Showing posts with label REAL ESTATE. Show all posts
Showing posts with label REAL ESTATE. Show all posts

Friday, August 26, 2011

[NEWS] CHRISTINA AGUILERA SELLS SUNSET-STRIP AREA HOME

'The Voice's' soprano sells for $4.7 million.



Christina Aguilera has sold her Sunset Strip-area house for $4,653,815.



The Midcentury Modern, built in 1960, is in the celebrity-populated Bird Streets. The 6,500-square-foot post-and-beam house has a recording studio, screening room and walls of glass opening to a pool, a 12-person spa and a fireplace. There are four bedrooms and seven bathrooms.



Aguilera, 30, is among the world's bestselling recording artists with sales of more than 50 million records. The Grammy-winning soprano's hits include "Ain't No Other Man" and "Beautiful." She is a coach on "The Voice" (2011).



Public records show she bought the property in 2003 for $5 million.



Drew Fenton and Justin Paul Huchel of Hilton & Hyland, Beverly Hills, were the listing agents. Peter Lavin of Links Commercial Real Estate represented the buyer.



Source: LATimes

Sunday, May 30, 2010

[NEWS] DOES XTINA'S NEW ALBUM 'BIONIC' MARK HER AS THIS GENERATION'S ANSWER TO CHER?

Christina Aguilera (r.) appears to be this generation's answer to Cher (l.), particularly when it comes to her sense of style and her music, including new album, "Bionic."



She favors the freaky in fashion, the nerdy in men and the bombastic in music. No wonder, as time goes by, Christina Aguilera keeps looking more and more like this generation’s answer to Cher.



This week she even endured a vintage Cher-like bit of critical drubbing. She postponed her new tour - due to poor ticket sales, they say. Aguilera insists she just needs more time to prep the full-on show she wants to give, which will come next year.



In the meantime, she's got a new movie in the can, "Burlesque," in which she stars opposite - you guessed it - Ms. Cher-tastic herself.

She also has a new album to promote, "Bionic," arriving June 8, graced by a cover that depicts her as half-woman, half-machine. Could this be her space-age answer to Cher's beloved half-breed incarnation of yore?



The singer will hype her new look and sound on the MTV Movie Awards June 6, then host her own installment of VH1's "Storytellers" on the 13th. The new wonder-woman, robot/goddess persona she'll rock at all these events isn't just a whim. It makes genuine sense for her - on more than one level. The balance she has lately struck in her life openly courts the superhuman.



"Bionic" caps a personal and public campaign by Christina to bring the classic feminist insistence, "you can have it all," to screaming life (aided, no doubt, by all the nannies that platinum records can buy). "Bionic" represents Christina's first release since giving birth to Max Liron Bratman on Jan. 12, 2008. She had him with husband Jordan Bratman, a music marketing executive who can be seen as her Sonny. By all accounts, he's a similarly levelheaded business guy, the furthest thing from a boy toy - like, for example, Britney Spears' ex Kevin Federline.



Indeed, the contrast between the two singing icons (once seen as rivals) in how they run their careers clearly shows who has more focus and drive. While other child-to-adult stars have strained under the pressures of that transition, Christina seems to have surfed it with ease. The tangential "outrage" and "controversy" necessary to keep her in headlines haven't come through scandals, but courtesy of carefully managed photo shoots and the occasional catfight.



While Mariah Carey, Pink and Kelly Osbourne have mixed it up with her in the press, none has drawn blood or reflected too poorly on Aguilera herself. (In fact, the Osbournes wound up selling Christina their old Beverly Hills house, where she now resides.)



Taking another page from Cher, Christina has found that her genius for ugly clothing can be richly rewarded in ink and camera time - even if that has led to multiple mentions on the late Mr. Blackwell's Worst Dressed List. (Naturally, Christina shares that perverse point of pride with the "Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves" artist herself.)



In Aguilera's case, think of her styles in the "Dirrty" video, which ranked as a skankfest of historic proportions. Add her intermittent love of kinky/fried hair and lacquered-on makeup, and even John Waters' "ugly experts" would have trouble doing a makeover as grotesquely comic.



Still, no matter what scandalous shmattes and horrific hairstyles she sports, Aguilera has never fooled with her most enduring asset: her rockin' (now bionic) bod. Less than two years after giving birth, the star has reemerged with a fitter figure than ever, a feat she made sure nobody missed by posing, birthday suit-style, for the cover of German GQ.



As she explained to an Atlanta radio show: "When you have a baby, you go through a period where your body is not your own. It becomes for your child and that's it. Once you bounce back from that and kind of get your body back ... I feel better than ever."



