Britney Spears

[skylynx]

I dont like WB at all, think its a terrible boring song tbh but I do like a lot of Glory. Make Me wasn't a good lead single, the chorus of that is so weak. I agree she needed something far stronger to come back with but overall in terms of quality there is no comparison between BJ ( where she hardly sung on some of the songs) and Glory, as an album.

HIAM and TTWE were very of their time. I mean I wouldnt really listen to the FF album now.

Britney's first two eras were amongst my favourites. I was rooting for her over Christina and Pink. I felt she had really melodic songs that were very catchy. I went to an all-boys school and one evening at camp we all started singing Oops I Did it Again.....i mean our tent started it and then other tents joined in. Yes she was THAT impactful even to mostly straight boys.

The thing with Britney's leads is that ever since Oop's I Did It Again they never hit me instantly, it took a long time to like them and I still can't say I liked them all.

I'm a Slave For You - didn't get the hype, If I remember correctly it was also a huge let down and it was caught up in the whole Britney trying to be a grow woman looking sexy conversation. Though now, i've grown to like it and I love the bass line of this song.

Gimme More - One of my favourites and I felt the opening bass line was also very iconic. Actually when this comes up on the clubs these days, everyone goes off

Me Against the Music - Had so much potential ruined but a very mediocre song and not very melodic at all

Womanizer - I remember this blowing up and a true sign that Britney was back and fresh, i can't say I love it today still. I prefer Gimme More over his

3 - I felt this was not a deserving #1, and rode on the success of Circus

Hold It Against Me - hardly listen to this anymore, just very harsh sounding. At the time David Guetta was doing great stuff and I much preferred the more meldoic side to EDM than this mind thumping chorus

[InFamous]

^ I dont like Womanizer at all, or the Circus song. I find them incredibly boring and just kind of "go-nowhere" type songs. I love Overprotected, Stronger, Cinderella, Oops, Toxic. I kinda find BOMT a bit overrated tbh. I'm not a huge fan of that song. I much prefer BTMYH or even Sometimes. I cant stand MATM, just a terrible song.

[JeremySpears]

[BehindBreakaway]

Miley always stanning Brit makes me so happy

[MrLeonix]

I’ve witnessed her entire career since the very first single “Baby One More Time”. I basically grew up with her.

I won’t tell my detailed experience with each lead single because the post would be so song but I will say that as of today “Gimme More” is (IMO) her best lead single and “Work Bitch” her worst one.

I don’t care which song was more or less successful. Based on my personal opinion I’d rank her lead singles this way:

1. Gimme More
2. Baby One More Time
3. Hold It Against Me
4. I’m A Slave 4 U
5. Make Me
6. Oops I Did It Again
7. Womanizer
8. Me Against The Music
9. Work Bitch

”Oops” is a mega classic but that’s the one that could be a bit overrated to me just because it was a BOMT pt 2 ... and “Baby” for me will always be the superior and original.

Also the first 7 are all IMO very solid pop songs ... only the last two (“Me Against The Music” and “Work Bitch”) were quite weak. At least I can appreciate that MATM wasn’t generic and had it’s very own particular sound, vibe and musicality ... but for “Work Bitch”, To this date I don’t know what to think about it.

[BehindBreakaway]

The work bitch shade wounds me

[BeeBoy]

IMO Work Bitch is much better than Hold It Against Me,Womanizer and Me Against The Music. Especially HIAM is terribad. There is a reason why it's so forgotten today despite hitting No.1.

[JeremySpears]

IMO Work Bitch is much better than Hold It Against Me,Womanizer and Me Against The Music. Especially HIAM is terribad. There is a reason why it's so forgotten today despite hitting No.1.

This is absolutely not funny, delete this immediately or my lawyer will be in contact.

This woman is a legend.

[mattsky]

My personal raking of her lead singles:

1. Gimme More
2. Make Me
3. Baby One More Time
4. Work Bitch
5. Oops I Did It Again
6. I’m A Slave 4 U
7. Womanizer
8. Hold It Against Me
9. Me Against The Music


I love them all, though.


Work Bitch is iconic!

[JeremySpears]

'HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUE' Britney Spears has been treated like a toddler who has no rights over conservatorship…it’s senseless, says pal

SHE was the biggest female pop star in the world but Britney Spears is now being treated like a “toddler who has no rights” by her controlling dad.

The astonishing claim from one of her songwriters is the latest twist in an ongoing scandal engulfing the Hit Me Baby One More Time singer.

