Robbed hit of the week 9/11/23 - Christina Aguilera's "Dirrty"...
"Dirrty" - Christina Aguilera featuring Redman
from the album Stripped (2002)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #48 (two weeks)
This week's "robbed hit" comes from Christina Aguilera, who had kicked off her post Mickey Mouse Club career in a huge way with her debut album which spun off three #1 pop hits followed by her #1 collaboration with Pink, Lil' Kim, and Mya from the Moulin Rouge soundtrack, the cover of "Lady Marmalade" in the summer of 2001. She also followed up her debut with a pair of albums on RCA Records, the Spanish-language record Mi Reflejo and the holiday set My Kind Of Christmas, which both made the top-30 of the Billboard 200 sales tally.
With this clout Christina was granted more control over her sound and acrimoniously left her original manager for the high-profile Irving Azoff. With that move she wanted to leave the teen-pop world behind. She did that in a big way with her next release, Stripped, and more importantly, with the lead single "Dirrty". The song contained an interpolation of the 2001 single "Let's Get Dirty (I Can't Get In Da Club)" by rapper Redman (aka Reginald Noble), who shares writing credit on "Dirrty" with Aguilera and producers Jasper Cameron, Dana Stinson, and Balewa Muhammad. He also contributed a new verse of his own to the record as well. He has appeared as a lead artist on one top-40 hit on the Hot 100, his collab with Wu-Tang Clan rapper Method Man on "How High", which peaked at #13 in 1995. He also was featured on Dru Hill's single "How Deep Is Your Love", which rose to #3 in 1998, and most recently was on the single remix to Styles P's top-40 crossover hit "Good Times" in the early autumn of 2002.
The result? Well....
The song is loud. It's in your face, and not really in a good way. It was Xtina (as she dubbed herself from then on) cooing verses about partying and getting down sexually (like most of the R&B club jams of the time), only allowing her signature powerful voice to appear when she's screaming the chorus. I mean, it's definitely a change in sound from her debut, but it seemed to dumb down things instead of coming of age. The music video is a total trainwreck, with Aguilera clothed in as revealing outfits as she could, with hair seemingly left over from a cruise to the Caribbean. Redman's verses are actually the best thing on the record, as he rolls over the flow with an ear-grabbing cameo, but soon its back to Xtina belting. And JFC dancing in a flooded room of urinals IS A CHOICE. Coming a year after Britney's Spears' much tamer attempt to do the same thing on "I'm A Slave 4 U", Christina should've learned from Spears' almost derailment of her career (at least that one made the top-40 barely). The Christo-fascists jumped on this to cause a stir that radio backed away from (only in the States though), but it did give enough press for her fans to try to salvage it...
While "Dirrty" did manage to climb to #14 on Billboard magazine's Mainstream Top-40 radio chart, and #20 on the dance/R&B-oriented Rhythmic format, the single never got any attention at urban radio and with little sales points stopped just short of the halfway mark on the Hot 100 in October of 2002. However, internationally, where sexually-charged hits from women are more gladly received, it was a completely different story. "Dirrty" became Xtina's third #1 hit in the United Kingdom, and also topped the singles chart in Ireland and Croatia, and reached the top ten in the Netherlands (#2), Spain (#3), Switzerland (#3), Norway (#3), Germany (#4), Australia (#4), Denmark (#4), Belgium (#4 Flanders/#8 Wallonia), Canada (#5 Sales/#27 Radio), Austria (#5), Hungary (#5), Sweden (#6), Slovenia (#6), Portugal (#7), and Italy (#8). The Stripped album, released in October as the single was cresting, spent a week at #2 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, going on to spend 79 weeks on the list and selling over five million copies, thanks to follow-ups that did do much better on the chart. But even so, at the Grammy Awards, "Dirrty" was nominated for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals in 2003 (the power of label promotion is strong), losing to Santana and Michelle Branch for "The Game Of Love". Stripped was nominated for Best Pop Vocal Album a year later, losing to former Mickey Mouse Club castmate Justin Timberlake for his Justified set.
(3/10)
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Next up, on her Back To Basics tour in 2007...
And lastly, Aguilera brought back the trainwreck for the trainwreck that is CNN's New Year's Eve in 2020...
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