CHRISTINA AGUILERA:
Oh hey did you watch the new video for Christina Aguilera’s single “Not Myself Tonight?” Probably, we’re a little slow to the game for this one because we couldn’t decide if we cared or not. Luckily now we have lots of other opinions at this point too to share with you. Here, firstly, take a gander:
There are a lot of spikes, leather, and bondage gear that I don’t even know what it’s called in this video; there are also a lot of people upset about similarities between this video and Gaga’s stuff. Are you one of them? Do you have feelings about the overt bisexuality themes? Are you mostly just interested in the scene where Xtina unties that girl’s corset with her teeth? If you’re not sure how to feel, we have helpfully rounded up some other peoples’ opinions for you:
+ Hortense at Jezebel: “Everyone steals from everyone in pop culture: if you look solely at the work of music’s platinum blondes over the past 30 years or so, you can easily find style similarities between Christina and Gaga and Gwen Stefani and Madonna and Dale Bozzio of Missing Persons and Debbie Harry of Blondie and Cherie Currie of the Runaways and Wendy O. Williams of the Plasmatics, not to mention the influences each of these women brought to their own style via hundreds of years of icons that came before them. Aguilera’s “Not Myself Tonight” (again, NSFW) may have similarities to many of Gaga’s videos, but the major influence is clearly Madonna, who also pops up as a major influence in Gaga’s work, most notably her recent “Telephone” video.”
+ Queerty: “The mainstream female pop music category has, for months, been dominated by a one Lady Gaga. Christina, a former reigning queen of this genre, took some time off to have a baby and put on a deep red lipstick, but returns with a creative video for what’s really a mid-level song. Bubble dresses and cigarette sunglasses aside, we’re pleased to have another thin blonde re-enter the fray.”
+ Christina: “It just comes with the territory. That, in particular, is not even worth wasting the breath to comment on,” she told the Bert Show on Q100 in Atlanta Tuesday morning (April 20). “I’ve been around for over a decade and I think my work speaks for myself. [When I was younger] I would have engaged, been a little upset [about the comparisons]. There’s a bigger picture out there. I’ve got my son, my family, my work.”
+ MTV: Has a really good rundown of all the references and homages of the video, but really we just want to talk about Bad Romance: “From Christina’s cat-like crawl across the floor to her red lingerie, there’s a whole lot of “Not Myself Tonight” that’s reminiscent of “Bad Romance” though, for brevity’s sake, let’s just focus on the black pair of Carrera shades she wears at the beginning of the video. Gaga can be seen rocking an identical pair in “Romance,” although hers are white.”
QUEERTY HAS A BETTER VIDEO WITH GIRLS MAKING OUT IN IT:
It’s by a band called “Complicated Universal Cum” which is gross, but whatever:
Complicated Universal Cum – I can hardly wait from Fake Diamond Records on Vimeo.
WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENTS DINNER:
Obama was really funny at The White House Correspondents Dinner last night! (@gawker) Here’s the entire video! Watch it and LOL!:
GAGA:
New favorite Gaga rumor: There’s a rumor circulating that Lady Gaga had her leg amputated, including this “quote”: “This is the latest fashion I’m starting… I’m a world leader when it comes to wacky and weird shit.” (@gawker)
COMING OUT:
Also, if you missed it, we figured out who logically must be coming out on May 5th on People Magazine’s cover. Because there’s nothing like a false positive to inspire a tentative tipster to leap forward and set the record err—straight— this pontificating led to our intended result: now we know for real who’s coming out on May 5th: Chely Wright. (via gawker & queerty)
CHRIS COLFER:
Chris Colfer was on Ellen being super cute and like mega funny and talking all cute about Lady Gaga!
ARTIST:
We love finding out about new artists! Photographer Allison Michael Orenstein has a new series of portraits focused on transpeople and “creative types.” They are, in a word, smokin’. (@theadvocate)
ELLEN:
As far as I know Paris Hilton hasn’t done anything in like two years; I like to think that she was just waiting for the right opportunity, namely to work with Ellen. We can’t embed the video, but trust us, you will not regret clicking over. #perfect (@queerty)
When I first saw the video I definitely saw a major Erotica/Justify-My-Love-era Madonna influence. There are shades of Gaga, but as one of your quotes said I think that’s more reflecting that Gaga also channels Madonna in her vids.
