Christina Aguilera goes back to her roots with La Fuerza

Christina Aguilera doesn't pick up exactly where she left 22 years ago with her Latin Grammy winning Spanish album Mi Reflejo. The superstar singer comes full force as a “grown woman and a mother” to showcase her Latino roots in the EP La Fuerza, out Friday. And that is only the beginning.

While 2000's Mi Reflejo included five Spanish-language versions of tracks from her self-titled 1999 debut album, four original compositions and two cover songs, La Fuerza presents six original tracks, all co-written by Aguilera. The Sony Music Latin release includes the singles Pa’ Mis Muchachas with Becky G, Nicki Nicole and Nathy Peluso, Somos Nada and the newly released Santo with Ozuna.

“It’s something that I wanted to do for a very long time, but to be honest, I really wanted to wait for the right moment," Aguilera said in an interview from Los Angeles. “When everything slowed down within the last couple of years, I was able to really pause and come back to my priorities and what I’ve been wanting to do.”

In La Fuerza, Aguilera plays with rhythms that range from reggaeton (in the opener Ya Llegué) and Latin/urban fusion, to ballad and guaracha. She even tackles ranchero music in La Reina, which she says is a tribute to the recently deceased Vicente Fernández, who famously performed José Alfredo Jiménez's Mexican classic El Rey.

In 2020, during the pandemic, the mother of two moved to Miami with her family to work for a month in the studio with other musicians and “finally dive in the way I wanted to, 'cause I wasn’t just gonna do it and receive songs and be done,” she said. “I really fell in love with music all over again.”

Being in a city with one of the biggest U.S. Spanish-speaking populations, where Latin music can be heard everywhere, helped her reconnect with her childhood and inspire her: “It just felt so good getting back to it.” The singer, whose father is Ecuadorian, grew up in a Spanish-speaking household before her parents divorced when she was 6.

And her Spanish-speaking fans can expect more this year. La Fuerza is the first installment of a trilogy that Aguilera plans to release in 2022.

Aguilera spoke about the experience, being a perfectionist and living without expectation.

Did motherhood play a role in you wanting to explore a little more your Latino roots at this point?

Yes, that was also a part of why it was so important for me. You know, I grew up in a Spanish-speaking household ... (but) my kids, I don’t have a Spanish-speaking partner, so they don’t hear it the way I grew up listening to it. This is such a beautiful thing to give them, the experience of music, to be around and see that this is a part of them, this is a part of their background, and this is a part of my childhood sharing with them.

The whole experience now, coming full circle from baby Christina with Mi Reflejo to now La Fuerza as a grown woman, means so much to me to be able to also share that with my children.

You co-wrote all the songs and sing them with perfect pronunciation. How was this process for you?

I take it very seriously. I’m a super perfectionist when it comes to myself and my work, and I’m very critical, so I take my time, and that’s also why I wanted to be surrounded and inside of it. Miami is such a hotbed of incredible talent from all over the world and again, the Latin music is undeniable, there’s nothing like it, and to feel it from the inside out is very important for me.

So going there, and when I start hearing it from all angles and everybody is speaking it (laughs) — nobody is speaking English — you catch up very quickly and many things are remembered from being a kid.

No expectations! It’s just a labour of love. I’ve been in this business too long to worry about expecting anything. Anything can always happen! I’ve learned over the years to truly let go of what people think, what people say. I just wanna do things that I love, do things that fans I hope love and appreciate and inspire them. At the end of the day, really make music that I can love and respect and feel proud of and share with my children, that will live on after I’m gone.