it's britney ...

[maura.livejournal.com]

well.

Comments

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

disappointingly unambitious video (girl you are better than a pole dancer) but she looks great in that hat at the start

[dickmalone.livejournal.com]

I wish Britney would realize that the videos of hers eveyone likes involve her dressing up in costumes, i.e. schoolgirl, stewardess...

[maura.livejournal.com]

i don't think she's really 'realizing' much of anything these days.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I thought the 'Toxic' video was a bit lame! My favourite Britney videos are 'Everytime', 'Slave', 'Me Against The Music'...

I can't wait to see this one.

[koganbot]

Better sound here (assuming it stays up):

http://www.youtube.com/v/tqZt9Qb7NP0

She's calling her new album Blackout, which is brilliant, and uncompromising in an obstinate way. A refusal to play sweet. I'm flabbergasted at how she goes from brilliant to inept from moment to moment. (Or maybe from partially drunk to totally drunk.) I can't say she looks much more alive in this vid (compare to this) than she did tottering around the VMA stage, but at least she's got a pole to hang onto, and a sympathetic audience.

The song itself will likely snake its way into my Pazz & Jacks Top Tens, very intense, though as I told Xhuxk, my reaction is still quite Smokey Robinson: don't like it, but I love it, insinuates its way under my skin, hard in a way that frightens me; gives me goose bumps. Apparently this isn't the official vid that'll premier Monday, but an officially leaked alternate vid.

"Gimme More" has been in the top 20 in airplay on the mainstream Top 40 stations for the last couple of weeks, though still getting fewer than half the spins of Pink, and not being able to break through to many of the r&b stations.

(By the way, Kara's got at least one song on the new alb, according to Billboard.)

[maura.livejournal.com]

Pretty sure that the "officially leaked alternate video" theory is spin from the diehard fans out there who are kind of in shock that this video is so crummy -- after all, this is the video that's available on iTunes, and there's no "alternate take" notation on the buy page. (I bought it, and most of the streaming-video rips are taken from iTunes purhcases.) There wasn't a lot of salvageable footage from the shoot.

[koganbot]

Oi. (Actually I might defend the video's artistry for making the most of it, using the cruddiness to create a mood, which it does rather effectively. But still, w/ Britney adding so little herself...)

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I like 'Gimme More' in much the same way that I like 'Me Against The Music' - nothing wrong with it but nothing brilliant about it (apart from "it's Britney, bitch"). I'm surprised that it's basically had a good reception, when it would have been really easy (and in keeping with the general nastiness) to dismiss it as generic by-the-numbers pop-r&b. 'Cold As Fire' on the other hand is AMAZING 4EVA, its existence is proof to me that Britney Spears' career is still v much a viable project despite appearances (and a more worthwhile enterprise than most other popstars' careers).

Oh yeah the video is terrible obv. Blonde Britney appears to be laughing at pole-dancing Britney, I agree with her.

[koganbot]

I don't know how general the nastiness actually is. In my sporadic reading of YouTube comments, some of 'em are "You whore" or "Face it, Brit, it's over," and "Stop this awfulness and take care of your children," but more of it seems to be, "I hope she takes the time off to get herself together and comes back strong in eighteen months." 71-year-old Presidential candidate John McCain mentioned to a Times reporter that he feels sorry for Britney.

Maybe I like generic by-the-numbers pop-r&b more than, say "Toxic" (whose status as poptimists' favorite Britney track still baffles me), but as I said, the sound and the voice in "Gimme More" have a disturbing presence I can't tear away from. (I've come across what might be an actual album demo of "Piece Of Me," but haven't listened yet. My prediction is that it will not strike me as inspired by Tori Amos.)

I hope that (1) Britney cleans up, (2) without losing her recent causticness. She's unexpectedly morphed into Grace Slick, at least on her webpage. And the title Blackout! (Grace once put out an album called Manhole.)