It got me thinking about how in 2001 some US radio stations refused to play Darren Hayes’s Insatiable (which is super TAME) because they thought it was too explicit. And now this? What changed?
(though the Hayes beat both Gaga and XTina to the bisexuality references – from “Love and Attraction”: “I want her she wants him, he wants me I give in, I want her I want him I don’t want anything; I started questioning the rules of coupling, this strip of Moebius is never-ending”. And this was a while before he came out!)
Every time I watch that video all I can I see is the white hotpants/gogo boots/dangly necklaces combo that are pulled directly from Lady Gaga which are pulled directly from Britney Spears which are almost certainly pulled from somewhere else, but that’s where my immediate reaction chain ends.
i bet they are pulled from the heavens!
I didn’t really like the video. Not because she was copying Gaga but I just felt it wasn’t nearly as believable as Gaga. I know some people have accused Gaga as just being an attention seeker but I’ve never felt that way. I always feel like her wacky videos mean something even if they are provocative. With Christina I just kinda thought bondage and lesbionicness….yeah right.
But maybe I’m just being a bitch because she’s straight in which case I definitely have double standards.
I like both Lady Gaga and Christina. I too am underwhelmed by this video just as I was underwhelmed by the song. That said, Aguilera may not be anywhere as straight as you may think. She likes men and loves her husband but… As for Lady Gaga, I have no idea.
That’s true. In fact Christina has made comments about kissing women and finding women attractive. But I guess on the whole Gaga represents queer and possibly kinky whereas the image of Christina is married with kids. It just doesn’t come across as believable or genuine.
It goes beyond Christina’s comments. Just because someone is married and has a family, such as Christina, does not mean they don’t have a very, very kinky and queer side to them. Nor does playing up a queer or kinky identity in appearances or video’s mean that someone, such as Lady Gaga, is either in real life. I know one is believable and genuine. I can only make a guess at Lady Gaga.
I do find it interesting that whereas Christina was once ripped to shreds for her kinky extreme sexual image she is now considered by many to be some nun in a convent stealing from the profoundly queer Lady Gaga. It shows what short term memory and Perez Hilton propaganda can do.
That said, I find Christina’s video lacking. It just does not have focus.
I didn’t mean it to come across that Christina can’t be kinky or queer because she’s married. It just didn’t seem believable for some reason. Maybe that’s a media image issue or maybe its not. Personally I can’t pinpoint exactly what it is. When I watch Gaga I want to celebrate and when I watched that I felt underwhelmed.
Lady Gaga is the new Regina George.
Lady Gaga… How do I begin to explain Lady Gaga?
Lady Gaga is flawless. I hear her hair’s insured for $10,000.
I hear she does car commercials… in Japan. Her favorite movie is Varsity Blues. One time she met John Stamos on a plane…And he told her she was pretty.
One time she punched me in the face… it was awesome.
I would pay to have Gaga punch me on the face! and beg her to leave a small scar! and maybe sign it.
this
No, it’s not like Gaga- it’s boring. Completely boring. And the song matches.
I had a nice little convo about this with ElliB. Although she and the quotes have a very good point that everyone copies from something and with this its all a derivative of Madonna..In this case Christina is blatantly/pathetically copying Lady Gaga.
This video is basically a B version of Bad Romance/Paparazzi. Yes, I know Gaga copies a lot of artist form the 70’s/80’s/90’s. But copying something from 10+ years ago is different than copying something from 5 months ago. Especially when you take from biggest pop star in the world’s biggest videos.
In this video, Christina had the bondage, the hair, the shoes, the white background, makeup, making out with a guy in a bed, burning shit, crazy randomness that we just saw in Gaga’s Paparazzi and Bad Romance videos. WE JUST SAW THIS!
So I feel that it’s tired. You are making a ‘comeback’, why would you comeback and do the same thing that someone else is currently doing. Regardless if it has been done before, years ago, someone is doing it right now.
Also Christina is married and mom and all of this just seems out of place and forced. Like she is trying to be shocking, edgy, and provocative.
Also the song is lame. Again I say if you are going to comeback, come correct!
Christina even crawled on the floor like Gaga. I was like really is she serious? Did she really just release this?
I do love xtina, but this song is just not catchy. Making a provocative video won’t do anything to save that.
Other artists should take this as a warning: no does Gaga better than Gaga.
To be honest I don’t see THAT much Gaga in the video.
However look up Madonna’s Express Yourself video and also Human Nature video. The rip off/homage is obvious.
