Christina Aguilera has a favorite word right now, one she employs with the frequency of an addict: edgy. It pops up in many of her conversations, sometimes with purpose, other times at will. She describes herself, for example, as an “edgy” artist, and she admires the “edgy” acting of Angelina Jolie. The reason she responded to Madonna’s last-minute invitation to appear alongside her and nemesis Britney Spears at MTV’s Video Music Awards back in August, meanwhile, was because it sounded — you guessed it — edgy. It turns out, however, that in the end the performance didn’t quite live up to Aguilera’s high expectations.

“The VMAs were so . . . so vanilla,” she says. “So safe, so predictable, no edge. Apart from Madonna, Mary J. Blige and myself, I cannot think of another female performer who had her mic switched on. That is very disappointing to me. I agreed to do it in the first place only because Madonna had told me that it was mandatory to sing live.”