Background and Composition
Aguilera approached record label RCA, then having financial difficulties, and was told to contact Disney. After being given the opportunity to record the theme to the 1998 film Mulan named "Reflection" it was reported she had gained a record deal with RCA Records with Aguilera saying "I landed a record deal simultaneously as I landed the Mulan soundtrack. I had just turned seventeen years old, and during the same week, I just landed both. I recorded the Mulan soundtrack first and then a few months later I was out in L.A. recording the record for about six months". When asked about the song and Aguilera, RCA executive Ron Fair commented,
"She is a badass genius of singing. She was put on this earth to sing, and I've worked with a lot of singers.... When Aguilera met with us, she didn't care that she was auditioning for a record deal; she got into a performance zone that you see in artist much more mature than she is."
After she was asked to hit a musical note required for "Reflection", she thought that the song could be the gateway into an album deal. Aguilera spent hours recording a cover of Whitney Houston's "Run to You", which included the note she was asked to hit. After successfully hitting the note, which she called "the note that changed my life", she was given the opportunity to record the song. To record the song, she flew to Los Angeles for roughly a week. Despite growing increasingly exhausted during the recording sessions, when she heard that a 90-piece orchestra would be arriving to record the instrumental she begged to stay and witness the event. She later called the experience "amazing". Due to the success around the recording of "Reflection", RCA wished for Aguilera to record and release an album by September 1998 to maintain the "hype" surrounding her at that time. The label laid the foundation for the album immediately and started presenting Aguilera with tracks for her debut album, which they later decided would have a January 1999 release. "Reflection" was written and produced by Matthew Wilder and David Zippel, in the key of G major. The track begins with the lyrics "Look at me, you may think you see who I really am, but you'll never know me", with Aguilera's vocal range spanning from G3-Eb5 in a moderately slow tempo of 92 beats per minute. An alternate version of "Reflection" was included on Aguilera's 2000 Mi Reflejo, which was her first Spanish-language album and second studio album overall.
Read more about this topic: Reflection (song)
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