Aguilera was born in Staten Island, New York, to Fausto Wagner Xavier Aguilera, a Sergeant in the U.S. Army at the time, and Shelly Loraine (née Fidler), a teacher of Spanish. Aguilera's father was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador and her maternal grandmother emigrated from County Clare, Ireland. Her father was stationed at Earnest Harmon Air Force Base in Stephenville, Newfoundland and Labrador and Japan. Aguilera lived with her father and mother until she was seven years old. Aguilera grew up hearing Spanish and thus understands the language, although she is more fluent in English. When Aguilera's parents divorced, her mother took her, and her younger sister Rachel, to her grandmother's home in Rochester, Pennsylvania, a town outside of Pittsburgh. According to both Aguilera and Fidler, her father was very controlling, as well as physically and emotionally abusive. She later sang about her difficult childhood in the songs "I'm OK" on Stripped, and "Oh Mother" on Back to Basics. Although her father has written to Aguilera, she has ruled out any chance of reuniting with him. Since then, Fidler has married a paramedic named Jim Kearns, and changed her name. Although Aguilera's debut album was very well received, she was dissatisfied with the music and image her management had created for her. Aguilera was marketed as a bubblegum pop singer because of the genre's upward financial trend. She mentioned plans of her next album to have much more depth, both musically and lyrically. Aguilera's views of Steve Kurtz's influence in matters of the singer's creative direction, the role of being her exclusive personal manager and overscheduling had in part caused her to seek legal means of terminating their management contract. She revealed while recording her then upcoming album, "I was being overworked. You find out that someone you thought was a friend is stealing money behind your back, and it's heartbreaking. I put faith in the people around me, and unfortunately, it bit me in the butt." Kurtz was terminated and Irving Azoff was hired as her new manager. Aguilera who is a soprano, has rivaled many of her other contemporaries and has been referred to as the "voice of her generation" and a blue eyed soul singer. In the MTV special All Eyes on Christina, John Norris said that Aguilera "has a four-octave vocal range". Aguilera also topped COVE's list of the 100 Best Pop Vocalists with a score of 50/50 and came fifth in MTV's 22 Greatest Voices in Music. Aguilera has also been known to sing in the high whistle register, high Belt (she can belt to high F ( F5)). A review in an Entertainment Weekly article mentions her "tackling that dog-whistle high note" at the 3:20 mark in the song "Soar" from her album Stripped. Her rendition of "It's A Man's Man's Man's World" at the 49th Grammy Awards ranked third in the Grammy's Greatest Moments List behind Celine Dion's performance of "My Heart Will Go On" and Green Day's performance of "American Idiot". In an interview, Dion described Aguilera as "probably the best vocalist in the world." During the work on Back to Basics, DJ Premier explained, "She really represents true music and true singing. She can belt out notes. She has true lungs." Rolling Stone ranked Aguilera at 58 on their list of the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time, the youngest singer on the list. Since her debut in 1999 Aguilera has been compared to the likes of Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston. A review in the Los Angeles Times compared Aguilera's vocal stylings to Barbra Streisand, Gladys Knight, and Aretha Franklin adding, "Aguilera's Streisand-esque tendencies are a good thing; they're helping her figure out how to become the "great singer" she's been dubbed since she released her first single, the wise-beyond-its-years "Genie in a Bottle", at 18." Although praised for her vocals, Aguilera has been labeled for oversinging in her songs and concerts. Longtime producer and writer, Linda Perry, commented on working on the record, "Beautiful", saying, "I tried to keep it straight. I told her to get rid of the finger waves. Every time she'd start going into "hoo-ha", I'd stop the tape. I'm like, 'You're doing it again.'" Perry ended up using the first take saying, "She had a hard time accepting that as the final track. It's not a perfect vocal – it's very raw. She knows her voice really well, and she knows what's going on. She can hear things that nobody else would catch."