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.