Christina Aguilera leaves her label RCA Records after 26 years

[StrawberryBlond 13,469]

Really surprised. RCA held onto her despite her back-to-back flops which I thought was strange as labels are ruthless when artists aren't being supported by the public, particularly if they're female so this turnaround suggests Latin will be her set style. Which is odd as her Latin album did terribly and couldn't get one hit despite Latin being hot right now and her songs featuring current and popular names. I think she's well past the point of caring then. Music doesn't really seem to be her focus anymore anyway. 

8 hours ago, moonsago said:

Good. They ditched her the moment she had her first flop with Bionic. They shelved the era and stopped properly investing in her career after that. I still think her ‘downfall’ is one of the saddest, and that label is horrible at taking care & promoting their female artists. 

I still wonder why they kept her on if they couldn't be bothered to try hard with her. When labels have stopped caring about artists, they drop them. How she lasted this long remains a mystery. She did release her last album under Sony Latin, though, so maybe it was already decided in advance and is just being announced now.

6 hours ago, Karl said:

Idk Latin music does really well in general, look how successful Shakira has been since going full Latin 

I think that's why she went back to Latin (her first foray into it in the 90's was clearly forced by her label when Latin was popular). I don't think it came from a genuine place. She's only half Latin anyway and said she forgot her Spanish back in the day and had to re-learn it. Basically, I think she'd never have done that album if Latin wasn't blowing up the way it is. But as seen with that album, nothing charted despite it sounding like hit Latin material and putting big names on it. Not everyone gets success with it just because it's popular, clearly.

2 hours ago, BlingNotTheMusic said:

This is so odd. I thought her Spanish record was a side project and she was going back to full pop? At least, that's what she has been hinting at. This is so confusing for a long time Christina fan...

Maybe she will still release both styles of music under this label?

As an artist who has always liked to change genres, signing with a Latin label which will put her in a box is bizarre. As far as I've seen, if you're signed to a Latin label, that style will be your only output, just like how a lot of artists sign to a country imprint of a label when they go country. Maybe she's hoping to garner a new Latin fanbase as her English language fanbase abandoned her?

[BlingNotTheMusic 27,651]

12 minutes ago, StrawberryBlond said:

Really surprised. RCA held onto her despite her back-to-back flops which I thought was strange as labels are ruthless when artists aren't being supported by the public, particularly if they're female so this turnaround suggests Latin will be her set style. Which is odd as her Latin album did terribly and couldn't get one hit despite Latin being hot right now and her songs featuring current and popular names. I think she's well past the point of caring then. Music doesn't really seem to be her focus anymore anyway. 

I still wonder why they kept her on if they couldn't be bothered to try hard with her. When labels have stopped caring about artists, they drop them. How she lasted this long remains a mystery. She did release her last album under Sony Latin, though, so maybe it was already decided in advance and is just being announced now.

I think that's why she went back to Latin (her first foray into it in the 90's was clearly forced by her label when Latin was popular). I don't think it came from a genuine place. She's only half Latin anyway and said she forgot her Spanish back in the day and had to re-learn it. Basically, I think she'd never have done that album if Latin wasn't blowing up the way it is. But as seen with that album, nothing charted despite it sounding like hit Latin material and putting big names on it. Not everyone gets success with it just because it's popular, clearly.

As an artist who has always liked to change genres, signing with a Latin label which will put her in a box is bizarre. As far as I've seen, if you're signed to a Latin label, that style will be your only output, just like how a lot of artists sign to a country imprint of a label when they go country. Maybe she's hoping to garner a new Latin fanbase as her English language fanbase abandoned her?

Random but it's crazy how super successful 90s acts are flopping now. Xtina (although this has been prevalent since 2010, unfortunately) JT, JLO, etc

There must be something behind the scenes but tbh she gives off a very sh*tty attitude and even though I have followed her career and enjoyed AT LEAST a few tracks from every album since 2010, also watching her Stripped concert thousands of times, she just comes off as a cvnt, similar to Madonna. However at least Madonna speaks up for political issues and supports other female artists. Xtina never speaks out and had a huge opportunity to support Britney but didn't. 

Anyways, I was REALLY looking forward to more pop Xtina as I enjoyed Liberation a lot. You can't have a voice like that and your career flops simply because of "bad management". Something else is going on...

