Stripped

Aguilera was unhappy with the image her manager of the time, Steve Kurtz, had built around her, and after bringing in Irving Azoff she remade herself with black hair and the alter ego Xtina. She executive-produced the album and wrote most of its songs. She announced in December 2000 that recording would begin in February 2001, and the release slipped from 2001 to October 2002. Sessions took place around California and New York, including Electric Lady Studios and The Hit Factory in New York and The Enterprise Studios in Burbank. Scott Storch wrote and produced seven songs. Alicia Keys joined her on Impossible, recorded at Electric Lady. Linda Perry, she said, taught her that imperfections are good and should be kept because they come from the heart.

The first single, Dirrty, was released on her insistence, and the second was Beautiful. Fighter, Can't Hold Us Down with Lil' Kim and The Voice Within followed. Make Over borrows from the Sugababes' Overload, and later pressings added the Sugababes' writing credits. Metacritic averages 55 from 14 reviews. Jancee Dunn of Rolling Stone called it almost an album for grown-ups, and Betty Clarke of the Guardian found it overlong and oversentimental but called Dirrty and Get Mine, Get Yours majestically filthy. It debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 behind the soundtrack to 8 Mile, with 330,000 copies in its first week, and was certified five times platinum. In Britain it peaked at two and spent 102 weeks in the top 100. Billboard named it in 2017 among the most important albums of the 2000s, and in 2022 a twentieth anniversary edition added I Will Be and a Benny Benassi remix of Beautiful.