When I begin the reeducation of Alex Macpherson in earnest, we're going to start with Grace Slick.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

The name Grace Slick rings a bell! The Reeducation of Alex Macpherson as sequel to The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, I like that.

I agree with you about 'Gimme More', and generic pop-r&b in general, but the World At Large sadly doesn't share this fondness - I remember 'Me Against The Music' getting PANNED, but it's actually pretty good apart from when Madonna comes in sounding geriatric. It's all about pronouncing "you could die" as "chickadah".

Britney's already had her Tori moment, 'Everytime' was v reminiscent of an early Amos b-side called 'Upside Down' (but more little and more lost).

Blackout is a great title but I was really rooting for the Lohan one :(

[koganbot]

I want her to cover Lou Reed's "They're Taking Her Children Away."

[koganbot]

Grace Slick sang lead in a couple of rock bands in the 1960s. A few of her lyrics drew on novels by Lewis Carroll and James Joyce. I think of her when I hear Hole's "Violet" and Fleetwood Mac's "Gold Dust Woman" and the raveup that consumes the last half of the live "Rhiannon."

[koganbot]

False alarm. No "Piece Of Me." (The versions on YouTube certainly deserve an award for strangeness. I can't tell if its screwy minimalism is due to the shitty rip or if it's intended to be so screwy.)

[koganbot]

Oops, I botched the link. This is it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqZt9Qb7NP0

[datura800.livejournal.com]

Shit video or no, the song is now her second biggest US hit ever (in terms of chart positions).

[maura.livejournal.com]

thanks almost entirely to the power of the 99c download.

[datura800.livejournal.com]

Which means its position is because a lot of people are buying it, no? Which is surely better than its position being because of airplay?

[maura.livejournal.com]

well, let's give it a few weeks. if it sinks like a stone on the download chart next week, then a *lot* of people were simply buying it for the giggle factor.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

I dunno, I doubt "giggle factor" could go into the 99-cent purchase of the song, when you can watch her VMA performance (or hear the song) for free. Just can't imagine that many people would download it for money without liking it.

Love the song, think the video is...um. I dunno. It's right in the middle of some kinda nadir publicity-wise, and it's uncomfortable being right in the middle of it. She'll "pull through" by default (whether or not this coincides with her career ending or rebounding isn't clear) and I think in retrospect this period of time in her career is going to seem a lot more complex (and interesting) than the current culture-wide nastiness suggests. But I'm not going to say this is "intentionally" or "unintentionally" brilliant by a long shot (because Maura'd get mad at me!). I do wish that this didn't strike me as approaching the music video equivalent of the Nic Cage movie 8mm, though.

[koganbot]

As I said to Lex, I don't perceive the reaction to Britney as unremitting nastiness. I mean, how sneering and gleeful can you get about a woman possibly losing custody of her children?

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

But I think that what goes missing in this conversation is that these tensions -- which I think are being acknowledged at a social level -- are happening in the music, too, and I think it's the music that's generally getting lost in he fold here (we'll see what happens when the album comes out -- the promo leak I listened to is somewhat weak on huge singles but big on complexity in the lyrics of all places, which usually isn't where Britney even tries to draw me in). If it's as good as the promo leak suggests it might be, it will be kind of like her My December, meaning most people won't really focus on how the music/words are working as compared to her other stuff, and the shitstorm will take center stage. (But, interestingly, the shit storm is in the music, and not just in an exploitative way -- there's a little bit of tabloid voyeurism in there, but for the most part Britney seems really confused and angry; e.g., she's leaving her kids with K-Fed so she can go get drunk with an unnamed dude.)

Also, "Heaven on Earth," "Radar," and "Get Back" are all great dance singles, and not half as huge as most Britney singles (coming more out of subtler dance stuff like "Gimme More" and "And Then We Kiss," which kind of ingratiates itself, snakes its way into your brain/heart/whatever, whether its poisonous or kinda sweet, respectively).