Christina Aguilera - Genie in a bottle

"Genie in a Bottle" is the first single and signature song from Christina Aguilera's debut album, Christina Aguilera. As her first major single, the song is generally considered her debut single (although technically she had released two songs prior to this). Released in mid-1999, the single peaked at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for five weeks, becoming Aguilera's first number-one single. The single also peaked at number one in the UK, also becoming her first number one single in that country. The single is generally considered to be one of her signature songs. The single earned her a Grammy nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance in 2000; it also helped her win the Best New Artist Grammy that same year.

Song information

"Genie in a Bottle" was written by New Zealander, David Frank, Steve Kipner, and Pamela Sheyne and was produced by Frank and Kipner. The song's songwriting aspect has raised a minor scandal as apparently Aguilera co-wrote the song's B-section. Unfortunately, at the time Aguilera was unfamiliar with the legal aspect of songwriting, and did not submit a songwriting claim.

In her sexually driven debut single, Aguilera begins the song as a sexually repressed young woman stating that she feels like she's been "locked up tight for a century of lonely nights", and that she is waiting for someone to release her. She then sees a young man who sexually arouses her, making her exclaim, "My body's saying let's go". However, even though her hormones are "racing at the speed of light", she realizes "my heart is saying no". Nevertheless, Aguilera offers herself to the man by stating, "If you wanna be with me, baby there's a price to pay, I'm a genie in a bottle, You gotta rub me the right way".

The song's lyrics caused minor controversy at the time, as it was felt by some that Aguilera was too young to be singing such relatively suggestive lyrics, particularly as her music was marketed to young girls. The song was censored in some markets with tamer lyrics, in which Aguilera sings "you gotta treat me the right way" (instead of "you gotta rub me the right way"). The censored version was played in preteen-oriented markets such as Radio Disney.

Since then the song has been covered by The Dan Band, Speedway, Thrice, and Evil Adam and has made an appearance on Konami's Dance Dance Revolution Extreme 2.

Parodist 'Hawaiian Ryan' also recorded a spoof of the song, called "Weenie In A Bottle", one of the tracks from his Saving Ryan's Privates album. This parody is often incorrectly attributed to "Weird Al" Yankovic.

According to Christina's early songwriters who appeared on the documentary series Driven, Christina was not convinced that the track would highlight her voice. Her songwriter claimed that there was a "battle" between Christina and her producers because Christina wanted to display the power and audacity in her voice, whereas her producers would hold her back. In order to enable Christina's voice to be the central focus, she performed acoustic sets and appeared on television shows accompanied only by a piano.

In Aguilera's 2006 album, Back to Basics, a track dedicated to her fans titled "Thank You (Dedication to Fans...)" used samples of Genie in a Bottle. Extracts used such as "I feel like I been locked up", "My body's saying let's go", "oh, oh, oh", "Come on, Come on" and "Baby, Baby, Baby". Aguilera refers to the lock up mentioned in the beginning of the song to her being a prisoner of her dreams.

Chart success

"Genie In a Bottle" quickly debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 in June 1999, and sky rocketed up the charts due to strong airplay and strong sales of the CD single. In its 5th week, it reached on the Hot 100 and stayed there for five consecutive weeks. At that point, it had the longest stay at for the entire year, tying Ricky Martin's "Livin' La Vida Loca"and Jennifer Lopez's "If You Had My Love." All 3 songs were eventually overtaken by Santana whose single "Smooth" ended up topping the Hot 100 for 10 weeks later on 1999. The success of "Genie In a Bottle" marked the second time that year that a new female artist reached with her debut single (and later on in the summer reaching with her debut album as well), the first being Britney Spears who earlier in the year enjoyed success with "...Baby One More Time", this achievement for both females caused a lot of rivalry and comparisons between the two in the media.

In addition to this, the song was also a huge across the board, topping the Top 40 Mainstream, Top 40 Tracks and Rhythmic Top 40 charts. Strong sales assured the single a platinum certification. The song even managed to crossover to the relatively conservative Adult Top 40, and the Spanish version of the song, "Genio Atrapado" (English: "Trapped Genie"), was a modest hit on the Latin chart.

Internationally, the same chart dominance was seen, as the track went to number one in both the UK and Canada for multiple weeks. In other Euro countries it went top 3 wherever it charted and stayed inside the top 10 for countless weeks making it the 4th best selling single of Europe in 1999.