 Following the release of her sixth studio album, Bionic (2010), Aguilera filed for divorce from her husband Jordan Bratman, starred in her first feature film, Burlesque (2010) and recorded the accompanying soundtrack. She then became a coach on NBC's singing competition show The Voice and appeared as a featured artist on Maroon 5's single "Moves Like Jagger" (2011), which spent four weeks atop the US Billboard Hot 100 chart. Following these events, Aguilera announced that had plans to begin production of her seventh album, stating that she wanted high quality and "personal" songs for the record. Regarding the creative direction, she revealed that the album would be a "culmination of everything I 've experienced up until this point ... I've been through a lot since the release of my last album, being on (The Voice), having had a divorce ... This is all sort of a free rebirth for me." She further said "I 'm embracing many different things, but it's all feel-good, super-expressive [and] super-vulnerable." The added that the album would be about "self – expression and freedom" because of the personal struggles she had overcome during the last couple of years. Speaking about her new material during an interview on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in 2012, Aguilera said that the recording process for Lotus was taking a while because "I don 't like to just get songs from producers. I like them to come from a personal place ... I'm very excited. It's fun, exciting, introspective, it's going to be great".
