In the year since Christina Aguilera released Back to Basics, the album has gone to No 1 in almost every country that tracks such things and the road show has sold out venues in many of those places. So expect more of the same at the AsiaWorld-Arena next Tuesday.
But Aguilera doesn't seem as concerned with selling another million copies of her album or selling out another venue as she does with selling the idea that she's a performer on par with 'the Billie Holidays and Etta Jameses, those types of people.'
For her, it's a personal issue, and it likely dates back to her days as a bright-eyed, blonde-haired moppet on The New Mickey Mouse Club.
Co-stars Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears were the first to taste fame although Aguilera was the more talented Mouseketeer. After all, she was intimidating talent show contestants and singing the Star Spangled Banner for her home town American football team, the Pittsburgh Steelers, even before the Magic Kingdom came calling. And even after she'd finally doffed her mouse ears and released her eponymous debut in 1999, there was no hiding the fact the album was more her handlers' than her own.
Aguilera is confident in her abilities and determined to set the record straight. And the past, she says, is now something she looks back on philosophically. 'For me, with my first album, I kind of had to play by the rules and [do] what my label wanted me to do. After I'd sold a few million records, I was able to do what I wanted.'
What she did on her second album surprised both her fans and the pantheon of pop stars. Gone was the girl next door, replaced with a tarty temptress.
