COULD it be the battle of the sexes at the M.E.N. Arena?
The award-winning venue plays host not only to Mick Hucknall, leading Simply Red on stage tonight and famous for squiring some of the world's most beautiful women, but also to raunchy chart star Christina Aguilera, appearing on Monday.
She has just been voted the world's most desirable woman in a poll in a men's magazine, where she topped their Hot 100 Women Of the Year list.
Undoubtedly a lot of those votes for Christina, polled by British men as opposed to teenage boys, will have been prompted by Aguilera's relentless pushing of a "super-sexy bad girl" image as she enjoyed huge success with singles like Dirrty and her album Stripped.
Surprisingly, then, just a few years ago, you might have heard that self-same Aguilera, albeit then a virginal-looking teen pop star who'd even been a performer with Disney's squeaky-clean Mickey Mouse Club, bemoaning,"I think this business is far too concerned with image.
Music shouldn't be like that. It should be about heart, soul and depth rather than putting something together as a marketable product. Image is way over-rated."
On that subject, at least, she and music-loving Hucknall would be in agreement.
The multi-million selling, Manchester-born Hucknall was so disgusted with the way record companies insist on marketing even proven big-sellers like himself in ways that have little or nothing to do with the actual music that he put his home in hock to set up his own record company to release his last album, Home.
Hucknall
There, even though they've both topped "Worst Dressed" polls, the similarities pretty much end there. Hucknall is proud of his well-tailored, undoubtedly enormously expensive suits, whereas Aguilera seems more inclined to wear next to nothing.
"I don't purposely dress to shock people," she maintains. "I'm just being me and lots of parts of me aren't particularly conservative. I like to push the envelope. I don't think I'll ever have a nice simple pair of heels, a gown and straight blonde hair!"
While Hucknall spent his youthful years in Manchester listening to soul and reggae before serving time in some dubious Manchester punk bands and playing in some of the city's less salubrious venues, by the time she was 12 Aguilera was co-hosting a Disney television programme with Britney Spears.
She won a voice-role in the big-time Disney animation Mulan just a couple of years later, as a result of which she was, pretty much straightaway, put under contract to another record company who promptly began grooming her for the big-time.
Nonetheless, Aguilera has consistently spoken out about domestic violence, based on her own family experience.
"I wouldn't be singing at all if it wasn't for the hard times I endured growing up, witnessing my parents' really rocky relationship," she believes.
"Music was my way of escaping. I just dove right in and explored that whole part of myself."
(from: manchesteronline.co.uk) |