Claude Kelly, who worked on her 2008 album Circus, lashed out as a documentary about the superstar’s plight airs in the UK tonight.

Framing Britney Spears examines growing evidence that the former Mickey Mouse Club star was unfairly painted as an unfit mother and incapable of looking after herself.

The controversial move to give her dad Jamie control over her finances, business and personal life — known as a conservatorship — was introduced in February 2008.

It followed a tumultuous year in which she divorced backing dancer Kevin Federline, 42, shaved her head, attacked a paparazzo’s car with an umbrella and entered rehab.

Britney lost custody of sons Sean, 15, and Jayden, 14, in October 2007 and three months later was rushed to hospital and placed on a psychiatric hold.

The documentary is at the centre of the #FreeBritney movement by her fans who say they are fighting to free the star from the shackles of a “conservatorship”.

Claude, who teamed up with Britney shortly after Jamie, 68, took control, told The Sun: “She’s 39 and she’s been doing this a long time, it doesn’t make sense that she’s being handled like a toddler who has no rights.

“The whole thing brings up a bigger issue of human rights and it doesn’t make sense to remove the right for people to live the way they want to live.

“There’s hundreds of other celebrities that have had pretty tough times like public breakdowns, public divorces or embarrassments and they haven’t needed to lose all of their rights.

“If that’s the case then we should all be worried because we are all going to f*** up, fall short and make mistakes.

“God forbid that someone can come in, whether it’s your father or your mother, your husband or your wife or whatever and decide, ‘You no longer have the right to decide how you live your life’.”

Claude is the latest in a long line of acquaintances to defend the star, whose treatment at the hands of her dad and a manipulative media machine is laid bare in excruciating detail in Framing Britney Spears.

[...]

Hit songwriter Claude has also worked with Whitney Houston, Christina Aguilera and Jessie J over the years but said he was shocked by the intense scrutiny which Britney was subjected to.

Claude recalled: “The studio we worked at has really high fences and they were climbing the fences and cutting holes through the mesh to get shots of her.

“It was literally mayhem. And she was actually very quiet, very shy and kept to herself.

“What I got was that clearly she had been mistreated and taken advantage of enough that she had a huge wall up.

“But what I remember the most is that for someone who had been painted as all over the place, a mess, tragic and sloppy, she was incredibly professional.

“Much like a professional dancer, when it comes to the art, she’s a machine. It’s everything around her that’s insane.”

Britney hasn’t worked since January 2019, when she cancelled a Las Vegas residency shortly after her dad was hospitalised.

She said at the time that she wanted “to focus on family”. Three months later, Britney voluntarily entered a rehab facility.

It has since been claimed Britney is refusing to perform publicly or make music as long as Jamie is one of her conservators.

It is now uncertain whether there will be any new music from Britney, whose last album Glory came out in 2016.

However, Claude says he recorded several demos with her which are among “thousands” of unreleased tracks she made.

He insisted: “Anyone is capable of putting out a great new body of work from her at any time. We’re talking about a mega star.

“She’s not a has-been. She’s a genius at it and you can never, ever, ever count out a brilliant musician like that. She’s always a hit away.”

https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbi...ler-no-rights/

[JeremySpears]

[mattsky]

We all know Larry should also be removed

[JeremySpears]

Still getting those ratings 22 years into her career.

[RayRay]

Watched Framing Britney this afternoon and have been playing some of my favorite Britney songs right after. She made some brilliant songs, especially to dance to.

[thebritneykid]

In The Zone demo,

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ECPFVZAgwq4

It’s decent

[BehindBreakaway]

Some of the comments say it's not Britney singing. It sounds like her to me

[JeremySpears]

Guys that song leaked in 2017. I've always liked it but it clearly wouldn’t have sounded right on "In the Zone".

And yeah it’s her singing.

[excalibur1814]

I also watched Framing Britney. I feel for her, I really do. What I didn't like is the fact that you felt sorry for her, due to Mass media constantly hounding her, as well as photographers REALLY invading her space. Parasites. Then, right at the end, the show tried to contact her for comment or to be included. Umm... LEAVE HER ALONE you idiots!

P.s. Justin Timberlake AND Britney, used their situation(s) to sell records. As usual, the press spin something positive (his apology) into a negative. I don't think that he needed to apologise. Same for the Janet's last post that was ALL about Justin.

