Do you remember where you were when Christina Aguilera released her “Dirrty” music video? Let me jog your memory: It’s 2002, and Aguilera is still riding the high of “Lady Marmalade” popularity, but she wants to break out of her controlling shell. Enter Xtina, her hyper-sexual, club-ready persona that took pop music by storm and made daring fashion choices that made Gwen Stefani look downright modest.
The music video, meanwhile, was something like a club kid’s fever dream. There have been many videos about the process behind the “Dirrty” music video, including an episode of MTV Making the Music Video. But a post on Instagram Threads by someone who was on set brought the whole thing back to the present.
“A former friend of mine was working wardrobe on the video,” wrote Wynter Mitchell Rohrbaugh, going by the handle @wynter. “She was cast in the boxing ring scene up on the balcony and ringside,” the post continued. Rohrbaugh then explained that their friend texted them and several others to come down to the set in West Hollywood. “We don’t know what we’re walking into. My expectation was something buttoned up and it was but it was also horny chaos, it was incredible.”
What Went Down On the Set of Xtina’s “Dirrty” Music Video?
“First thing: the heat,” Rohrbaugh’s post continued. “Like 80, 90 degrees. Just big a** fans blowing hot air around. Just bodies bodies bodies and so much sweat and glitter and perfume and strobes and gel lights. It was just really stuffy.”
But, they added, “It was exactly the ‘hottest club in LA you’ll never get into’ energy but somehow grittier. Easily 100+ people. Dancers, and models and real bangers and fashion kids, chaos kids. Every color, every look.”
As for the actual filming, the post continued, “They are doing the boxing match scene and call cut and Xtina never stops moving. She’s practicing dancing. Hair choreo, she’s with her boyfriend the dancer, and they were truly in love, so everyone is dancing around her and with her. She stayed part of the vibe except to change wardrobe. She was VERY FUN, and excited about all of this.”
Additionally, the post claimed the shoot was expensive: “No expense spared.” Director David LaChapelle and Christina Aguilera ensured they shared the same vision for the video. The point was never to be “glossy or pretty,” but to be more like what MTV eventually described as “a post-apocalyptic orgy.”
Rohrbaugh added, “The crunkers would turn the music up LOUD during breaks and breakdance in one room, the women dancers would practice and flip around in another, stylists would swap in looks, the bangers hung in the stairwell smoking. Like the walls were dripping with sweat.”
In a reply to their original post, Rohrbaugh included that they all watched Aguilera rehearse the mini skirt dance “7-8 times in its entirety,” adding, “It was epic. I knew it would be history.”
Photo by Mark Mainz/Getty Images
The post Behind the Sweaty Fever Dream That Was Xtina’s ‘Dirrty’ Music Video, According to Someone Who Was There appeared first on VICE.
