“He About To Lose Me”, one of the bonus tracks on the “Femme Fatale” album, has been a fan favorite since the pre-release leaks began, and gas managed to remain so, despite a certain controversy, to which I will return shortly. Although I have seen a handful of critical remarks about the song, most fans seem to love the strength and musical integrity of the melody and the freshness of the lyrics. It’s instantly ear-grabbing, and it’s interesting to note that, although it is a bonus track, Britney has named it as one of her favorites too.
“He About To Lose Me” was written by Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins and young Norwegian singer/songwriter Ina Wroldsen, produced by Rodney Jerkins and mixed by Jerkins and Serban Ghenea. No instrumentalists are credited on the track, which presumably means all the instrumental tracks are programmed creations. Three “background” singers are named - Britney Spears, Ina Wroldsen and Michaela Shiloh.
The song has a familiar structure, with Verse Part 1, Verse Part 2, Chorus and Bridge.These are the lyrics:
I’m touching hands with someone seriously beautiful, eh-ah-eh-eh
I feel it burning and I know I'm standing far too close, eh-ah-eh-eh
I'm telling lies and if it shows I see that he don't care, eh-ah-eh-eh
I know he wants to take me home and get on outta here, eh-ah-eh-eh
I got someone waiting at home
He says he in love but lately I just don't know
He don't see me or make me feel hot
Banging in the club with all my ladies and he don't know that
He about to lose, 'bout to lose, 'bout to lose me
He about to lose me, eh-eh-eh
He about to lose, 'bout to lose, 'bout to lose me
He about to lose me, eh-eh-eh-eh... eh-eh-eh... eh-eh
I feel my body losing focus as he touches me, eh-ah-eh-eh
And I should go but I can't overcome this chemistry, eh-ah-eh-eh
He pulls me close before he whispers something in my ear, eh-ah-eh-eh
He says he wants to take me home and get me outta here, eh-ah-eh-eh
I got someone waiting at home
He says he in love but lately I just don't know
He don't see me or make me feel hot
Banging in the club with all my ladies and he don't know that
He about to lose, 'bout to lose, 'bout to lose me
He about to lose me, eh-eh-eh
He about to lose, 'bout to lose, 'bout to lose me
He about to lose me, eh-eh-eh-eh... eh-eh-eh... eh-eh
Someone by the bar keeps looking at us dancing
I see him staring at me, I see where he wants to be
Someone by the bar keeps looking at us dancing
I gotta, I gotta go, he don't know that
He about to lose, 'bout to lose, 'bout to lose me,
He about to lose me, eh-eh-eh
He about to lose, 'bout to lose, 'bout to lose me
He about to lose me, eh-eh-eh
He about to lose, 'bout to lose, 'bout to lose me
He about to lose me, eh-eh-eh
He about to lose, 'bout to lose, 'bout to lose me
He about to lose me, eh-eh-eh... eh-eh
I'm touching hands with someone seriously beautiful, eh-ah-eh-eh
I can quote these lyrics with unusual confidence in their accuracy, because Britney’s diction is extremely clear. Indeed it is largely because of the overall quality of her vocals that most fans have taken particular notice of this song. This is what I wrote in my review of the album: “Rodney Jerkins contributes a beautiful song that brings out the best in Britney. She seems, amazingly, to revert to her pre-Jive voice – natural, unaffected, sweet of tone, open-voiced, with lovely vibrato applied to selected lines.”
It is more than annoying, then, to observe that a fair proportion of fans have convinced themselves, and others, that Britney doesn’t sing the chorus. The argument raged on numerous forums for quite some time - does she or doesn’t she? And in the end the issue remained unresolved. Unfortunately, I’m now seeing fans stating as an accepted fact that she doesn’t sing the chorus. I think they’re completely wrong, and I’ll give two categories of reason, one based on logic and one based on listening.
Taking the logic first, why would she NEED to do it? The demands of the chorus in terms of range and dynamics are well within her capabilities. And do you think she would allow a track on one of her albums to go out with someone else’s voice singing the most prominent part of one of her favorite songs? I don’t. The chorus comprises almost half of the song -16 lines out of 37 - and if someone else was singing it, that would make it a duet. And if it was in fact a duet, wouldn’t Britney have given credit to the duettist? She is famously generous in giving credit to others. For someone else to sing 16 lines of a 37-line song would be a bigger contribution than Sabi makes to (Drop Dead) Beautiful.
