Why Oklahoma City Thunder Player Chet Holmgren ‘Can’t Listen’ to This Christina Aguilera Song
Chet Holmgren was selected by the Oklahoma City Thunder with the second overall pick in the 2022 NBA Draft. While playing in the team’s Summer League, he suffered a Lisfranc injury in his foot and was forced to miss the entire 2022-23 season.
He made his regular-season debut on Oct. 25, 2023, and has been a key part of the Thunder’s success, becoming the first rookie in NBA playoff history to score 25 or more points and put up a +25 plus/minus ratio in a game. He’s also the first rookie in Thunder franchise history to score at least 25 points and have five rebounds in the playoffs.
As good as he’s been on the court, some say he has a talent off the court in singing. But just don’t ask him to sing a certain Christina Aguilera song. Here’s which of the pop star’s tunes Holmgren hopes he never has to hear again.
The Christina Aguilera song Holmgren can’t hear anymore and why
The Aguilera song Holmgren won’t listen to these days is “What a Girl Wants.” So what does the athlete have against the 1999 hit?
In an interview with People, the 7-foot-1 center shared that he can’t listen to the song anymore after filming AT&T’s “What a Pro Wants” 2024 March Madness commercial.
Holmgren explained that he was born three years after the song came out and while he knows who Aguilera is, he was never really familiar with any of her music. That is until he had to sing it for the commercial with his teammate, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
“I mean, everybody knows who Christina Aguilera is, just through pop culture and everything,” Holmgren acknowledged. “But to say I had ever sung that song or listened to it in the car, I’d be lying. I didn’t know the words before the set day.
“I had to sing that for so many takes that the rhythm of it kind of got old to me, so I can’t listen to it anymore.”
When asked if he could name another song by the singer, Holmgren said, “Unfortunately, no.”
Aguilera wasn’t too happy with that bubblegum hit
“What a Girl Wants” was featured on Aguilera’s self-titled debut album. That album spawned a few other hits as well including “Genie In a Bottle” and “Come on Over.” But the songbird didn’t think those bubblegum hits and that squeaky-clean image she portrayed were a reflection of who she really was.
When speaking about that time, Aguilera told Vogue Magazine: “I was really green and fresh-faced, I call her ‘Baby Christina.’ I had all of these creative ideas, and I just wanted to be very expressive and over the top, and so this was very playing it safe. I didn’t really have any mobility to have a say yet. So I felt very plain, I remember, on this photoshoot [for the album cover]. But thankfully, looking back, that wouldn’t last very long.”
Despite Aguilera being unhappy with her image back then, her debut album was a huge success and her best-selling album to date. It reached No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard 200 in its first week, sold over 14 million copies globally, and earned her the Best New Artist award at the Grammys.
The single “What a Girl Wants” was certified platinum and sold over 600,000 pure units in the U.S. The track was on the Billboard Hot 100 for 24 weeks, spending two of those weeks at No. 1.
