Christina Aguilera on Why It’s “Corny” When Celebrities “Do Things Intentionally” to Stay Relevant

Christina Aguilera is “really proud” of the “risks and chances” she’s taken throughout her 25-year career in the music industry, no matter how they may be received by the public.

In a recent interview with Paper magazine, the pop icon opened up about the thoughtful decisions behind each of her projects over the years, noting that she never released anything just for “noise” and “attention.” This included her song “Dirrty” from her 2002 album Stripped, which saw her embrace her sexual side, a major shift from her self-titled 1999 debut album.

“You can make these choices. You can make them to play it safe and go along with the flow, or you can do things that really move people and shake it up,” she explained. “And I don’t intentionally, I think it’s corny to do things intentionally for pop culture, noise and for attention to stay quote-unquote ‘relevant.’ That becomes its own weird animal that gets away from artistry, period.”

The “Genie in a Bottle” singer continued, “So you can be a pop artist and genuinely do what you do, and still come through with messages and change it up. I never was interested in making the same record over and over again, that’s my worst idea of music. It’s part of our jobs as musicians to see where music is moving and see what’s happening socially. It really is about connecting and trying to bring people together.”

For Aguilera, artistry is about “wanting to experiment and not wanting to stay the same,” which is why she described her 2010 album Bionic as “an adventurous album,” while 2006’s Back to Basics was a “bit more relatable.”

“I have to feel strong in my message and my core and what I’m doing out there,” the Grammy-winning artist said. “I think it’s been apparent throughout my career that I’ve taken risks and chances. It’s very easy to play it safe for public perspective, so that they feel safe. People are comfortable with what they know, and when you change the script on them and change your sound — which I purposely did with every record — wanting to explore, wanting to experiment and not wanting to stay the same. I didn’t want to be a one-dimensional ballad singer, I didn’t want to be known for one specific thing.”