[RayRay]

I also watched Framing Britney. I feel for her, I really do. What I didn't like is the fact that you felt sorry for her, due to Mass media constantly hounding her, as well as photographers REALLY invading her space. Parasites. Then, right at the end, the show tried to contact her for comment or to be included. Umm... LEAVE HER ALONE you idiots!

Then didn't ask her by following her around and sticking a mic in front of her. They don't even know if she knows they tried to reach her for a comment. I think it's the only right thing to do though. How would she feel if they didn't ask her? It's about her, she should be asked.

[JeremySpears]

Jonas Åkerlund Talks 10 Years of Britney's 'Hold It Against Me'

It feels like everyone’s talking about Britney Spears right now, largely prompted by the recent release of Samantha Stark’s Framing Britney Spears, the sixth episode of the Hulu/FX docuseries The New York Times Presents. There’s lots to say at a later point about the film itself, not to mention the spin-off headlines it’s inspiring. My biggest (and very on-brand) gripe with it, as I wrote in my otherwise positive review for AwardsWatch, is that it largely skips over Britney’s actual art:

With the exception of a couple clips from her breakthrough in the late ‘90s, we aren’t treated to any of her musical or visual output. This matters because it was the main channel through which she fought back and attempted to reclaim aspects of her narrative during this time. In largely omitting it, the film inadvertently makes it seem as if she sat back and watched as [Justin Timberlake released and promoted his “Cry Me a River” video], and as she became late-night’s favourite punching bag. (This was simply not the case.) The omission runs the slight risk of discrediting one of the film’s prime arguments, which is that Spears has never been as helpless or malleable as many have liked to believe.

That final hyperlink above is to Britney’s video for “Hold It Against Me” (2011), directed by Jonas Åkerlund. The video—in which Britney pretty heavily alludes to her tabloid rise, fall, and ongoing recovery—played a substantial role in my thesis on Åkerlund’s film and music video work (more or less about surveillance technology and culture, including paparazzi culture.) We unfortunately never got to it when he and I spoke last summer, so I reached out to him again when I remembered that it’d be turning 10 today. He gave me a call just after Joe Biden’s inauguration last month, a day or so before the trailer for Framing Britney Spears dropped. Here’s that conversation, which has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Yeah, she’s really a chameleon. So, I wanted to chat with you again because your video for Britney Spears’s “Hold It Against Me” turns 10 in a few weeks [on February 17], and you should know that it’s an extremely loved video among her fans. A decade ago today, you would have been a couple days out from shooting it. What do you remember of that shoot?

I don’t remember so much of the pre-production. I remember that we were meant to shoot it on location but we ended up shooting it at Paramount, in one of the big studios, which was probably the best because we had so much to do in one… I can’t remember if we shot that video in one or two days [two days, the weekend of January 22 and 23], it was a very quick shoot. We had a lot of stuff to shoot in one day or two days. And I remember all the fittings because there were so many different [outfits, styled by Åkerlund’s wife, B.], and then all the dance choreography. It’s one of those ideas that’s more of like a visual treat, and just trying to make sense of all the different sets and all these different things. And then all the stunts, like with the fight sequence and all that. It was a lot of physical pre-production, and then maybe it doesn’t show in the video but that set when her dress becomes really tall and she rises up—that whole set with the cylinder-like room with all the screens and stuff, it was huge. That set was so big. It’s probably one of the biggest sets I ever had, actually. It was really, really big. It looked spectacular in real life, I wish you could have seen it in real life. It was just spectacular, the size of that thing. It was a monster.

It seems like the video would’ve been a technical challenge, between the dress, and the paint, and the dancers, and the huge rig that lifts her up.

Yeah, exactly. That’s what I mean, and all the press was probably mostly focused on that. All the focus [was] on getting the choreography right, getting all the technical aspects. That cylinder room was filled with screens, and getting the picture on those screens—that was a big challenge.

You sort of put 2011 Britney in conversation with her past eras and videos there. Is she someone that you’d paid attention to as she was coming up in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s?

I mean, how couldn’t you? Of course, she was always around. We talked about working together for a long time before we actually did it. She had all this backstory with the lyrics from the song, so there was the whole idea of reflecting back on her life and her creativity. And she had just come out of all those difficult years that she had, so there was a lot to build on. But we did it in kind of an artistic way, and she expressed herself with the [dance sequences].

It was a comeback video for her of sorts. It’d been a couple years since she’d done anything. You depict her as this meteor hitting the earth at the beginning.

