Christina Aguilera, once too young for the Mickey Mouse Club, sold over 100 million records
At ten, Christina Aguilera beat about 400 hopefuls onto the Mickey Mouse Club shortlist, only to be turned away for being under the age limit. A year later the producers called back. Within the decade her four-octave voice had carried her to the top of the charts and one of pop's biggest careers.
She was born on December 18, 1980, on Staten Island to an Ecuadorian-born army sergeant and a mother who had played violin in a youth symphony before becoming a Spanish translator. Military postings took the family to New Jersey, Texas and Japan. Her home life was turbulent, and she later said music was her only real escape. After her parents divorced in 1987, she moved with her mother to her grandmother's house near Pittsburgh, where old soul and blues records fed her ambitions. Locally she became known as the little girl with a big voice, sang the national anthem at Pittsburgh sports events and reached the Star Search semi-finals in 1990.
After the Mickey Mouse Club, she recorded a duet in Japan that flopped, then sent demos to labels including a Whitney Houston cover to Disney. That landed her Reflection, the theme from Mulan in 1998, and a deal with RCA. Genie in a Bottle spent five weeks at number one in 1999, her debut album sold over ten million copies in its first year, and What a Girl Wants became the first new chart-topper of the 2000s.
She reinvented herself repeatedly: a Spanish-language album, Mi Reflejo, that helped drive the Latin pop boom; the provocative Stripped in 2002, one of the century's best sellers; and the retro Back to Basics in 2006. Moves like Jagger later made her only the fourth woman to top the Hot 100 in three consecutive decades.
Beyond records, she starred in Burlesque, earning a Golden Globe nomination for its soundtrack, coached on The Voice from 2011 to 2016 and served as a World Food Programme ambassador. Her honours include five Grammys and a Hollywood Walk of Fame star, and Rolling Stone ranks her among the greatest singers of all time.
Source: Christina Aguilera