HUMAN NATURE! That’s the video i was trying to remember!
CC, I fully agree. Even more so I see an modern take on the Dirrty video with all the oddly remote sheen so palpable in video’s nowadays. As for Lady Gaga I have difficulty saying anyone is stealing ideas from her considering her reliance on borrowed ideas. Granted the borrowed ideas are twisted but nowhere as much as I think many believe.
the sexuality just seemed forced to me. i remember the dirrty vid and that was good. this one just made me feel like they did EVERYTHING THEY COULD to make her sexy. every sexy pose, licking, biting, humping, grinding–just all shoved into a couple of minutes. gaga is believable. this was not.
sry christina…i do love you.
Yeah, MsNJS and I had a lengthy convo on Twitter about Xtina’s video… and we obvs still can’t agree! I think it’s a great video that is an homage to 80s/90s videos, esp Madonna and George Michael and a whole lot of divas. Yes, there are scenes lifted straight from Gaga, but there are scenes lifted straight from many other videos. It’s an homage. It’s ‘hey, look, I love what you love and what you do and I can do that and my own thing too!’ Plus, it did what it was supposed to do- it thrust Xtina right back into our conversations. No one can say they don’t know she has a new album coming out now after all this… And this is only the first song/video from the album, so it makes you wonder what the rest is going to be like. Like the song/video or not, girl has pipes and she has been around for a long time. She managed to survive her teenage bubble gum pop days with much less negative attention than Britney. I think she deserves the benefit of the doubt.
I actually already had a fight with Alex about this on Friday so I’m scared to stir up some shit, but I agree, I don’t think that she’s lifting from Gaga. She is doing an homage, as you say, to Madonna, George Michael, etc. I think it’s really limiting to say that two women with the same influences — and these influences, sidenote, are not even originals either, they are homages to an entire culture of human beings, and there’s no rule that only x amount of people are allowed to do videos with BDSM themes or something, that’s silly. It’s not like Madonna invented S&M or Gaga was the first woman to wear the leather fetish-gear that she sported last year.
However, I don’t like the song and I didn’t like the video either. I just don’t think she was deliberately copping Gaga, at worst she was just responding to an identical cultural moment that Gaga has brought back into the mainstream.
Agree on all points Riese. Sadly criticism nowadays has way too much short term memory and way too little insight. Uninformed criticism misses the point that Gaga and Aguilera are both paying homages to the same prior individuals. Your criticism does not.
YES RIESE. AGREED.
I can’t decide if I actually care either; I didn’t really like the song or the video, but maybe the video would have been more enjoyable had I liked the song. What I like about Gaga’s Bad Romance video is that she lies on a bed next to a skeleton with a bra shooting out sparks after wearing a bear dress. Christina’s video felt more like “I’m going to twist my body in ridiculous ways and be overtly sexual but without a bear dress”. That’s not to say I don’t like Christina, because I do, actually a lot, but I guess I’m not really a fan of this vid.
Also that Ellen/Paris Hilton thing was GOLD.
yeah gaga is just so much more COMPLICATED. you know?
I was really trying to figure out how I felt about the Xtina vs Gaga thing but half way through reading the opinions on it I saw a video titled “Complicated Universal Cum” and I just didn’t care anymore.
I did enjoy the CUC video. 2nd hottest video I have seen lately. The hottest is still The Real World Ayiiia and girlfriend video. Managed to catch that kissathon before the two took it down.
SNORE PIE WITH YAWN SAUCE.
I consider myself a geniune Christina fan. I like her wierd looking husband and her kooky baby, and I used to really like her music. I don’t think she ever recovered from Back to Basics. She lost her sexual mojo after that album and has been trying to get Diirty again ever since.
This video and (most importantly) the song are just boring. Snore pie with yawn sauce.
Paris Hilton, however, is pure genius. I love her.
And another thing I am so sick and tired of pop stars claiming bisexuality and ooo look at me I kissed a girl to seem sexy and provacative. So the f what? You want a cookie?
wait—she’s bisexual [for fans] too????
I’m actually rather annoyed with Christina’s video. It just comes across so try-hard and safe. Instead of trying to innovate and evolve, she decides to use the same ole gimmicks. Oh, you kissed a girl?? GASP! There are whole songs on kissing girls now, must I hand you a late-slip?
I think the bigger tragedy is that the song isn’t great. It’s actually quite bad by Christina’s standards.
