I immediately took note of Britney back when she was first came out with "Baby One More Time" when I was a wee little "straight" 13 year old boy back in 1999 (yes, I actually thought I was straight until 2008, but that's a whole different story). Three of my best girl friends at the time even sang that song to me on my Bar Mitzvah tape haha. At the time, I thought she was cute, her songs were catchy and she was fun.
But after the Britney fad died down, so did my love for her. I never really connected her, then or now, like I did with Madonna or Beyonce or Gwen Stefani when I was younger. I think her whole wholesome virginity act made me feel like she was a bit of a fraud. Yes, I loved her "Oops I Did It Again" MTV VMA performance with the sheer body suit, as well as "I'm A Slave 4 U" performance with the snake at the VMA's the following year. But I still wasn't crazy about her.
It wasn't until Britney released her 2003 album "In the Zone" that i really took notice. The album's lead single, "Me Against the Music" was a duet with my all-time favorite, Madonna! Plus Britney even dressed up like the Material Girl, sang with her on stage, and kissed her in a tribute performance at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards. I thought, if Madonna was paying this much attention to her, there must be something there. Madonna, who at this point had a 20 year successful career behind her, was always hesitant to jump on the band wagon at whomever was christened to be "the next Madonna" at any given point (another testament to Madonna's awesomeness, that every single new pop star to come along since the late 80's, from Tiffany to Britney to Lady GaGa has been compared to her). The follow up single, "Toxic" was on constant rotation in my car for months. I was officially a Britney fan (but still not a huge one by any means).
But many said that Madonna's kiss with Britney, meant to "pass the baton" to the next generation of female pop stars, was actually a kiss of death because shortly after is when Britney started having her mental break down, marrying that guy Jason Alexander in Vegas, dating K-Fed, taping that awful reality show "Chaotic" that showed the world what a mess she really was, shaving her head, etc. The pop stars I feel most connected to all stand for things that I believe in. It is not their music alone that attracts me. I simply felt a bit ashamed calling myself a Britney fan after I saw how she really acted behind the scenes on her reality show (not the sharpest tool in the shed by any means). So it wasn't so much the mental breakdown, i.e. shaving her head and attacking the paparazzi with her umbrella. It was more the fact that I began to see her as a pop star puppet...Madonna wrote her own music and made statements about things she believed in. Britney, on the other hand, struck me as too dumb to write her own music or really take a stand for anything important (did you see the clip of her supporting George W. Bush that Michael Moore used in "Fahrenheit 9/11"? My point exactly).
If her music never really struck a cord with me (aside from a few songs here and there), and I had no faith in her to be a really artist instead of an "employed pop star," she had no real place to fit into to my musical taste pallet. However, the release of her 2007 album "Blackout" (which was in the midst of her craziness...the MTV VMA performance of "Gimme More" anyone?) slightly changed this. My views on her as an artist remained the same...she barely did any promotion for the album after the awful VMA performance and co-wrote only 2 of the songs on the album (a huge step backwards from "In the Zone," by the way, on which she co-wrote 8 of the songs). But the music itself suddenly struck a cord with me. Thanks in large part to the producers she worked with, the music was far more sophisticated than most of the music on her last three albums.
Her music continued to strike a cord with me with her next album, "Circus," released the following year. This time, however, Britney was supposedly on the road to recovery so she actually put an effort into promoting the album. Out of her whole career, it was 2008-2009 when I was most avidly a Britney fan. She still didn't stand for anything worthwhile, still didn't write most of the music on the CD, but at least she seemed to be in a better, more respectable place than she was in her "Chaotic" reality show, let's say.
My enthusiasm for Britney, however, was soon curbed after I saw her in concert for the first time ever on her Circus Starring Britney Spears Tour in 2009. All of my former concerns about her merely being an employed pop star puppet instead of a true artist were confirmed. She did not sing one note live, which can sometimes be a bit more understandable when the pop star is dancing her ass off (like Britney used to do). However, she did NOT dance like she used to, but mostly walked across the 3-ring center stage back and fourth. Even when she sang "Every Time" sitting under an umbrella she lip-synced! She was not even moving around during this song, but still chose not to sing it live. Plus, all her costumes and even sets were reminiscent of older pop star concerts, from Christina to Madonna, and she didn't even have the professionalism required in a pop concert of this magnitude. I noticed her getting out of character multiple times before she was completely off stage, not to mention the countless stories you heard from other shows where her tampon was hanging out or she shouted that her pussy was popping out because she wasn't aware her mic was still on (if you haven't seen these before, youtube them!).
After all this, I decided that I would appreciate Britney as a fun artist whose music is great to dance or party to. She will never mean anything more to me because I just can't take her seriously. I truly believe that if she did not have such good producers making such awesome music lately (which I know is debatable to a lot of people, but I quite enjoy it), she would be completely irrelevant. Especially after the rise of Lady GaGa (who actually wrote a couple of songs for Britney before she hit it big), Britney just seems like a Neanderthal pop star in comparison. GaGa does it all, plays an instruments, sings live with an incredible voice, writes her own music, and dances her butt off. Britney does NONE of this.
So back to Glee...it is a bit disappointing to me that out of all the pop icons out there, the second tribute episode they are doing after the Madonna one last season (third if you count the Lady GaGa one, but that only had 2 of GaGa's songs in it so I don't really count it), is Britney. Sure they should cover a song or two of hers, but a whole episode? Does she really deserve that? Most of the cast of Glee at this point can be said to have more raw talent than her, yet they are all paying tribute to her and aspiring to become more like her? (I read that the Me Against the Music sequence specifically--which is pictured at the top--involves the character, also named Brittany, dreaming of becoming more like Britney Spears after being sedated in the dentist's office). We'll see how the episode turns out, but if it were me in that dentist chair, I'd be dreaming to be able to work with the producers Britney does or have the team behind me that she does rather than being more like Britney herself.
No comments:
Post a Comment