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Originally written April 28, 2006. Are we suffering from collective amnesia? It amazes me that so many Britney fans think her image has gone to hell and her career is in the balance. If we cast our minds back to 2003 and the period just before In The Zone was released, we find that back then things were so much worse. Yes, Britney was still assumed to be a pretty girl, and yes, she was still reckoned to be an international-class sex object. But that wasn’t the hot gossip about her at the time. The chatter among the cooler-than-**** teenagers was “She’s SOOOOOOO over!” And the media agreed.
With the release date of her imminent new album as the trigger, showbiz commentators took to debating whether there was even the slightest possibility that she could re-invent herself quickly enough and extensively enough even to survive in the business. Most of them thought it was beyond her. After all, her whole career to date had been as a youngster who appealed to youngsters - most of them even younger than herself. She sang teeny songs, she was a teeny role model, and worst of all she was a leader of teeny fashion - which is notoriously fickle. The accepted career trajectory of a teeny star is to have a few spectacularly successful pop singles, a couple of albums, a couple of tours - then oblivion. Tiffany? Debbie Gibson? No one is saying stars like them aren’t good, but they do tend to be somewhat one-dimensional and when the newness wears off the audience is eager to trade them in for this year’s shiny new model. Back in 2003, the experts predicted sagely that this is what would happen to Britney Spears. Appeal to an older audience? Bring her existing audience with her? Nah, no chance!
But what actually happened? “In The Zone” was a No.1 album in America - of all places. So what’s the problem with America? Well, there does seem to be a sharp division in opinions about Britney depending on whether you live in her home country or anywhere else. Back home, she apparently carries the baggage of once being America’s Sweetheart - and now she’s fallen from grace. But hang on - was she ever that squeaky clean? A quick retrospective trawl through the media shows that she got a few “Wow!” notices from the press when she first appeared on the scene and everyone was struggling to understand where this cute li’l gal came from and how she became the Princess of Pop overnight. But within a year she was already a controversial figure, with bad notices outweighing the good and endless speculation raging about her Lolita image, her ever-changing boob size, her low-rise jeans and her disastrous impact on the sexualisation of young teenage girls. For all that, however, in 2003 she was still a heroine and an extremely glamorous figure in her mome territory.
Things were somewhat different elsewhere. In the UK and much of Europe, for example, there has never been any great love for Teen Princesses. That wholesome cheerleader Prom Queen aspirational thing has never played well in the old world. Shiny, happy people are greeted with a cynical yawn. As yet another seemingly vacuous product of the endless US babystar production line, tabloid columnists didn’t like Britney at all, and that was BEFORE her image became “tarnished”. Overpaid, over-hyped and over here. Who needed her? They were SO eager for her to fall on her face and the “Crossroads” premiere debacle gave them all the ammunition they needed to launch a fusillade of flak in her direction. The beasting of Britney began in Europe and we exported it back to the US. The media killed the old Britney. And if she had been a regular little teenage music star, that would have been the end of her. But the difference with Britney was that she knew what had happened, accepted it and decided to move her life on in a very different way.
The key revelation for Britney was realising that she had somehow become an icon. She even referred to that in her letters to fans. And the thing is, when you become an icon, you enter a kind of timeless, ageless existence. You become the sort of figure who only has to walk on to a stage to get an ovation. You get to be applauded just for being you. Nobody cares that much about the grubby details of your personal life. When you’re an icon, whatever happens only adds to The Legend. Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, Billie Holiday, Josephine Baker, Edith Piaf, maybe Janis Joplin - what did stars like these have in common? They all had messy lives, relationship problems, addictions, breakdowns. And they were legends. You can’t be a legend unless you’ve been around the block enough times to have A Story. Just having a successful showbiz career doesn’t get you one, it’s all the accretions of a life well lived by larger-than-life people with larger-than-life appetites. Compare Britney to Christina Aguilera or Jessica Simpson or Kelly Clarkson. Jessica and Christina and Kelly are great singers, they’ve made great records, they look great. But that’s baseline activity for big-selling stars. For whatever reason, things don’t seem to happen to Christina and Jessica and Kelly like they happen to Britney. No matter how quiet and hidden she tries to be, things just keep happening to her.Yes, it’s a curse - but it’s also a kind of perverse blessing.
It means that she won’t be forgotten in the way normal mortals are forgotten. She could take a 5 year break and she’d still be The One, The Only, The Legendary Britney Spears. The slightest rumor that she’s about to do ANYTHING causes a flutter of excitement around the showbiz world. If there’s any solid news about a new album, it will become one of the most eagerly-awaited albums of the year. Admittedly, that has always been the case with Britney albums, but this time it’s different. “In The Zone” wasn’t very well reviewed by most of the press - mainly because they decided to review Britney instead of the album - and they’d already made up their minds that any attempt by this archetypal teeny pop girl to transcend her proper role and function was laughable. The result was reviews that were condescending at best.
But over the years since “In The Zone” came out, Britney seems to have moved far beyond that point. Most of the reviews of her singles and Greatest Hits album have been surprisingly positive. Everything written about her music in the last two years has been good and even the quality newspapers in the UK have been treating her with the respect that would normally be reserved for a Madonna. The wider world of music commentators doesn’t expect trashy teen music from her now - they expect her music to set a new benchmark for quality pop.
It’s as if she has grown up so much, and changed so much, that it’s no longer possible to slot her into a simple category where life and personality and career and music are pretty much interchangeable. Britney Spears is far too complicated, both as a woman and as a phenomenon, to be treated lightly, and now everyone knows it. And if you want to be taken seriously, being edgy and controversial is a lot better than being safe and predictable and showbiz-typical. People attack her, not so much because they hate her, as because she’s the tallest tree in the forest, so she’s fair game for it.
Yes, it’s worrying that Britney should have slipped from FHM’s Sexiest Woman In The World in 2004 to being right outside the Top 100 in 2006, but it’s a situation she can turn around if and when she wants to. Britney never pretended to be sexy or beautiful off stage, she always made it clear that this was just part of her act, and when she returns she’ll turn on the glamor and sexuality just as she always has. She has a chameleon-like ability to look fascinating and beautiful in a thousand different ways, and once she starts appearing in new photoshoots she’ll be back up there on the FHM list.
Another thing we shouldn’t forget is that the pop music scene needs larger-than-life figures around or it all goes dead. I hardly ever watch TV music shows now, because it all seems so dull and worthy or plain mediocre. When Britney’s around, things come alive. That’s how big she is. It’s not just that she’s there herself, she seems to inspire others to compete with her and the whole scene is full of “next Britneys” and “new Britneys”. Everyone starts talking about her. There are Britney pictures and stories in the papers every day. The pop industry, and several million fans, will be very relieved and glad to see her return.
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