I couldn’t really decide whether or not I liked Christina’s video or not, but then I saw the CUC video and I completely forgot everything else :)
I care not about the Christina video and song. It does come off as her trying wayyyyyyyyy too hard. More Madonna rip-offs than Gaga, I feel. Xtina should find her own thing. I liked the retro throwback thing she was working in “Ain’t No Other Man”. She should stick with that.
The CUC video pretty much made my week/month/year/life. I didn’t realize I could watch two girls making out for a whole song and pretty much be entertained.
So. Entertained. RAWR.
Normally, I would try and analyze that video and which parts are derivative. But the song is so terrible that I could hardly make it through one viewing. And now I’ve forgotten everything I’ve seen in it except the corset untying and Xtina dumping what looked like liquid latex on herself. I don’t really care beyond that, anyway.
Cryface, I wish we were debating over butches biting off other butch videos. And Justin Bieber doesn’t count.
who cares about xtina when you can watch two girls making out to music for 4 minutes?
DIDN’T YINZ WATCH IT?!
The CUC video with the girls….YAWN…I see better shows from straight girls at the bar, looking for a drink. It was ackward and gawd awefull. The song was alright, if I could shift my focus away from the sad excuse for lesbians long enough.
Im sorry but both the song and the music video are crap.
The song is a massive rip off of a few I can name, and I’m sure I’m forgetting some other “influences”, and the video looks so forced and “in your face” as in “OMG Christina is so super sexy like super sexy like uber sexy like looook how sexy she is and she makes out with women, oh wooow”. Bad. Very crappy, no interest whatsoever in this. And a big waste of talent. :(
Complicated Universal Cum is not only a mouthful (see what I did there?) but it’s not easy or pleasing to say. This is how me and my best friend feel about An Horse, kind of. Sometimes we just don’t talk about them because it takes so much effort and irks us so much to say An Horse. In fact, I might be into them if their name was different. But every time I think about going to give it a listen, and I have to type An Horse, the grammar freak in my has a shiver and I go so something else. In fact, that was a really hard spiel for me to type.
What a stupid rumor to start, we’re all totes gonna see her leg later, duuuh! We should keep talking about her OMG-THAT’S-SO-BIG dick. I heart it’s rainbow colored now. The more righteous shit she does the more I actually start to like this Lady. Take that Westboro.
I just watched the Universal Cum video. Hehe. I like it.
ok I know this is super old at this point, but I got some feelings to share about Christina Aguilera, and the internet is made for sharing feelings.
The song is mediocre. There’s no hook, and no way to really sing or dance along. The video is sexual, but in a contrived way. However, I really really want to give Christina a free pass on this one.
Admittedly, I’m super late to the Christina Aguilera game. I’ve only recently discovered that I can be a feminist and indie kid AND still like pop music! But I defo secretly liked her in my high school, militantly outside of the mainstream days. “Beautiful” is a great song, and is made for every lonely homo out there. She sings it directly to us, guys! In addition to the supportive narrative to gender expression in “Beautiful,” she carries it with “My Reflection” too. Think about it – “My Reflection” pretty much sums up the trans experience, or any “non-normative” gender expression. She really loves queers, and has for awhile.
Perez and other media have really set up a false dichotomy – Gaga OR Christina! Folks, we can have it all! Let’s piss on the patriarchy by showing both Gaga and Christina can both be successful at the same time!
That, and if this single tanks, then maybe the tracks she did with Sia, Le Tigre or Santigold won’t get released and then we can’t dance to them in clubs! D:
I agree about the dichotomy thing. It used to be Christina vs Britney back in the day, and now she’s being put up against Gaga – what does a girl have to do to be considered in her own right?
I got bored with the song/video and turned off halfway through, and I can’t think of a single song of hers I’ve really enjoyed. But I appreciate that she’s a talented lady who has produced some really strong, positive pop songs and I hope she continues to be successful.
The video is awful. Christina just comes across really try-hard and desperate. I do not know why but I feel that X-tina just does not know how to own this persona/image she is trying to portray. Gaga can do these crazy things n get away with it because the girl owns it, n that makes it more believable. X-tina has an amazing vocal range, she should make use of it and go the celine or kelly clarkson root. In the pop star world, I always felt X-tina although she has crazy vocal range she always ends up getting over-shadowed whether it be by Britney,Beyonce n now Gaga.
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