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Aguilera emerges from the shadows
STANDING alone on a stage dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, Christina Aguilera almost ordered 14,000 fans not to let "words get them down".
The instruction - a line from her chart-topping hit Beautiful which ended her Sheffield show - has obviously stood the 22-year-old Pittsburgh lass in good stead.
Throughout her hour-and-a-half performance at the Hallam FM Arena, Christina belted out hit after hit, proving her talent goes much further than her trademark leather chaps and knickers combo.
Granted the chaps played their part, alongside mini skirts, hotpants, corsets and fishnets, but her show proved the girl can sing.
As well as topping most "worst-dressed women" polls, Christina is the target of many tabloid stories - the most recent saying the cocktail of chemicals she has poured on her hair is making her bald. Her showbiz spats also supply a staple diet of gossip pages, with Pink and Kelly Osbourne reportedly among Christina's latest victims.
So appropriately her show started with a dig at the critics - a video of the singer breaking free from chains, interspersed with flashing words "lies, gossip, scandal, rumours".
Then, the one-time Mickey Mouse Club member used costume changes, raunchy dance routines, and her amazing voice, to give a performance for fans to relish.
Her infamous anthem Dirrty kicked off proceedings, followed by several hits from her seven-million selling album Stripped.
From the Spanish influenced Infatuation, which details her first love, to the feisty Fighter, written about her brutal childhood watching her Ecuadorian father beat her Irish mother, she tells her tale well.
The range of angst-ridden ballads and feisty anthems varied the pace alongside clever dance routines and meticulous choreography.
To finish, Xtina, as she likes to be known, put away her stiletto boots, sacrificed accompanying musicians and recorded tracks, and sang her heart out to Beautiful.
This girl is unrecognisable as the bottle blonde who first arrived on the music scene four years ago, in Britney's shadow. She is now putting her rivals in the shade.
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Weather for Sheffield
Saturday 26 May 2012
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Temperature: 9 C to 21 C
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