This made me cry

[koganbot]

The Elvis imitation at the start was great, and the amount of flesh on her body is actually quite attractive. But this is really really sad.

Britney at the VMAs

Comments

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

I think physically she looks really good there, in terms of figure etc. I'm not even bothered by that wig, which doesn't look all that bad to me.

The performance, though... she looks so, so uncomfortable and I think it flags up what makes me uncomfortable about the song; this isn't what she is at the minute. The mere sentiment of wanting more, the attempt at the sort of dominatrix thing... it looks like watching some kind of deeply sleazy nightclub strip act with some sixteen year old thrown up there to be fed to the lions. Britney's always played on being innocent/not and she's still doing it there but in a sort of... uncontrolled, unintended manner.

Oh, I don't know how to explain how I feel about it. It agitates me.

[koganbot]

My reaction and upset is way more primitive. If I'm a family member or friend, I'm worried that Britney's going to be dead in a few months, she seemed so obviously fucked up. Of course, maybe she merely had a virus, or had had trouble keeping down her food that day so was unnaturally weak, but...

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

Mmm, I sort of wrote all that off as nervousness on her part. I hope it was. Even so, she does seem very fucked up somewhere and it seems unlikely she's going to manage many more performances in the near future. :/

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I was going to post that tonight! Well, I was going to post that and Amy Winehouse's Mercury performance as a compare/contrast exercise. It is sad. It's like...you could tell that they'd made the choreography as simple as possible, and still Britney just...wanders around the stage, occasionally waving her arm three beats after everyone else. The bit when the backing dancer has to help her up the steps...aargh. I guess everything's been covered everywhere by now? The glazed-over eyes, the not knowing the words to her song, the shocked expression on Fiddy's face at the end, Rihanna's laughter...

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Alsom apparently Fiddy was interviewed beforehand, and he said he was most looking forward to Britney, because he really wanted to see her smash her critics, and he identified with her as a fellow artist. You get the feeling that everyone was rooting for her! Oh, Britney.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I dunno, having seen the reactions to it before the clip I was expecting something genuinely horrible - she looks bored, demotivated, nervous, someone who's been in her job too long, but not especially fucked-up.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

All of those things, plus every time she tries to do a fast dance move or move around the stage she stumbled and looks like she's going to fall over!

[koganbot]

Tom, this is her comeback performance, the one where she's showing everyone what's what and telling the world it can go suck shit, and instead she's lifeless, imprecise...

[koganbot]

Which I suppose is a way of telling the world to go suck shit, but...

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Yes - but I think the performance says "I really actually can't be bothered to come back" rather than anything more macabre - maybe she doesn't care whether the world sucks shit or sherbet.

[offensive-mango.livejournal.com]

I agree with you entirely.

[koganbot]

I actually think that Rihanna's laughter was for the pole dancer up above her (that's where she seemed to be looking), but nonetheless...

Interesting that most of the people on this thread didn't see what you and I saw.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Surprised that they didn't! (Most people I know, ie people not here, did see it. Most people thought Britney looked not just drunk, but as if she'd been drunk for eight days; I concurred.)

The weight thing is such a red herring! We've known she isn't slim and toned these days for ages, because she has had two children and also keeps flashing us. It wasn't her belly which was disturbing, but her almost total lack of motor functions.

[koganbot]

My ex-gf Naomi recently posted this on the LVW site:

you've met stephen, michaela's boyfriend. his sister, nina, was one of britney's backup dancers at the vma. she was the one in the front row on britney's direct left, as viewed from the audience. she flew on the plane to vegas with her, and transmitted info to stephen throughout the day of the vma's. suffice it to say that britney's blank-eyed stare MIGHT have had something to do with her (ummm, alleged?) consumption of adult beverages, both on the plane, and then throughout the night and during the day (the latter two reported ad-nauseum by all the wires and people magazine, among others). it's hard to look connected when you're still drunk or severely hung over. trust me, i should know.

Btw, if you scroll down, I've posted some equally classic (though more animated) Alice and Hilary performances.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Winehouse's Mercury performance - another high-profile train-wreck/scared little girl going out in front of an industry audience, but she manages to pull something special off, and saves the aimless wandering for after she's finished singing.

[koganbot]

Oh, Amy's performance is fine, though in a way I worry for her because if she can perform that well fucked-up, then she has less motivation to get help. But she doesn't look blasted out and emptied from the inside, the way that Britney did.

[zenith.livejournal.com]

The problem is that while I thought Amy was the star of the show at the dismal Mercurys, the gloss that has been put on her performance is almost that it was remorseful - "help I am so fragile and have been ruined by the drugs but I will try to be good now"... Whereas Britney being shambling but also kind of shameless is, wait for it, exactly the kind of behaviour that has been getting male rock'n'rollers adoration for decades - but it makes Britney a fat wasted skank lol hurr hurr...

[andthatisthat.livejournal.com]

exactly the kind of behaviour that has been getting male rock'n'rollers adoration for decades - but it makes Britney a fat wasted skank

I couldn't agree more. If I see one more comment on the internet calling her a skank, I'm going to explode.

*explodes about thirty seconds after posting*

[koganbot]

Oh, I'm totally with you guys on this; I've been extolling Britney in print this summer, here and here.

Honest reaction

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I was staring at her belly for three and a half minutes.

My inner feminist (and inner sensible human, too) is raging: "She looks NORMAL! This is what YOU look like! This is a perfectly reasonable body shape to aspire to! Why is this bothering the non-feminist, non-sensible human side of you so much?"