EDIT: @moonsago I still to this day have no idea how Bionic flopped, it has SO MANY bops and such potential for iconic visuals. Also the lore behind that album is wild. 

EDIT EDIT: I was so shook when, in her book, she said she ran into Xtina at a club in the early 2000s and she was "really messed up" 

Edited May 11 by BlingNotTheMusic

[Anderson123 32,257]

42 minutes ago, olive specter said:

didn't avril drop rca after goodbye lullaby?

Ahh I just checked Wikipedia and you're right. All of the albums she released after Goodbye Lullaby have been released each of them under different labels.

Well in Avril's case, Goodbye Lullaby is the last album I really loved from her. All of the rest after that have been kinda meh with just a couple of good songs in there. At least for me.

[HIM820 1,629]

2 hours ago, BlingNotTheMusic said:

Random but it's crazy how super successful 90s acts are flopping now. Xtina (although this has been prevalent since 2010, unfortunately) JT, JLO, etc

 

It shouldn’t be that shocking and if we as a society measured success less uniformly then we would be able to analyze and appreciate older artists in different ways. For instance, when these artists were debuting in the late 90s artists from 10 years prior were starting to struggle, pop acts specifically. Madonna obviously has had career issues in the last 20 years, but she’s still considered such an anomaly because other female artists of the time couldn’t sustain their career past 10 years in the same way. Cher as well to a degree. Whitney, Janet and Mariah all had other issues that held back their careers at a certain points. 
 

However we had many 90s acts like Britney, JT, JLo etc still being able to compete in 2010 amongst new artists. That’s why that era of charts/pop is considered so great. It had an intersection of generations that were still dominating. Obviously if Bionic was more successful Christina would have been part of that group too delaying her career decline. 

20 year pop careers are not bad and should be somewhat expected now. Beyoncé is the new outlier, but even her newer albums have middling streaming numbers and obviously lower sales than she had before. She’s just way above the expectations for artists from her era, and her team is great at showing that as successful in its own right which is how it should be done. They have to be even more strategic and careful with age as artists. There were parts of JT and JLo’s last album rollouts that were such big mistakes imo and hurt them sales wise. 

 

 

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I agree it's good she left RCA, they are the definition of If one single flops, we will ditch the rest of the era, it happened with Bionic, Lotus, Liberation and other pop girls albums like Britney Jean, Glory and Younger now, Plastic hearts

If you listen to her music what makes her unique is the ability to craft conceptual albums and develop a pop record around it and ofc her voice, she should be doing her own thing not being pressured to chase trends in a 20+ years career that's why liberation, Aguilera and partly Lotus feel deluted

Also signing a latin label doesn't mean she will be doing only latin albums, Aguilera did really bad and I doubt she would go back to do another spanish album

Edited May 11 by Reject False Icons

[StrawberryBlond 13,469]

4 hours ago, BlingNotTheMusic said:

Random but it's crazy how super successful 90s acts are flopping now. Xtina (although this has been prevalent since 2010, unfortunately) JT, JLO, etc

There must be something behind the scenes but tbh she gives off a very sh*tty attitude and even though I have followed her career and enjoyed AT LEAST a few tracks from every album since 2010, also watching her Stripped concert thousands of times, she just comes off as a cvnt, similar to Madonna. However at least Madonna speaks up for political issues and supports other female artists. Xtina never speaks out and had a huge opportunity to support Britney but didn't. 

Anyways, I was REALLY looking forward to more pop Xtina as I enjoyed Liberation a lot. You can't have a voice like that and your career flops simply because of "bad management". Something else is going on...

Well, most 90's acts will have had their heyday, so it's not really surprising. Not many artists can be as successful 20+ years after their debut. 

But I agree her attitude was always a big problem for her. She dissed a lot of other artists and by Bionic, she'd just done it one too many times. When she started dissing Gaga at her peak, it was all over for her, particularly as she and Gaga shared a lot of fans and she should have realised that and held her tongue. Definitely someone in her team sat her down and straightened her out because after this, she never publicly dissed another artist again. But it seems no one forgets the reputation she used to have. 

I liked Liberation too, it was a return to form for her and then she went off to do this doomed Aguilera project and we were back to square one again. The idea of her just going along with what's popular to stay relevant doesn't seem like the Christina who used to take risks.