This post is about Christina Aguilera.

No, seriously. I just saw her new video and I want to talk about it.

My friends are always shocked when they find out I like Christina Aguilera. Certainly any of my high school friends who only remember me as long-haired Heavy Metal Peat reading this are about to have their hats blown off, cuz I thk xtina rwks! 8o)

(And not just because of that awesome henna back tattoo in the image to the left.)

This love, of course, brings me much derision amongst all my friends, be they hipster Obamites or straight laced McCainies. “How can you like that bubblegum bullshit?” they ask. One guy even went so far as to say I was gay for her.

First off, I can say with absolute certainty that there’s absolutely nothing “gay” about the way I feel about Christina Aguilera. I’d say more, but my mom reads this blog.

As for why, I think it comes down professional and artistic respect.

No, seriously. Bear with me.

Because she was young and pretty and blonde and a Mouseketeer, Christina was (quite naturally) lumped in with the likes of Britney, Mandy Moore, or N’Sync. Even her handlers and publicity people considered her such. However, any comparison of early work shows clearly that Christina had natural talent far exceeding her genre peers, like Einstein exceeded physicists of his time. Unschooled, yes. Pre-packaged and immature, yes, but it was there.

I feel that way when I think of my earlier books (the ones that never sold). I had something there. I know I did, but I was too immature of a writer to fully realize it. Even now, I look back at that early stuff and think “someday I’m going to remix that shit and win a grammy.”

But here’s the thing about Christina. She never does the same thing twice. Her second album was in Spanish. Then Christmas shit. Then she reinvents herself as the uber-vixen, who would steal yo’ man, if she only thought he could handle her for a night. She boogied with hip-hop in its heyday and laid some real voice behind it.

Then before she’s typecast, she switches to prohibition/WWII big band music. Rocks it. Moves on. Now it looks like she’s doing a pop dance club thing.

I don’t generally like modern dance club music. All the thumping electronic beats and endless repetition of mindless catch phrases bugs the shit out of me. I probably won’t even like this album. But I will buy and listen to it anyway.

Why? Because I respect someone that doesn’t rest on their laurels once they find something that sells, like 99% of all artists in any medium. Christina keeps on learning and experimenting, because she is driven more by her love of music than her desire for success. She’s already successful, and now she’s just seeing how far she can go and loving the journey. Think of all the true artistic geniuses of history. They didn’t just keep doing the same shit over and over. They were creating and inventing from the cradle to the grave.

We all face temptation to find comfortable patterns in our lives, and try to maintain them. There’s safety in playing the odds and being cautious in life. I do it, too. But out there are also the lives unlived, the things we could have done if we made different choices, or had other opportunities. I think art is about exploring those unlived lives. I do it in my work by trying to explore the inner workings of people from all walks of life; people with little or nothing in common with me, and trying to get in their heads. Christina does it with different genre sounds, trying to learn from each like a mixed martial artist building a repertoire. Like Batman when he walked the earth as Bruce Wayne, mastering every martial art known to man.

I bet you anything she does a country album one day. And bitches it. Good for her. Maybe she’ll even get around to retro-heavy metal, and I can look 1991 Peat in the eye again: