“Not Myself Tonight” is Christina Aguilera’s electropop lead single from Bionic (2010): a 120-BPM identity-swap dance record whose Hype Williams video went full S&M—dominatrix wardrobe, a bound Jenna Dewan kiss, Clockwork Orange eye clamps, a church orgy, and a public argument about whether Xtina was channeling Madonna, Lady Gaga, or her own 2002 “Dirrty” era. Polow da Don (Jamal Jones) produced. Aguilera wrote it with Greg Curtis, Ester Dean, and Jason Perry. RCA put it to US radio on 6 April 2010 after a website countdown dumped “Glam” as the planned lead. The cover was black-and-white devil drag: leather suit, tail, ears. MTV Buzzworthy’s Tamar Anitai immediately filed the look under Madonna/Gaga. For a BDSM site the song is useful as pop evidence: a major-label diva sold a bondage video to Oprah’s audience and still got accused of arriving late to a fetish the underground had been wearing for decades.
Reviews split between “she still owns dance-pop” and “mediocre costume change.” The track hit number 23 on the Billboard Hot 100, number one on Dance Club Songs, gold in Australia (35,000 shipments), and top fives in Hungary and Japan. It was never “Genie in a Bottle.” It was the S&M commercial that Bionic’s later cult insisted had been underrated. A 2020 #JusticeforBionic campaign even parked the video at number one on iTunes video charts in the US, France, and Spain. That afterlife is part of the story: gay clubs and fetish-adjacent pop fans kept the single after radio moved on.
After the Baby, Into the Synth Dungeon
Aguilera told Ryan Seacrest the next album would show a new artistic self after the birth of her son, Max Bratman. She told People in 2008 she would start writing at home in Beverly Hills. Pregnancy listening leaned electronic; she wanted that grain on Bionic. “Not Myself Tonight” is the thesis single of that mood: tribal-house tics, dripping synths, pulsing bass, house drums, key of G minor, vocals from G3 to D5. She talked about a “fresh, sexy feel” mixing electronic and organic, playful to introspective. Slant’s Eric Henderson heard Britney’s “Gimme More” and “If U Seek Amy.” Billboard’s Michael Menachem heard a more Euro-glam update of the Xtina who made “Dirrty.”
Lyrics are a costume change announced as personality change. “Tonight I’m feeling a little out of control.” Pre-chorus: “The old me’s gone and I feel brand new, and if you don’t like it, fuck you.” Chorus: “I’m not myself tonight / tonight I’m not the same girl”—a divorce filing against the 1940s/50s swing of Back to Basics (2006). Sexual inventory is club-simple: shots, dancing, “kissin’ all the boys and girls.” It is not a negotiation checklist. It is a permission slip to be the person who would wear the leather tail on the single cover.
The rollout was pure 2010 internet: countdown, devil artwork, lyrics the next day, eighteen-second snippet on 26 March, full stream on her site on 30 March, radio impact 6 April. She had almost led with “Glam.” Choosing the nastier dance cut was the correct fetish-pop instinct even if the album’s commercial moment had already been eaten by Gaga’s Fame cycle.
Critics: Highlight Reel vs Identity Crisis
AllMusic’s Stephen Thomas Erlewine pulled it as a Bionic highlight. Menachem said dance-pop’s moment would be incomplete without her and praised the vocal. Digital Spy’s Nick Levine gave four stars: ordinary on first play, not a flop after a few. WHTZ New York program director Sharon Dastur called it well produced, the tempo top 40 needed for spring, “an amazing vocal.” The Daily Mirror’s Gavin Martin said post-natal Aguilera had pumped the sex appeal with more class than her obvious competitors, even if the “top-shelf strategy” was not original. BBC’s Fraser McAlpine liked the record and still felt she was only “getting up in our collective grill” again with sexy attitude. The Boston Globe’s Mesfin Fekadu shrugged “mediocre at best.” The Village Voice’s Drew Hinshaw went after voice and words. NME’s Dan Martin thought the new style gave her no room to sing. Drowned in Sound’s Richard Wink diagnosed an identity crisis: is Xtina the freewheeling party girl or the mask a pop star wears when relevance slips?
Retrospectives were warmer. Billboard’s Glenn Rowley later called it a “brashly sexual lead single.” Gay Times’ Daniel Megarry framed an empowering feminist anthem that welded new electropop to Stripped-era attitude. Digital Dream Door ranked it 40th among 2010 songs. The Celebrity Cafe’s Christopher Rosa put it ninth among her ten best, a “thumping, glittery synth sashay.” BuzzFeed’s Kelley Dunlap claimed a line of influence on Beyoncé’s 2013 “Drunk in Love.” In 2020 i-D listed it among the century’s best pop comebacks. Idolator’s Mike Wass ranked it third of her forty best. Polish LGBTQ site Queer.pl called it a gay classic. That last verdict is the one that matches dungeon-adjacent dance floors: the single outlived the album’s chart disappointment as a queer workout and drag lip-sync.
What the Song Is Doing Musically
G minor at 120 BPM is club math, not ballad math. The low G3 keeps her in chest; the D5 is a punch, not an aria. Tribal-house percussion and a dripping synth line do the work a guitar would have done on Stripped. Ester Dean’s hook writing is in the “fuck you” pre-chorus: a two-syllable insult that radio could not bleep without killing the record. Polow da Don’s drums are the reason Dastur at Z100 could call it spring tempo. It is a functional dance single. The fetish is almost all in the clip and the leather tail on the sleeve. Listen with the video off and you have a competent 2010 electropop record about not being last year’s girl. Listen with the video on and you have a dominatrix variety hour. That split is why club DJs could play it without a bondage brief, and why this site files it under S&M media anyway.
The “kissin’ all the boys and girls” line is the only lyric that requires a body. Everything else is identity: old me gone, not the same girl, out of control. Power exchange in the words is implied (control lost, persona put on) rather than staged (no chains in the chorus). Compare Rihanna naming chains in the same season. Aguilera outsourced the chains to Williams. That is a production choice and a historical tell: by 2010 a pop star could put a flogger in a video and still keep the radio edit clean enough for Oprah’s stage. The dungeon stayed in the clip. The single stayed a dance record.
Chart Peaks, Not a Week-by-Week Diary
US radio: most-added at Mainstream Top 40 (886 plays in six days) and at rhythmic stations; Mainstream Top 40 debut 27. Digital: 77,000 first-week downloads, Hot 100 debut and peak 23—her third-highest solo opening behind “Keeps Gettin’ Better” (7) and “Ain’t No Other Man” (19). Nielsen BDS put first-week Hot 100 audience at 11.8 million. Dance Club Songs: number one. Z100 New York made it the most-requested song after premiere. By March 2011 it had sold 368,000 copies in the United States. That is a hit by normal-people math and a letdown by 2000s Aguilera math. Both can be true.
Canada 11, UK 12 (a short six-week top 100: 12–24–39–64–48–83). Australia debut-and-peak 22 for two weeks. New Zealand 32 for one week. South Korea: Gaon International Digital debut 4, peak 3. Japan Hot 100: 3. Hungary and Japan supplied the top-five flags in the lede. Twenty-one countries saw a top 40. ARIA gold is the only certification the source bothers to name. You do not need the rest of the spreadsheet to know it traveled and did not dominate.
The Video: Express Yourself, Dirrty, and a Room Full of Looks
Hype Williams shot in Los Angeles 7–9 April 2010; Vevo premiere 30 April (some reports say 28). Aguilera wanted the clip aligned with the album’s packaging and “book.” She called Williams a legend and the shoot a “love connection.” She also imported homework from the film Burlesque: more precise dancing, a body she felt she had not used that cleanly before. She walked Williams through her home salon—“creative den”—and asked for iconic stills, not only choreography. Makeup artist Kristofer Buckle said she “wanted to push it.”
What they pushed toward was S&M as costume drama. Dominatrix outfits, multiple wigs, a sex-kitten persona, look-alike dancers she dominates, a kiss with bound performer Jenna Dewan that literalizes “boys and girls,” glamorous eye clamps that Vigilant Citizen (and anyone with a DVD shelf) read as A Clockwork Orange, a church orgy, and a clothes-burning beat that nods at George Michael’s “Freedom! ’90.” Locations include church interiors and grand buildings. Aguilera said the tape was a Madonna tribute, especially “Express Yourself” (1989), which she called strong and empowering—the sexuality she tries to keep in her own work. Critics also ticked “Human Nature” (1995) and “Like a Prayer” (1989). MTV News’ Gil Kaufman heard “Dirrty” again: same sexual depiction, new designer leather.
That stack of references is the video’s achievement and its bruise. James Montgomery (MTV) called it jaw-dropping. Us Weekly’s Ericka Sóuter counted “one diva and twelve fierce looks.” Entertainment Weekly’s Tanner Stransky found Gaga and Madonna already sitting in the chair and called Aguilera “desperate” and “unoriginal.” Rolling Stone’s Daniel Kreps listed a dozen guises—Gaga wardrobe, Madonna, Beyoncé, Gwen Stefani, the Robert Palmer “Simply Irresistible” girls, Michelle Pfeiffer’s S&M Catwoman from Batman Returns—and said she would never out-Gaga Gaga or out-controversy Madonna. Wass (Idolator) split the difference: “equal parts fetish porn and high-fashion shoot.” NME later ranked it 8th on a “50 Worst Music Videos Ever” list. Megarry (Gay Times) thought the Madonna tribute was obvious and that critics missed the message. In kink terms the message was not subtle: power, looking, church desecration, women kissing in restraints. The problem was copyright on the poses, not the existence of the poses.
For players, the clip is a 2010 moodboard. The leather is fashion-house, not bar-tanned. The bondage on Dewan is decorative. The eye clamps are cinema, not a negotiated predicament. The church orgy is Protestant panic as set dressing. Still, a prime-time pop star spending three days on this imagery did the same cultural work Rihanna’s “S&M” was doing that same era: telling mall audiences that harnesses photograph well. Underground leather did not need the lesson. Teen radio did.
Bionic, Xtina, and the 2010 Fetish-Pop Traffic Jam
Bionic was sold as Aguilera’s electronic reboot after the vintage swing of Back to Basics. The album arrived into a year already owned by Lady Gaga’s The Fame Monster hangover and a radio format that wanted shorter hooks than Aguilera’s belt. “Not Myself Tonight” had to do two jobs at once: announce a new sound and prove she still photographed as a sex object after motherhood. The devil-tail cover and the Williams video chose the second job as loudly as the first. That is why so many reviews read like wardrobe notes. The record is competent electropop. The campaign is a costume change aimed at a culture that had just learned to say “Gaga.”
Xtina as a brand already included “Dirrty” (2002): boxing-ring grime, baggy shorts, a video that tabloids treated as a scandal and gay clubs treated as a gift. “Not Myself Tonight” is that persona run through 2010 synths and high-fashion leather instead of sweat. Menachem’s “Euro-glam Xtina” line is the accurate genealogy. It is also why some listeners felt déjà vu rather than danger. Underground SM had spent the 2000s on FetLife, at Folsom, and in local dungeons. A chart diva discovering a tail in 2010 was late to a party her own “Dirrty” video had already RSVP’d to. The single still matters because late, expensive copies are how most people meet the imagery.
Bionic itself underperformed next to Stripped and Back to Basics. That commercial weather is why “Not Myself Tonight” was read as a failed comeback instead of as a club record that did its job on Dance Club Songs. The later #JusticeforBionic campaign was fans arguing the album was futurist and the rollout was the miss. You can believe both: the single is not her best singing, and the video is still the most concentrated S&M broadcast she ever paid a legend to shoot.
Compare the same year’s other bondage-pop objects. Rihanna’s “S&M” grinned, named the kink, and went to number one. Madonna had already done hotel voyeurism in 1990 and a whole Sex book in 1992. Gaga was wearing meat and harnesses as weekly press. Aguilera’s clip tried to stack all of those citations in three Los Angeles days. The result is a syllabus: Express Yourself industrial, Human Nature leather, Dirrty sweat, Clockwork eye clamps, Freedom! ’90 fire, church as desecration set. If you already own the syllabus, it looks like homework. If you were sixteen in 2010, it was a first look at a woman topping a room.
Live: Lasers, Movie Awards, Residencies
Television came first. 7 May 2010, The Oprah Winfrey Show: black one-piece, trench, boots, green lasers, smoke, dancers in Matrix black. She ad-libbed that the song was “about letting go and expressing yourself.” 8 June: Today. 10 June: Live with Regis and Kelly. 11 June: CBS The Early Show concert. The 2010 MTV Movie Awards stacked it with “Bionic” and “Woohoo.” VH1 Storytellers got a more sit-down version. Later one-offs: Justin Timberlake’s Las Vegas benefit (October 2010), Morocco’s Mawazine Festival (May 2016), Georgia’s Black Sea Arena (July 2016). Las Vegas residencies locked it as an opener: The Xperience (2019) paired it with “Your Body”; Christina Aguilera at Voltaire (2023–24) opened on it in a “mountainous gown” and a double-strand diamond necklace. The S&M club track became a showgirl door.
Fashion and TV kept sampling the look. A remix walked Christian Dior’s Cruise show in May 2010. Netflix’s Glamorous (2023, Kim Cattrall) used the song. Farrah Moan wore a “Not Myself Tonight” tribute on Watch What Happens Live the night Aguilera sat with Andy Cohen (2019). Dorit Kemsley cited the video dress at the 47th People’s Choice Awards when Aguilera took the Music Icon prize. A contestant on Thailand’s Sing Your Face Off (2019) performed it. Swiss skater Sarah Meier used it in an All That Skate program. That is how a mixed-review single becomes wardrobe folklore: drag, housewives, and ice shows remember the silhouette after radio forgets the BPM.
Shot List: What the Camera Thinks SM Is
Walk the video as a catalog, because that is how it was built. Aguilera in devil leather is the single-cover come to life. Aguilera as sex kitten is the “Dirrty” body in better lighting. Aguilera among look-alikes is a clone-army dominance joke: she tops versions of herself. The Dewan kiss is the bisexual line made flesh, and the restraints on Dewan are fashion cuffs—visible, photogenic, not load-bearing. The eye-clamp close-up is Kubrick as jewelry: forced looking without the novel’s ultraviolence. The church sequence is Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” plus an orgy extra. The burning clothes are Michael’s “Freedom! ’90” as a purge of the old her. None of these shots is a scene you could run in a club without a long negotiation. All of them are shots a stylist can reproduce for a Halloween pair or a drag number. That is the clip’s real afterlife: silhouette, not technique.
Williams’s career (Missy Elliott, a hundred hip-hop maximalist tapes) means every frame wants to be a still. Buckle’s makeup and the “twelve fierce looks” Us Weekly counted are the point. Kreps’s laundry list of stolen silhouettes is mean and not wrong. The question for a kink site is not “was she original?” Pop is not original. The question is “what did a Super Bowl-adjacent singer think bondage looked like in April 2010?” Answer: expensive, church-adjacent, multi-wig, woman-on-woman, Clockwork-shiny, and still less explicit than a random FetLife album from the same week. The gap between that answer and a real flogging is the review.
What to Keep from the Fetish-Pop File
“Not Myself Tonight” is not Aguilera’s best vocal record. It is her most concentrated S&M broadcast: devil leather on the cover, Williams fetish-fashion in the clip, a lyric that treats persona as a dungeon you enter on purpose. The chart story is a peak-23 Hot 100 and a dance-club number one, not a world-conquering ballad. The cultural story is the fight over originality—Madonna’s “Express Yourself” versus Gaga’s then-inescapable wardrobe—and the later queer reclaiming of Bionic as a lost futurist album. #JusticeforBionic putting the video back at iTunes number one in 2020 was fans doing archival work the label would not.
On a BDSM media shelf, file it next to Rihanna’s “S&M,” Madonna’s “Human Nature,” and the “Dirrty” video it keeps citing. All four taught prime time that collars and church-and-leather juxtapositions are entertainment. None of them taught topping. If you want technique, go to a class. If you want to see how 2010 celebrity femininity wore a flogger as branding, press play, count the looks, and notice how often the camera prefers costume over contact. That gap—fashion SM versus played SM—is the whole review.
Aguilera has spent the years since opening Vegas nights with the same chorus. The old her is still gone for four minutes. The boys and girls are still in the lyric. The tail on the single cover still photographs like a joke and a dare. That is enough afterlife for a dance single that radio treated as a shrug and leather-adjacent pop treated as a classic.
