Christina Aguilerais celebrating 25 years of her 1999 self-titled debut album, and its enduring hit “Genie in a Bottle.”
While she revealed in her newest Glamour cover story that she’s “grateful” for everything that the album provided for her, it was the start of navigating her journey as an artist that wouldn’t be defined by one genre. “I didn’t love the bubblegum thing, where you had to play a virgin but not act like one,” she admitted. “When I was performing ‘Genie’ and ‘What a Girl Wants’ and ‘Come on Over,’ I got bored easily. Creatively, it was one-dimensional.”
That’s why she shifted her focus on 2002’s Stripped, which fittingly stripped the teenybopper persona with more adult themes and vocal-focused pop hits with R&B tinges. “I think it was just a matter of believing so wholeheartedly in my vision, which was to fight for sexuality,” she said of fighting back against the backlash to the provocative album.
Funny enough, Aguilera was on that empowerment wave before her debut album was even released. The then-18-year-old star told Billboard of “Genie in a Bottle” back in 1999, “The song is not about sex. It’s about self-respect. It’s about not giving in to temptation until you’re respected. It’s time for something different. It’s time that music make[s] kids feel confident and secure.”
With “Genie in a Bottle,” Aguilera unleashed her first of five Hot 100 No. 1s and 11 top 10s. Aguilera’s debut album subsequently launched at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with 253,000 copies sold in the United States in its first week, according to Luminate.