She also sounds better than ever, which tips off her other "Bionic" quality: that voice. While you can criticize Christina for the way she uses her instrument - how recklessly and egotistically she can throw it around - there's no denying its blunt and powerful thwack. At 29, she clearly owns the biggest voice of the under-30 generation.



She's even making moves on the over-30 set, with Whitney down for the count and Mariah having fallen off her commercial game. Were Aguilera to cut an "Enough Is Enough"-style female diva-off today (à la Donna Summer and Barbra Streisand in the '70s), only Celine Dion would have the pipes to go up against her.



The way Christina uses her pile-driving talent on the new album guarantees she'll get a fresh rush of attention. Like the electro gimmick that relaunched Cher on the smash "Believe," Christina has allowed her voice to be treated, or at least surrounded, by lots of futuristic effects on the new CD. To help her do so, she partnered with avant stars like M.I.A., Peaches, Santigold and Le Tigre.



The heavy use of electronics, and the switch to dance music, on the new CD have already inspired Web sniping, with accusations that she's riding the long coattails of Lady Gaga. (Hey, Ke$ha has done it, to great commercial effect.) Aguilera will have none of it.



"That, in particular, is not even worth wasting the breath to comment on," the singer has said. "I've been around for over a decade. I think my work speaks for itself."



By most accounts, Aguilera's new sound isn't quite like the neo-'80s new wave dance-pop of Gaga. It's meant to be a broader take on the style. More, Christina has impressed fans by continuing to change her sound throughout her career. Not one of her four albums repeats the style of another. And, while Gaga goes for "art" with her look, Aguilera leans far closer to camp, just like the original babe of "I Got You Babe."



For the upcoming "Burlesque" flick, Cher plays the owner, and headliner, of the club where Christina appears. It's directed and written by Steve Antin, brother of the chick who started the Pussycat Dolls, which means he knows a thing or two about trashy dancing. With any luck, the pairing of the two stars will have an "All About Eve"/mother-daughter frisson of rivalry and rapport, making the connection between them more obvious than ever.



Given all this, can it be very long before we no longer even recognize Aguilera by her second name? At this rate, don't be surprised if she soon enters that rare, Cher-like company of stars so intimately known, they require just a first.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

[NEWS] CHRISTINA AGUILERA UNVEILS HER ULTRA-GLAM MANSION

Christina Aguilera hangs in the kitchen with her hubby, Jordan Bratman, and their 22-month-old son, Max.

Douglas Friedman/InStyle Did you ever imagine that "Dirrty" Christina Aguilera could be domesticated? Sure, the Grammy winner still enjoys a night out on the town every now and then, but she seems quite happy being a homebody. And I would, too, if I lived in her beautiful Beverly Hills abode!

The "Genie In A Bottle" singer gave InStyle a tour of the five-bedroom, 11,000-square foot home she shares with husband, music producer Jordan Bratman, and their 22-month-old son, Max.

If you were a fan of "The Osbournes" reality show, you might recognize the Mediterranean-style mansion in the photos below as it used to belong to the Prince of Darkness and his family.

While the colorful home still has somewhat of a gothic feel, Aguilera added a few new design elements to make it her own. Visitors will discover burlesque, Hollywood Regency, and chinoiserie styles juxtaposed with graffiti artwork, Japanese anime, and kaleidoscope rugs.

"I wanted every space to have its own personality," she shares.

Smoky mirrors, crystal chandeliers, a pink-and-black billiards table, and a pair of vibrant rugs by Paul Smith add sophisticated edge and grown-up glam to the game room.

Of course, like most female celebs, Xtina's pride and joy are her two closets.

"Everything on my shoe wall is grouped by designer -- Louboutin, McQueen, YSL -- all in their own little family," notes Aguilera. "And there's room for boots up top." She also has designated areas for her jeans, jackets, coats, skirts, sweaters, and jewelry in the ultra-glam room, which features a chandelier and leopard-print rug.

According to InStyle, "Whimsical furniture, radical art, and an abundance of red roses" makes "a visit to Christina Aguilera's home feel a little like falling down a magical rabbit hole. Which was exactly how she wanted it."

Christina has not one but two expansive closets!

"I wanted a grand bed -- to feel like a queen on a throne," says the singer of her extravagant four-poster bed.

A Lulu Guinness rug leads to the singer's freestanding bathtub. For Aguilera, the bathroom is yet another place to display her found objects --candles, figures, flacons, even a Moroccan side table. "It's an eclectic equation," she says.

Source: Yahoo!