Rodney Jerkins told the fans that he was responding to their demands by not applying processing to Britney’s voice. Is it likely that he would have so little integrity that he would make that commitment then go and use an entirely different singer? Seriously! These conspiracy theories go into the realms of extreme fantasy. The standard of argument on the “she doesn’t sing it” side is shown, for example, by claims that the chorus was sung by Myah Marie, but she isn’t even on the track and has denied it anyway!
But if you want to say “damn the logic, it just doesn’t SOUND like Britney” we have to consider the alternatives - Ina Wroldsen and Michaela Shiloh. Ina has a soft-edged, folksy voice and Michaela has an r&b/soul inflected one and the chorus doesn’t sound a bit like either of them. And now cast your mind back to the Circus tour and “You Oughta Know” - B’s voice on the chorus of that song sounds very like the voice on the chorus of HATLM, and I guess the only reason why fans believe it was her singing “You Oughta Know” is that they saw her doing it.
I hesitate to mention good quality headphones and a good quality CD player, but if you use them you can hear the wide stereo spacing of the double tracked vocals in the chorus become narrower, then centralised just before the end, and at that point it’s easy to tell that it’s Britney. During the final (repeated) chorus, a center track joins the double tracked stereo pair and here again this simply emphasizes that it’s Britney singing. There is no “blending” of another voice - that is just a figment of some people’s imaginations. In Verse Part 2, there are two voices singing in harmony, but this is Britney providing a background vocal to herself. The only place where the other background vocalists are employed is in the bridge: “Someone by the bar keeps looking at us dancing...”
Having gotten all of that out of the way, I think we can now simply give our unconditional appreciation to the wonder of Britney’s vocals on “He About To Lose Me”. It’s like a reaffirmation that she can still do it, still sing with power and pull out that warm, emotional voice that charmed and captivated us all those years ago, and what is more, show us that she sounds a great deal better with her voice free of the processing and robo-Britney mannerisms that have invaded much of “Femme Fatale”.
Instrumental accompaniment is mostly guitar and percussion. There is no bass track as such. A simple strummed guitar plays through most of the song, but engages in more assertive chords that provide counterpoint to the vocal melody during the chorus. A jagged, stabbing fuzzy guitar joins the kick drum at 0.25 and both of them play through most of the song, only falling silent at the ends of the first two choruses.
Imagining your head as a stereo soundstage and listening with headphones, the strummed guitar and percussion are at center and the fuzzy guitar is split between left and right channels. Britney’svocal during Verse Part 1 is at center, with the “eh-ah-eh-eh” parts split into a narrow stereo pair. In Verse Part 2 her lead vocal is at center and the harmony she sings with herself is in a narrow double-tracked stereo pair. In the first two choruses, as mentioned above, Britney’s voice is double-tracked as a wider stereo pair, but in the final chorus she is also singing at center. In the bridge, Britney is at center and the background vocalists can be heard at various locations.
In summary, “He About To Lose Me” is based upon simplicity - a simply constructed song, simple production and stripped down accompaniment. And this simplicity does not undermine or detract anything at all. Rather, it allows the beauty of the song and of Britney’s vocals to shine all the more brightly for not being masked in synthesized artifice.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Friday, August 12, 2011
Britney Spears and that Strange Sense of Longing
This is probably the weirdest article ever written about Britney, but I’m going ahead with it anyway. I know some readers will be saying “What was she smokin’ that day?!” but I think it was worthwhile to write it in the hope of reaching out to a few fans who will know EXACTLY what I’m talking about. I’m going to talk about a phenomenon that is almost inexplicable, yet is experienced in some way by many people. I want to see if any readers agree with me that Britney’s singing evokes this experience.
I’ll begin with a sidestep. One afternoon a few weeks ago, while I was working, I began to think about a certain song. And even thinking about it made me cry. Not just once - seven times in the same afternoon. I just couldn’t think about this song without being taken over by some strange emotions that I couldn’t quite identify. In my mind I kept being transported towards a different place and time, with its own emotional atmosphere. It felt important and significant that I could almost glimpse this place and time, yet if I tried to focus directly on it or analyse it, the feelings began to disappear.
The song was “The Folks Who Live On The Hill” as sung by Peggy Lee. She was a gentle, sweet, sensitive singer and she chose to sing this song in the softest voice imaginable. No belting, no histrionics, no show-off climaxes. The song was originally from a stage musical and wasn’t sentimental - it was actually quite humorous, in its own subtle way, poking fun at some “white picket fences” folksy imaginings. The way Peggy Lee sang it seemed so straight and simple, yet for many listeners it taps directly into a deep emotional well and is more profound than funny.
