"Not a proper pop star" - WTF?

Please God, let it be over! Now that we’ve been told that Britney is to perform 5 songs on Good Morning America, is there ANY chance of an end to the overheated, over-dramatic, over-emotional and seemingly endless chorus of condemnation directed towards Britney for, apparently, “not being a proper pop star”? The character of the rhetoric is evident in the title of a thread at BritneyBoards: “Being a Britney fan is not easy at this point... “

OK, let me illustrate what I’m referring to with a few quotes:

“To continue to let Britney sit in her multi-million dollar home that we pretty much helped her pay for and have us... paying for her music, who's doing the work again? She gets millions per year, and I swear she works less than I do. Sure she has millions of fans, but how many of these people are going to stay interested when other artists continue fighting and sweating for theirs?”

“She isn't ready to be a popstar again, it's as simple as that. How does she expect her fanbase to act when she doesn't even show up at the Grammys, or the Brit awards, call a radio station, make a youtube video...”

“I'm REALLY annoyed at how Britney and her management think it's OK just to repeat the whole Circus process all over again for this album...She's meant to be BACK now! I understand why they wanted to ease her in with Circus after 4 years out the game but there's no excuses now. BE A PROPER POPSTAR AGAIN BRITNEY!”

Some went even further, apparently seeing “being a popstar” as a competitive sport, and if you aren’t getting the statistics to beat your rivals, you’re not fighting hard enough. And if you’re not prepared to promote the hell out of yourself to carry on this “fight”, you should get off the field, retire from music and make way for somebody who has a hunger for combat. ProphetBlog... shame on you.

You can tell that fans with this attitude are mostly male. Female fans are broadly happy that their favoured star is still alive and active, and take a relatively simple, unalloyed pleasure in her music. Some of us, I admit, adopt a disturbingly judgmental and bitchy stance, but we do seem to lack the “OMG we’re doomed, DOOMED” approach of our male counterparts.

To my mind, this doomladen emo-fest is misguided and perverse, to say the very least. Take a step back and ask yourself a question: What is the point of engaging in a full-on campaign of heavy promotion? Presumably to try to reach a wider audience than the one you already have.

But what if you're a modest, self-effacing Southern girl who’s amazed and humbled by the huge number, loyalty and emotional commitment of the fans she already has? You may think it’s needy, greedy and unnecessary to go out looking for even more. And if you’re quite happy with the size and composition of your fanbase, why would you feel the need to promote? Surely all that's necessary is to let your existing fans know that you're about to release something?

The kinds of people who chunter on and on about Britney "not caring about her career", "not caring about her fans" etc. etc. (and therefore we should not care about HER) seem never to have considered the possibility that, in her eyes, BRITNEY MAKES HER MUSIC FOR HER FANS!!! This simple hypothesis would explain perfectly why she continues to make albums but seems to see no great need to promote them.

If we accept this hypothesis, the transaction is equally simple. She makes the records for us, and being fans, and liking her music, we buy them.

She may be “a different kind of artist” now, as many have pointed out. But should the automatic follow-up to this epiphany be “and that means she’s not as good as she used to be”? I don’t see why. When she started out, she was a great little dancer but her music was purely teeny-bopper fare, and meant to be that way.

She’s making better music than ever now, constantly pushing the boundaries of pop, always leading at the cutting edge and never playing catch-up with her peers. She makes more albums than any other megastar performer. Her voice may, or may not, have been stronger back in the day (I’m not convinced that it was) but, with the benefit of long experience, she uses it a lot more creatively now.

She may be different now, but she’s still right there at the top of the tree. Back in 2003, great dancer or not, almost every music journalist was convinced that she was a time-expired teeny artist with nothing more to offer. But she has confounded them all. Against all the odds she has become a respected, iconic artist who can satisfy adult musical tastes, and who will still be satisfying them in another ten years. None of this sounds like a failed act who should get out of the game.