Non-feminist, non-sensible human side is countering with the following: 'That is a REALLY bad choice of outfit, she could have worn something just as revealing but that emphasised her lovely bits (legs, back, hips, boobs) without having this disproportionate distance between the bottom of her bra and the top of her pants. Something like this, perhaps:



Even just two crosses of material across there would be just lovely. Call me Trinny and/or Susannah but there's sexy and there's desperate. And she hasn't brushed her hair. Or bothered to learn more than 45 seconds of proper choreography."

Both halves are right, really. And both are quite angry with her for Not Making Enough Effort.

Re: Honest reaction

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

Agreed re: desperation of the outfit; she could have worn a proper full length evening gown and looked more appropriate for the thing, to be honest. It looked so much like 'hey everyone by the way, Britney is SEXY!!!! don't know if you've noticed' and really, given the overt sexuality of the song, she could have tried being a bit more subtle/classy.

Re: Honest reaction

[koganbot]

Oh, I think as far as her body goes, she looked luscious, and I didn't mind the costume at all. But the deadness in her face, the listlessness of the movements!

Re: Honest reaction

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

It was all a bit too Anna Nicole for comfort.

Re: Honest reaction

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

The only 'problem' with her body is that it looks different after having two kids than it did e.g. here



...but Britney hasn't realised this and (intentionally or not) is desperately trying to pretend nothing has changed. Another problem is that because this is the first time we've seen her body recently, we are harking back to old photo-shopped images and videos (like I just did just now) and our comparisons are skewed. (By 'we' and 'our', here I really mean the critics who have been saying she's overweight, and my non-sensible half who is wondering what the hell happened to my lovely Britney and is looking for a particular aspect onto which to attach blame). Sorry, this is all getting a bit incoherent, I've just got back from Ikea.

[pot80.livejournal.com]

"the amount of flesh on her body is actually quite attractive"

This is probably the weirdest way of expressing the idea "that girl looked hot in a bikini" that I've ever encountered!

[koganbot]

Apparently lots of commentary has been about her "paunch" and "baby belly," so I thought an endorsement of the flesh on belly was in order.

Train of fools

[koganbot]

Jimmy Draper: "'train wreck' makes it sound like there was actual momentum at some point. more like a train puttering to a stop"

Re: Train of fools

[edgeofwhatever.livejournal.com]

Well, after the train crashes, it's still, isn't it?

[offensive-mango.livejournal.com]

I've just posted about this. I don't really think it was all that bad. I think her demeanor and lazy/loose attitude was entirely matched to the song, and that it was an unfortunate choice, because everyone expects Britney to be highly charged and a highly technical dancer. I don't think it was great, but I don't think it was awful either. I just don't think it was worth remarking on either way. I can't believe the amount of press attention it's got; it was an entirely forgettable performance.

[zenith.livejournal.com]

The press attention I've seen (in the shitty London free papers) really seems like it's been decided that Britney is the ultimate sacrifical lamb for that section of the media that has a totally contradictory attitude towards pop music, fame, sex and women. It's like someone decided: she's going to be the one we really go for, and now is going to be the time when we really go for her. 'S fucked up.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure it is so much a "section" as "the entirety", now.

[zenith.livejournal.com]

Point.

[datura800.livejournal.com]

I think people are running with this and turning it into major drama when it really wasn't. It was a very disappointing, lacklustre performance, but she certainly didn't come across as 'fucked up' and all the rest of it. She just seemed to be terrified - and given the slating she gets in the media, and the sheer pressure she must have felt for that one performance, who can blame her?

To re-iterate - bad, bad performance. But she can still pull it around I think. The single is brilliant, and hopefully the video will be too.

And the tabloids really can go fuck themselves. The way they turned the entire thing into some disaster of 9/11 proportions was just sad.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

> To re-iterate - bad, bad performance. But she can still pull it around I think. The single is brilliant, and hopefully the video will be too.

I really really hope so. I love the single and have been humming it all morning. I just want the awesome kick-ass Britters back asap!

[andthatisthat.livejournal.com]

I was saying to a friend yesterday that, if you'll pardon the pun, I still believe (still believe!) that Britney will come back and kick all our asses - if not this time, then soon. It's just a question of when.

Unfortunately this performance has rather left my opinion looking about as credible as that of the bloke who stands on Oxford Street imploring me to be a sinner, not a winner.

Perhaps this shouldn't be seen as a bad performance in isolation, but in context it definitely was: because this was her chance to come back and wow us all, and it didn't happen. I'm intrigued by the various internet rumours that offer explanations for her general demeanour during the performance, but ultimately I just want Britney back being awesome again. C'mon, Brit. For me? Please?

I go runnin' in outer space, again

[koganbot]

My favorite Alice Cooper video (and a lot more lively than the Britney vid)

Re: I go runnin' in outer space, again

[koganbot]

YouTube eventually killed the link, so here again is that so-wasted-I-can't-really-stand-or-remember-all-words version of "I'm Eighteen."

My favorite Hilary Duff video

[koganbot]

Let's go back, back to the beginning, hmmm, I'm swaying aren't I, now let's plant my feet firmly, perfect didn't feel so perfect, clutch stomach, let the rain fall down and I'm, um, sitting down, ah yes, now I'm, I think I'll run to the back and see what the drummer is doing, OK?

(In case they scotch that link - so to speak - here's an alternate one.)