In my recent review of “Unusual You” I referred briefly to the experience of “Sehnsucht”, and this, I believe, is what surrounds Peggy Lee’s “The Folks Who Live On the Hill”. “Sehnsucht” is a German word that, in its most literal sense, means “longing”, but the experience is a lot more complex and intangible than that. The great Irish-born writer C.S. Lewis, in attempting to explain it, admits that “I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you - the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism... the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something which has never actually appeared in our experience.”
He continues: “[The poet] Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”
Wikipedia makes a gallant effort at a slightly more prosaic account: “It is sometimes felt as a longing for a far off country, but not a particular earthly land which we can identify... At other times it may seem as a longing for a someone or even a something. But the majority of people who experience it are not conscious of what or who the longed for object may be. Indeed, the longing is of such profundity and intensity that the subject may immediately be only aware of the emotion itself and not cognizant that there is a something longed for. Yet though one may not be able to identify just what it is, the experience is one of such significance that ordinary reality may pale in comparison...”
Triggers for these experiences vary widely from individual to individual. C.S. Lewis gives his as “the smell of bonfire, the sound of wild ducks flying overhead, the title of The Well at the World's End, the opening lines of "Kubla Khan", the morning cobwebs in late summer, or the noise of falling waves.” The Transition Gallery’s JT 09 project refers to “images of intense urban wilderness... washed out beautiful boys... fragile Northern landscapes”.
For me, it’s the image of Baby and Joe in Peggy Lee’s song (even typing those words makes me cry), some Grant Wood paintings, the song "Wonderful, wonderful" by Johnny Mathis, the low, pink afternoon winter sun in a suburban street, overhead power lines, street life (hearing “Summertime” by Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince actually makes me feel faint) and.... Britney Spears’ voice. The songs that hit me hardest are a random enough selection, but here are a few examples: “Anticipating”, “Radar”, “Unusual You”, “Tell me what ya sippin’ on”, “State of Grace”, “Sugarfall” and “Why Should I Be Sad”. Some of these songs should be superficial and jolly, but Britney transforms them into something almost mystical. They all make me experience Sehnsucht. The words don’t matter. I barely hear them.The sound of Britney’s voice transports me to the edge of that elusive, mysterious place.
Is it because Britney’s soft, sweet voice has the same direct entree to the emotions as Peggy Lee’s? Do her off-stage whispers touch us on a subconscious level? Is it that the impression she gives of innocence and naivety makes us long for things we didn't understand as children? Is it because she ends words and phrases with a gentle, fading cadence instead of a sharp, snappy assertiveness? Is it because she always chooses quietness and stillness over loudness and drama? Is it because her unusual phrasing, steering away from conventional singers’ mannerisms, sounds so honest and heartfelt? Is it the way she sometimes holds back a fraction from the beat and seems to make time slow down? Is it because it sounds as if SHE is always searching for that longed-for thing that she can almost glimpse out of the corner of her eye but never quite grasp? This is a woman who has been on a long spiritual journey.
I threw out a lot of options there, and I’m not going to vote for any of them. I don’t want to influence you in any direction because this whole thing is very personal. I know it’s a very different thing to analyse how she creates the experience of Sehnsucht than to analyse the experience of Sehnsucht she creates, but each of you is probably hearing different things, and responding to different songs in different ways. Even if a lot of us agree that she calls up strange and elusive feelings with her singing, we may not be in agreement about exactly how she does it. I'd love to hear what you think, because I want to develop this subject further.
I have to finish on an anxious but hopeful note. The “Blackout” era was particularly rich in these strangely evocative vocals, and “Circus” has its moments, although far fewer of them. “Femme Fatale” hasn’t any, in my opinion - but that is ONLY my opinion. As she approaches her 30s, Britney seems to be leaving that searching phase of her life and moving into a more settled one, and its possible that this might be reflected in her singing. “Femme Fatale” seems less subtle, less sensitive, more assertive, more functional. Yet somehow I believe in that dear, sweet soul of hers, that big heart, that modesty, that lack of confidence, that awkwardness, that other-worldliness. I think she’ll continue to touch our deepest, most unfathomable emotions. I hope and pray that she does, because artists like this may only come along once in a lifetime.
