If the rumors are true, Christina Aguilera is getting dirrty again.
Back in December, a YouTube video titled “9.1.13.669321018” appeared on the account of a user called iamamiwhoiam that shows a blonde woman, covered in mud, essentially performing oral sex on a tree. Another video “Prelude 699130082.451322”, which surfaced around the same time, showed various kicking tree branch limbs and the same mystery woman gestating in womb-like setting. Accompanied by some non-sequitor footage of a goat giving birth and a soundtrack of ominous, grimy, electronica, the video became a hot topic in the blogosphere as intrigued music fans tried to guess who was behind it.
Aguilera was named as a possibility early on. Her fourth studio album, Bionic, is due in April, and her list of collaborators, which includes Ladytron, Le Tigre, Santigold and M.I.A., reads like a list of the cool kids in indie electronica. Sonically, the video seems like the perfect album promo, but the visuals, on the other hand, don’t sit right. Aguilera’s never pushed the freak envelope like this, and although she said her new album was influenced by her pregnancy and the birth of her son Max, the videos are a disturbing take on motherhood.
The short-lived iamamiwhoiam Twitter account started tweeting the message “WILL YOU FOLLOW OR FLEE? #sheiscoming” at the accounts of suspect singers like Aguilera and Lady Gaga (and Rivers Cuomo, but we’re pretty sure it’s not him). Gaga was an understandable possibility, but she’s already in the midst of touring for her last album, The Fame Monster. British duo Goldfrapp, who worked on a song for Aguilera’s new album, was also considered, but the album cover for their new album, Head First , and its cheerful first single “Rocket” don’t match the vibe of the videos. Bjork is equally capable of such out-of-the-box creativity, but due to the amount of bizarre stuff she does on the regular, it’s a mystery as to why she’d go incognito for this one.
In late January, a third video, “9.20.19.13.5.723378,” was uploaded. Featuring the same woman swimming in a surreal pool while the words “like hell” echo in the background, the video was just as confusing as the first two.
But around the time of the third video, a few more signs started to point to Aguilera. A user on British pop music message board Popjustice pointed out that one of the video titles spells out her initials. If you add up the numbers in “Prelude 699130082.451322” you get 38.17. If you assign each number a letter so that 1 = A and B = 2, 38.17 becomes CH:AG.
Since that revelation, fans hoping for Christina Aguilera have been grasping at straws trying to prove a physical resemblance, such as making this side-by-side profile comparison. The most promising clue so far has been a screen shot of one of the videos on the German Sony BMG Web site – Aguilera’s record company – whose URL attributes the clip directly to her album promo.
Aguilera’s people have vehemently denied that the singer is responsible, and in the mean time, official information about the album has been steadily coming. With an April release date, Bionic’s first single, “Glam,” which was described in a Marie Claire magazine interview as a throwback to Madonna’s “Vogue,” is likely to surface in the first half of February. But judging by the title, there’s nothing glamorous about the mystery videos.
The professionalism of the videos is another issue. The viral campaign seemed too well-produced to be amateur footage until copyright issues sprang up. All three clips originally featured footage of live animals, but soon after Popjustice users located the original footage elsewhere on YouTube, iamamiwhoiam replaced the animal clips with filler pictures. If this campaign were the product of a well-funded record company, surely those behind it would have the resources to stay above stealing footage? And if it wasn’t, why would its creator sit around and let a former Mickey Mouse Club star get all the buzz?
The biggest question, of course, is whether or not Christina Aguilera – the woman who brought us “Genie In A Bottle” – can really be this cool. In a time where most pop stars are at the mercy of fleeting trends and A&R executives, is it possible that her team could pull of such an intriguing marketing campaign? Is it possible that Aguilera could circumvent her management team to initiate something so profoundly strange and disturbing that Lady Gaga probably wouldn’t touch it with a 10-foot disco stick?
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