Although there was no one else in sight-somewhere in the massive suite were a publicist, a manager, and two assistants, and in the hallway was a bodyguard twice her size-Aguilera seemed capable of bursting into laughter that could fill a TV studio at any moment. She curled up on a gray couch with her bare feet tucked beneath her. Aguilera, who has owned the calling card of tiny person with the ginormous voice since she was belting out Whitney Houston covers at elementary school talent shows outside Pittsburgh, padded out of her bedroom freshly scrubbed, having shed the armor of her blinding white Michael Kors pantsuit for black Adidas track pants, a white tank, and a black silk polkadot kimono that looked like it could’ve come from the studio of Yayoi Kusama. Now, after a respite alone in her hotel room at the Four Seasons, she re-emerged relaxed and refreshed, her shoulder-length platinum hair pulled back into an efficient bun, wearing a layer of natural makeup.

“Of course I was nervous,” Aguilera said. Most distressing of all for her, though, was how the day had begun: with a one-on-one meeting with Anna Wintour. There had been a photo shoot followed by a video taping followed by an industry appearance, all crammed into a five-hour sprint during which Aguilera was touched and clothed and instructed and observed closely by people she’d just met. The singer, on the cusp of a major comeback at the age of 37, had just been released from a day in New York spent getting reacquainted with the metabolism of the pop star album cycle, which she hadn’t experienced in the six years since 2012’s Lotus.

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