I’ll begin with a sidestep. One afternoon a few weeks ago, while I was working, I began to think about a certain song. And even thinking about it made me cry. Not just once - seven times in the same afternoon. I just couldn’t think about this song without being taken over by some strange emotions that I couldn’t quite identify. In my mind I kept being transported towards a different place and time, with its own emotional atmosphere. It felt important and significant that I could almost glimpse this place and time, yet if I tried to focus directly on it or analyse it, the feelings began to disappear.
The song was “The Folks Who Live On The Hill” as sung by Peggy Lee. She was a gentle, sweet, sensitive singer and she chose to sing this song in the softest voice imaginable. No belting, no histrionics, no show-off climaxes. The song was originally from a stage musical and wasn’t sentimental - it was actually quite humorous, in its own subtle way, poking fun at some “white picket fences” folksy imaginings. The way Peggy Lee sang it seemed so straight and simple, yet for many listeners it taps directly into a deep emotional well and is more profound than funny.
In my recent review of “Unusual You” I referred briefly to the experience of “Sehnsucht”, and this, I believe, is what surrounds Peggy Lee’s “The Folks Who Live On the Hill”. “Sehnsucht” is a German word that, in its most literal sense, means “longing”, but the experience is a lot more complex and intangible than that. The great Irish-born writer C.S. Lewis, in attempting to explain it, admits that “I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you - the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism... the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something which has never actually appeared in our experience.”
He continues: “[The poet] Wordsworth’s expedient was to identify it with certain moments in his own past. But all this is a cheat. If Wordsworth had gone back to those moments in the past, he would not have found the thing itself, but only the reminder of it; what he remembered would turn out to be itself a remembering. The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”
Wikipedia makes a gallant effort at a slightly more prosaic account: “It is sometimes felt as a longing for a far off country, but not a particular earthly land which we can identify... At other times it may seem as a longing for a someone or even a something. But the majority of people who experience it are not conscious of what or who the longed for object may be. Indeed, the longing is of such profundity and intensity that the subject may immediately be only aware of the emotion itself and not cognizant that there is a something longed for. Yet though one may not be able to identify just what it is, the experience is one of such significance that ordinary reality may pale in comparison...”
Triggers for these experiences vary widely from individual to individual. C.S. Lewis gives his as “the smell of bonfire, the sound of wild ducks flying overhead, the title of The Well at the World's End, the opening lines of "Kubla Khan", the morning cobwebs in late summer, or the noise of falling waves.” The Transition Gallery’s JT 09 project refers to “images of intense urban wilderness... washed out beautiful boys... fragile Northern landscapes”.
For me, it’s the image of Baby and Joe in Peggy Lee’s song (even typing those words makes me cry), some Grant Wood paintings, the song "Wonderful, wonderful" by Johnny Mathis, the low, pink afternoon winter sun in a suburban street, overhead power lines, street life (hearing “Summertime” by Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince actually makes me feel faint) and.... Britney Spears’ voice. The songs that hit me hardest are a random enough selection, but here are a few examples: “Anticipating”, “Radar”, “Unusual You”, “Tell me what ya sippin’ on”, “State of Grace”, “Sugarfall” and “Why Should I Be Sad”. Some of these songs should be superficial and jolly, but Britney transforms them into something almost mystical. They all make me experience Sehnsucht. The words don’t matter. I barely hear them.The sound of Britney’s voice transports me to the edge of that elusive, mysterious place.
Is it because Britney’s soft, sweet voice has the same direct entree to the emotions as Peggy Lee’s? Do her off-stage whispers touch us on a subconscious level? Is it that the impression she gives of innocence and naivety makes us long for things we didn't understand as children? Is it because she ends words and phrases with a gentle, fading cadence instead of a sharp, snappy assertiveness? Is it because she always chooses quietness and stillness over loudness and drama? Is it because her unusual phrasing, steering away from conventional singers’ mannerisms, sounds so honest and heartfelt? Is it the way she sometimes holds back a fraction from the beat and seems to make time slow down? Is it because it sounds as if SHE is always searching for that longed-for thing that she can almost glimpse out of the corner of her eye but never quite grasp? This is a woman who has been on a long spiritual journey.
I threw out a lot of options there, and I’m not going to vote for any of them. I don’t want to influence you in any direction because this whole thing is very personal. I know it’s a very different thing to analyse how she creates the experience of Sehnsucht than to analyse the experience of Sehnsucht she creates, but each of you is probably hearing different things, and responding to different songs in different ways. Even if a lot of us agree that she calls up strange and elusive feelings with her singing, we may not be in agreement about exactly how she does it. I'd love to hear what you think, because I want to develop this subject further.
