'''Christina María Aguilera''' (born December 18 1980) is an American pop singer and songwriter. She began working in the entertainment industry at a young age, making several appearances on television shows such as ''
The Mickey Mouse Club''. She was signed to RCA Records after recording her song Reflection for the film soundtrack of Mulan, which reached the Top 20 of the American Adult Contemporary charts, and her bubblegum pop-influenced debut album ''Christina Aguilera'' (1999) was a critical and commercial success: it produced four hit singles, including "Genie in a Bottle", and helped Aguilera win a Grammy Award. A Latin pop album and a Christmas LP released during this period also sold strongly.
Aguilera took creative control over her second studio album ''
Stripped'' (2002), which produced the R&B-influenced "Dirrty" and the award-winning "Beautiful". It received mixed reviews, and Aguilera's increasingly sexual image during its promotion became the subject of much criticism and controversy. She contributed to several other artists' songs in 2004 and 2005 and married record executive Jordan Bratman.
[http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1514186/20051121/aguilera_christina.jhtml?headlines=true "Christina Aguilera Marries Jordan Bratman". MTV.com. November 21 2005. Retrieved June 11 2006.] Her third studio album ''Back to Basics'' (2006), which was preceded by the hit single "Ain't No Other Man", included elements of soul, jazz and blues music and was released to high sales and positive critical reception.
Biography
Early life and career
Aguilera was born in Staten Island, New York to Fausto Wagner Xavier Aguilera, a U.S. Army sergeant, and Shelly Loraine Fidler. Aguilera's father was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador while her mother has German, French, English, Portuguese, Irish, and Dutch ancestry.
[http://.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=gdtrowbridge&id=I14518 Aguilera's Family Tree] Aguilera's parents met while Fausto was serving at Earnest Harmon Air Force Base in Stephenville, Newfoundland and Labrador. They were both Catholics. Her parents married when her mother was 20 years old and her father was almost 32. Aguilera lived with her father and mother until she was 6 or 7 years old, when her parents divorced and her mother took her and her younger sister Rachel to her grandmother's home in Rochester, Pennsylvania, a blue-collar suburb of Pittsburgh. According to Aguilera and Fidler, her father was very controlling, as well as physically and emotionally abusive.
[http://uk.news.launch.yahoo.com/dyna/article.html?a=/dotmusic_news/14296.html&e=l_news Christina Aguilera relives her violent past", Dotmusic/Yahoo! News (June 20, 2000)] Since then, Fidler has married a paramedic named Jim Kearns, and has changed her name to Shelly Kearns.
[Helligar, Jeremy; Majewski,
]
