christina Aguilera impersonation and, uh, where Tina Fey interviews her and ultimately she just does all the, she stops being able to speak and she just makes the melisma.

• 1:35:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:35:13Speaker 02

  And then, um, uh, I forget what the other guy, the co-host, but anyway, he interprets what she's trying to say. It's really good.

• 1:35:24Speaker 01

  All right. I'll have to look that up. I have one last question for you, Barry. I want to clarify, did you say that the bass player from Four Non Blondes went to your wedding? Is that what you said?

• 1:35:38Speaker 02

  Uh, she went to my reception. Uh, yes, that's, uh, and I'm drawing a blank on her. Oh my God.

• 1:35:47Speaker 01

  There were a lot of people at your reception. I, yeah, it's, it's all right. It's, I was going to ask you what she got you as a wedding present, but that's probably.

• 1:35:54Speaker 02

  No, no, she wasn't.

• 1:35:55Speaker 01

  You don't have that memory.

• 1:35:56Speaker 02

  She was at the reception.

• 1:35:59Speaker 01

  It's a different event.

• 1:36:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. Uh, well, it was the same, it was the same, it was at Oasis, which is, um, it's a drag club.

• 1:36:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:36:13Speaker 02

  And we had, uh, um, uh, Marga Gomez, a lesbian Latina comic who's utterly brilliant. She was our officiant.

• 1:36:26Speaker 02

  You know, I, I'm not an assimilationist, but I did want to get married. And so I wanted to get married, uh, in a way that was true to my husband and I.

• 1:36:39Speaker 01

  In style.

• 1:36:39Speaker 02

  And so, yeah.

• 1:36:41Speaker 01

  I think you did it. Barry, this has been wonderful. Thank you so much for talking.

• 1:36:46Speaker 02

  Thank you. Thank you so much, Rob.

• 1:36:51Speaker 01

  Thanks very much to our guest this week, Barry Walters. Thanks to our producers, Julianna Ress, Olivia Creary, Justin Sayles, and Chris Sutton. Animations and graphics by Chris Calaton. Special thanks to Cole Kutchner and thanks to you for listening. And now let's all go listen to Beautiful by Christina Aguilera. We'll see you next week.

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