I have to finish on an anxious but hopeful note. The “Blackout” era was particularly rich in these strangely evocative vocals, and “Circus” has its moments, although far fewer of them. “Femme Fatale” hasn’t any, in my opinion - but that is ONLY my opinion. As she approaches her 30s, Britney seems to be leaving that searching phase of her life and moving into a more settled one, and its possible that this might be reflected in her singing. “Femme Fatale” seems less subtle, less sensitive, more assertive, more functional. Yet somehow I believe in that dear, sweet soul of hers, that big heart, that modesty, that lack of confidence, that awkwardness, that other-worldliness. I think she’ll continue to touch our deepest, most unfathomable emotions. I hope and pray that she does, because artists like this may only come along once in a lifetime.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
Image Revolution! Does she need it & what would it take?
Something came up in the PoorBritney.com debate on Britney’s image that got me thinking. I was thinking back to an article I wrote called “An icon has no image worries”, and at the time of writing I really believed this was true of Britney. This is an except from what I wrote, back around 2006:
“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 A Story, it’s all the accretions of a life well lived by larger-than-life people with larger-than-life appetites. Compare Britney to [her peers]. They 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 them 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.”
But that, you see, was when things DID keep happening to her. Since then, she’s gone so low-profile she’s almost subterranean. And that’s not a bad metaphor because she has pretty much buried herself. In our PoorBritney.com debate it became clear that Britney actually has no up-to-date image. And is it possible that you can de-iconify yourself? I guess it all depends on what you were iconified for, and by whom. If you used to be deified as a great dancer and now you’re not, and meantime the world of dance has moved on... Also, it’s pretty obvious that you can have minor icons as well as major ones, superannuated icons as well as current ones and so on. Diana Ross was once voted Queen of Pop ahead of Madonna. Barbra Streisand used to be the most talked-about woman in showbiz.
It concerns me a little that the Britney of old seems to have vanished some time around 2007-8 and left nothing but bad memories for those whose business it is to sum people’s life up in shorthand. Christina Aguilera was lucky, in a way. She’s still the “dirrty” but “beautiful” singer with a sexy image who took her clothes off for Maxim magazine. That’s a good one to stick with. Beyonce is still (even now) “bootylicious”, the “booty shaking” star. That one never gets old. Whatever Shakira used to be, she is now the “she-wolf”.
Britney has already been through most of the obvious transformations, a long long time ago. She was the fun, carefree but beautiful Katy Perry girl that every young girl wanted to be. Then she was the glamorous, sexy, edgy Rihanna-style girl. Then.... it seemed like she was yelling “Stop the magic roundabout, I want to get off!” It was like “How can I destroy this effing Britney monster whose face is on all the magazines?! I hate her! I want to KILL her!!!”
For months, fans such as myself looked in the tabloids with dread. Every day, there were shock-horror pictures of Britney. Every day she looked uglier, fatter, spottier, sluttier. She was rarely seen without a cigarette hanging from her mouth. She wore crude message T-shirts and torn jeans, she had her hair greasy and pinned up, she seemed to eat nothing but burgers and Cheetos. The media came up with the phrase “trailer trash” for her, even though she came from a respectable family, went to a good school and had never lived in a trailer.
You can’t get rid of an image like that just by cleaning up, brushing your hair and teeth and going back to your day-job. You have to replace it with something equally powerful, dramatic and unforgettable. “Pregnant Britney” didn’t really do the job, even though the nude pictures were beautiful and striking. But what Britney did next was so unexpected and so stunning, it actually did make people forget the “trailer trash” days.
This was the era of “crazy Britney”, the toxic singer who ran amok around town, drove through red lights, drove with her baby on her knee, almost dropped her baby in the street, dumped her husband by text, partied heartily with Paris Hilton, barely contested a damaging custody battle that consisted of little more than K.Fed’s team smearing her reputation, lost her kids, shaved her head, hit a car with an umbrella, went into rehab, then was forcibly hospitalized with mental health issues.
And there, for most of those in the media whose those business it is to sum people’s life up in shorthand, the story ended. She hasn’t done anything remotely crazy in 3 years, but, as before, cleaning up your act and going back to what you did before you became notorious just isn’t enough. If her icon/legend status is fading through lack of drama and subterranean profile, she needs yet ANOTHER dramatic, unforgettable, perception-changing image makeover.
