The Albums That Made Me: Christina Aguilera's 'Stripped'

Christina Aguilera magnum opus imprinted on 16-year-old me in profound ways

Welcome to “The Albums That Made Me”, a special column where I talk about the 90s/00s albums that had the biggest impact on me as an adolescent/young adult. Many of those albums have stayed with me in ways that others haven’t, and if you want to understand who I am as a person, many of these albums are at the root. These will drop one Friday a month.

There’s a page I follow on Instagram called “2000s Pop Hits” or something like that. The page’s main function is to remind us of the nostalgia of the era. Sometimes they’ll post a random song and ask “Bop or Flop?” or do a “You can only pick 2 / 3 songs out of 5” or my least favorite (sometimes) “1 and their entire catalog of music has to go”. There are times where those decisions are a slam dunk, and then there are times where I’m curled up in the fetal position trying to figure out what I’d choose.

Recently, they did a post asking people to choose between the albums Stripped by Christina Aguilera and Britney by Britney Spears. For me, this was one of those fetal position decisions. If you ask me, those albums are where their respective singers peaked. I will actually be writing about both albums at some point, but after sitting with it for a bit, I’ve decided that if I had to pick, I’m going with Stripped. 

Stripped is technically Christina’s fourth album. Between her self-titled debut album and this one, she released a Spanish language album, Mi Reflejo, and holiday album My Kind of Christmas. Both of those albums were released in 2000, while she was still in the same cycle as her debut. Stripped came two years later, in 2002, effectively breaking the feared Best New Artist Grammy curse for her. (The lore is that whoever wins the Best New Artist Grammy falls off the face of the earth.) Christina won in 2000, and you didn’t hear too much from her in 2001, aside from the collaborations “Nobody Wants to be Lonely” with Ricky Martin, and the ever iconic “Lady Marmalade” from the movie Moulin Rouge! I always consider Stripped her second album, because frankly, I forget about the two in between. Make of that what you will. 

I’ve written in the past about how important this era of Christina was to my burgeoning sexuality — if you haven’t read it before, go for it.

The Summer of 2003

But it wasn’t just because of my sexuality that I felt (and still feel) a deep connection to Stripped. I was 16, and my relationship to music was changing. Just like my favorite pop stars, I was looking for something more grown up. Lyrics became important to me, which isn’t a surprise if you know me now. I was looking for ways to connect to music beyond a dancey beat or a cute face singing the song. Christina wrote most of the songs on Stripped, which is probably why it feels like there’s a little something for everyone musically and lyrically. Christina was getting deep, but more than that, she was getting personal. Right from the beginning, she lets you know that the Christina Aguilera you thought you knew isn’t the young woman you will find on this album.

“Allow me to introduce myself. Want you to come a little closer. I'd like you to get to know me a little bit better. Meet the real me”

This is part of the album’s first track “Stripped (Intro)”. Christina is letting the listener know right off the bat that the girl who sang “Genie in a Bottle” is long gone and you better buckle up. Over the next hour plus, you get to learn more about who Christina is as a person and artist, and it was exactly what I was looking to connect to.

Stripped is an album that was in heavy rotation for me for a long time; at least a couple years. I returned to it in the last year or so, and not only did it take me back, but it still holds up on its own. You know how there are certain songs or albums that you have a soft spot for because you loved it at an important time but then you go back and it kind of sucks? That isn’t this album. It’s really just brilliant. At the time of its release, critics were divided, but upon revisiting it in 2022 for the 20 year anniversary, everyone could agree that it’s one of the best albums of the 21st century. 

In 2002, feminism in music was still a fringe topic only relegated to individual songs and artists. Christina was one of the first of the pop tartlets to really tackle feminism in what felt like a contemporary way. Gone was the cheeky Spice Girl brand of feminism — Christina was talking about the double standards she faced as a young woman in an industry that wanted her to stay a little girl in a raw way. She was exploring themes of insecurity, tackling the lingering trauma of her abusive childhood, and of course, reminding people that she was a young woman who was also a sexual being. I think so much focus was put on her X-tina persona and the raw sexuality of “Dirrty” that they missed all of the other things Christina was doing on the album.

It’s that subtle kind of feminism that embedded itself into many a millennial girl’s brain. A song like “Can’t Hold Us Down” became an anthem akin to No Doubt’s “Just a Girl.” Christina was pushing back against the men like Eminem and Fred Durst who were trying to brand her as a slut to make themselves look cooler. Lil’ Kim is featured on this track, and no one did sexual femme feminism better than Kim. Christina was pushing back against the second wave feminist belief that to be a “good” feminist, you had to be devoid of sexuality, which we now know is total bullshit. It’s songs like this, “Fighter,” “Underappreciated,” and “Keep On Singin’ My Song” that gave us the next generation of singers like Demi Lovato, Selena Gomez or Ariana Grande.

It’s funny that 22 years after the album’s release, the same songs are the ones that speak loudest to me. One of my favorite tracks in “Make Over,” a garage band song co-written by Christina and Linda Perry. “I just wanna get away. Savin' all your bullshit for another day. I'm the only one that can rescue me from me,” she wails through what sounds like a muffler. As a teenage girl with a lot of angst, it sparked something deep in me. Honestly, this song still scratches the same itch, even if the root of my angst is different

Two other songs that I really loved are “Cruz” and “Soar.” Like I said, I had a lot of big feelings, and I was ready to be free of the confines of my life and really live for myself. Obviously, it wouldn’t happen for a couple more years when I finally got out of my parents’ house and went off to college, but even at 16 I knew that the key to being the best version of myself was going to be getting away from everything and everyone I knew. Listening to these songs as a 38-year-old hits differently — I did the things the song encouraged me to do. And in the case of “Cruz,” I do really miss the past sometimes. But that’s mainly because I’m old and poor and I audibly groan every time I stand up. Oh, to have young knees again.

The ballads on Stripped are also top tier examples of Christina’s insane vocal ability. Everyone always talks about “Beautiful,” and it’s a great song (I used a lyric from it as the name of my tumblr account), but it’s not even the best ballad on the album. “The Voice Within” has a very similar tone to “Beautiful,” but you get the range of her vocals. “I’m OK,” is a raw look back at her parents’ abusive marriage and the early years of her childhood. She puts it all out there, and then tells the listener that she’s learned how to accept it and use it as her art. It’s no coincidence that these two songs are next to each other in the track listing — both are speaking to young Christina as a way to show her where she will find herself one day.

As a whole, Stripped isn’t as sexy of an album as it was made out to be. There are really only two songs that directly address sex or sexuality directly: “Dirrty” and “Get Mine, Get Yours.” The “Dirrty” video is a pillar of my gay awakening, which was tough in the days before YouTube! I loved “Get Mine, Get Yours” because it had a good beat and I understood what it was about. But I had a completely new level of understanding and appreciation for it when I lost my virginity in college. In fact, I made it the ringtone for the guy I was hooking up with (remember when we did that? Now if my phone makes noise I freak out.)

I think the thing I loved (and still love) about Stripped is how Christina doesn’t allow anyone to put her in a box musically. There are so many influences on this album — as someone who likes a lot of different genres of music, I appreciate the variety. I went back and listened to it a few times to write this, and I think I like it more now than I did in 2022. And I think that tells you everything that you need to know about how this album lives in me.