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Originally written August 8, 2005. Where the BOMT videos portrayed Britney as a cute, lovable young girl and the OIDIA videos showed a growing realisation of her sex appeal, the “Britney” videos captured a moment in time when Britney Spears was quite possibly the hottest female on the planet. For a while she was a peerless beauty, with perfect skin, perfect teeth, perfect hair, beautiful eyes and body of dazzling allure - slim, athletic and as toned as Miss Universe, yet with curves in all the right places and sexy as hell. Let’s have a look at them:
“I’m a slave 4 u” (dir. Francis Lawrence)
One of Britney’s best-ever tracks (let down only by the absence of a decent bass track) was matched by one of her best-ever videos. As so often, the concept came from the girl herself. In an abandoned industrial complex, Brit looks out at an orange sky and is lit by a yellow glow as she wiggles her hips suggestively. A bright low sun shines through the set and provides brilliant front-lighting and contrast. Britney and her dancers are suffering from the heat, but in an erotically charged atmosphere some sexy and complex routines take place. Onlookers ogle Britney’s astonishing muscle definition and the camera makes love to the small of her back. Some blessed rain comes at the end to cool an incendiary situation down a little.
“Overprotected” [International] (dir. Bille Woodruff)
Begins with a slow sequence and Bombastic Love music as Britney gets into a car and travels once more to an abandoned factory. Since she has a message to deliver, she connects with the audience facially as she lies on a couch. We get views of fine furniture in some very contrasting settings, then complex choreography intercut with soulful close-ups before the dancers appear for an ensemble work-out. Brit looks a little curvier than in the Slave vid and shakes her grabbable butt most pleasingly. To finish, a further solo sequence reconnects Britney with the audience and her eyes look round, deep and enormous.
“Overprotected” [Darkchild] (dir. Chris Applebaum)
There’s a “Britney’s new depths of depravity” news sequence, then an assertive Britney strides through and out of a glamorous hotel with her dancers. On the road, her limo transmutes into a dance set - cue some remarkably energetic routines with Brit in a technicolor pink top and some gorgeous close-ups. Her make up is more glam and sexy than in the International vid, her eyes seem wider and not so round, and she shows a whole new range of emotions on her face. The final scene finds the ensemble bustin’ some moves in the rain.
“I’m Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman” (dir. Wayne Isham)
Britney with ass-revealing low-rise jeans stands in a rugged landscape in front of a green lake and a cloudy sky. At times she looks fragile and vulnerable, at other times Mistress of all she surveys. The first scene finds her with very low-key make-up that emphasizes her youth. And at some points in the video she shows us a girlishly modest cleavage, while at other times her breasts are full and womanly. Scenes from her coming-of-age in Crossroads are intercut with scenes from the desert and from a bedroom where Brit in a green dress says “There is no need to protect me”. Time alone in the desert is her time to realise that each of us fights his/her battles alone.
“I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” (dir. Chris Applebaum)
In black-and-white then color, rocker-chick Britney with heavy green glitter eye make-up and backed up by a rock band writhes around a mic stand in a manner disturbingly reminiscent of Ms Alecia Moore. Erotic symbols are all around. Huge wires all over the stage behind Britney are like snakes while a hydraulic oil leak gives us an image of unspecified lubricity. Britney shakes her long, wind-blown hair, then writhes on a Harley.
“Boys” (dir. Dave Meyers”)
A guy outside a huge mansion is restrained by bouncers, then we see contrastingly surreal scenes inside with exotic looking people, a glass table, an illuminated pool - and a zebra. Ms Spears almost gets picked up by a guy from NERD who strangely asks “aren’t you Britney?” then at the bar a vixenish Brit whispers “get nasty” and Mike Myers in an orange suit dances with her before they go off together.
As compared to earlier Britney videos, these do not make as much of an attempt to tell a story, but they do contain a range of lovely, exotic and sometimes meaningful scenarios and images. In a sense they have moved on from introducing us to Britney, then telling us a little more about her, to celebrating her beauty, athleticism and sexuality in a series of settings, where each video is almost like an animated photoshoot. Even the Mike Myers-and-zebra set-up of “Boys” is conceptually close to the image-playfulness of Britney’s recent “Interview” photoset.
“Slave” and “INAG” deserve some additional words. Although the “Slave” video was clearly the inspiration for Xtina’s “Dirrty” video it has never received the credit it’s due. Indeed, one TV “countdown” rewrote history to claim that “Slave” was a rip-off of “Dirrty”. But “Slave” does have a unique position in video history. It’s the first video in which a female star held up her physique to public scrutiny in a totally unashamed way and invited a reaction which could only be “Wow!”
“INAG” is slightly out of place among the other “Britney”-era videos. It’s not a dance vid, and its allusions to Britney’s physicality are more incidental than central. It depicts a crucial point in Britney’s life journey in a number of different ways, but somehow it always remains a commentary on its subject rather than an engagement with her.
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