The problem is, good news struggles to shove bad news out of the way. Usually, the only thing that can do it is a different kind of bad news. But if you’re clever, you try to think of a kind of bad news that doesn’t contaminate you. Like Rihanna getting beaten up by her boyfriend. It was all over the media, humanized her, made her more “interviewable”. She was the victim and no dirt stuck to her. Or you could take Cheryl Cole getting cheated-upon by her husband. Martyrdom helped her career enormously. The bad news that changes the shorthand of your media image must not be something done BY you. It must be something done TO you. I offer these thoughts to Britney with a nod and a wink!
“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 A Story, it’s all the accretions of a life well lived by larger-than-life people with larger-than-life appetites. Compare Britney to [her peers]. They 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 them 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.”
But that, you see, was when things DID keep happening to her. Since then, she’s gone so low-profile she’s almost subterranean. And that’s not a bad metaphor because she has pretty much buried herself. In our PoorBritney.com debate it became clear that Britney actually has no up-to-date image. And is it possible that you can de-iconify yourself? I guess it all depends on what you were iconified for, and by whom. If you used to be deified as a great dancer and now you’re not, and meantime the world of dance has moved on... Also, it’s pretty obvious that you can have minor icons as well as major ones, superannuated icons as well as current ones and so on. Diana Ross was once voted Queen of Pop ahead of Madonna. Barbra Streisand used to be the most talked-about woman in showbiz.
It concerns me a little that the Britney of old seems to have vanished some time around 2007-8 and left nothing but bad memories for those whose business it is to sum people’s life up in shorthand. Christina Aguilera was lucky, in a way. She’s still the “dirrty” but “beautiful” singer with a sexy image who took her clothes off for Maxim magazine. That’s a good one to stick with. Beyonce is still (even now) “bootylicious”, the “booty shaking” star. That one never gets old. Whatever Shakira used to be, she is now the “she-wolf”.
Britney has already been through most of the obvious transformations, a long long time ago. She was the fun, carefree but beautiful Katy Perry girl that every young girl wanted to be. Then she was the glamorous, sexy, edgy Rihanna-style girl. Then.... it seemed like she was yelling “Stop the magic roundabout, I want to get off!” It was like “How can I destroy this effing Britney monster whose face is on all the magazines?! I hate her! I want to KILL her!!!”
For months, fans such as myself looked in the tabloids with dread. Every day, there were shock-horror pictures of Britney. Every day she looked uglier, fatter, spottier, sluttier. She was rarely seen without a cigarette hanging from her mouth. She wore crude message T-shirts and torn jeans, she had her hair greasy and pinned up, she seemed to eat nothing but burgers and Cheetos. The media came up with the phrase “trailer trash” for her, even though she came from a respectable family, went to a good school and had never lived in a trailer.
You can’t get rid of an image like that just by cleaning up, brushing your hair and teeth and going back to your day-job. You have to replace it with something equally powerful, dramatic and unforgettable. “Pregnant Britney” didn’t really do the job, even though the nude pictures were beautiful and striking. But what Britney did next was so unexpected and so stunning, it actually did make people forget the “trailer trash” days.
This was the era of “crazy Britney”, the toxic singer who ran amok around town, drove through red lights, drove with her baby on her knee, almost dropped her baby in the street, dumped her husband by text, partied heartily with Paris Hilton, barely contested a damaging custody battle that consisted of little more than K.Fed’s team smearing her reputation, lost her kids, shaved her head, hit a car with an umbrella, went into rehab, then was forcibly hospitalized with mental health issues.
And there, for most of those in the media whose those business it is to sum people’s life up in shorthand, the story ended. She hasn’t done anything remotely crazy in 3 years, but, as before, cleaning up your act and going back to what you did before you became notorious just isn’t enough. If her icon/legend status is fading through lack of drama and subterranean profile, she needs yet ANOTHER dramatic, unforgettable, perception-changing image makeover.
The problem is, good news struggles to shove bad news out of the way. Usually, the only thing that can do it is a different kind of bad news. But if you’re clever, you try to think of a kind of bad news that doesn’t contaminate you. Like Rihanna getting beaten up by her boyfriend. It was all over the media, humanized her, made her more “interviewable”. She was the victim and no dirt stuck to her. Or you could take Cheryl Cole getting cheated-upon by her husband. Martyrdom helped her career enormously. The bad news that changes the shorthand of your media image must not be something done BY you. It must be something done TO you. I offer these thoughts to Britney with a nod and a wink!
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