You’re right. As a video director, it’s like a dream to work with an artist like that. She’s multi-talented, she understands the value of videos, she has an ambition level that’s high, she’s a dancer, she looks great… all those things are everything I need to do something great.

I also love your narrative features, obviously, but I think your editing style really injects something interesting into the doc format. Just to get myself back on track, Britney stands out among some of your clients because you’ve only ever worked together the one time. You generally seem to be a repeat collaborator kind of guy otherwise, but is that just the timing issue?

I think so. If she asked me, I would say yes because I think she’s great. But I also know that right after that time, videos were kind of fading away a little bit. And then I know she did her Vegas thing, and I started to do more movies. It’s always timing. I don’t think there’s a lack of will there, it’s more of a timing issue.
There are several points in the video where you digitally enlarge her mouth, in a way that makes some of the stills very funny.

[Laughs] That’s funny.

There are fans out there that think that was sort of a message on your end, like her having this fake, digitized smile, but I was wondering what you had to say about that.

Oh, no. I think that was more… the basic idea of the video is like, everything is over the top. Everything is a little bit too much. She becomes 20-feet tall and she fights herself like a crazy woman and she’s doing all these over-the-top things. I think it was more of like a visual treatment, I guess, like a fun detail. I do love when the fans see those details because I spend a lot of time coming up with these small, fun things for fans to find, and sometimes they don’t, and sometimes they do. It’s really fun when they do. But there was no deep meaning in those effects at all, other than just making a fun, cool video.

With these fans, especially of pop divas—and you’ve worked with a lot of those—they’re watching things a thousand times looking for secret messages.

Right.

There’s another shot in the video when she’s fighting her double and her double kicks her in the knee, and some fans thought that that was on purpose, too, because she had this knee injury in 2004 that’s this cursed moment in her story.

Yeah, I don’t know if that was meant to be, either. The fans that analyze my videos are way smarter than I am. [Laughs] And sometimes I go with it, and I’m like, “Yeah, exactly, that’s what I meant.” But most of the time, it’s not like that. The knee thing was probably just part of the choreography. That was a challenge, as you can imagine, because she was actually fighting herself and we needed to put that together in a really smart way, so that’s a really technical scene to get that, the way it looks. We did it together with the choreographer and the stunt coordinator. We figured out the choreography of the fight. That itself is a pretty big deal, and then to execute it’s obviously even bigger.

Twins and doubles appear in a lot of your work, and I know last time you told me that it was a weird coincidence that you ended up having twins of your own. But you have a lot of videos where a star has a duplicate. “Gets Me Through” (2001) is like that, where Ozzy Osbourne’s seeing himself in all of these rooms. So is P!nk’s “Sober” (2008), where she’s making out with herself. There are creepy twins in Beyoncé’s “Haunted” (2013). Was there meant to be a meaning behind Britney’s double in the video?

We all know the problems that Britney had back then, and I think there was an idea that she has some sort of inner conflict. I think the easy explanation is that you have an inner conflict and you’re arguing with yourself. And I think one [Britney] is blue and one of them is red, or something like that. Traditionally, it’s always black and white, but we made it blue and red. But I don’t think there was much deeper meaning [to] that. I created a lot of that video in the edit, like all the footsteps and cutting the music. And also Britney letting me edit her music, because sometimes the artist doesn’t like to add sound effects and do all those things that I did on that video, but she was fine with it, which was cool.

I wondered about that, because there’s this long interlude where there’s a remixed version of the song. It sounds like you’ve maybe followed some of the #FreeBritney movement then?

I mean, totally. Like I said, the video had a lot of meaning to it at the time. She was at that place where she had a lot to say about her situation.

Right, it’s interesting because I think quite a bit of your work with Gaga seems to have been inspired by the same tabloid culture, and perhaps even Britney specifically.

Oh wow, that’s a tough one. I do see them as very different types of artists, I guess. They’re both talented and they both can do anything they put their heads to, but I don’t know. I think if something comes back in any of my videos, it’s probably more me than the artist. I might repeat myself or I might get reminded of something. I think it’s a little bit more that than comparing the two artists. I would never compare them, or any other artists I work with. I see them all as very unique and very special.

There was a weird rumour that TMZ started after the shoot the you’d had to use a last-minute dance double for her, and you and Britney both had to put statements out in response to that.

Ugh, that’s such a typical thing. I don’t know why that’s even interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever worked with… I mean, unless you do some heavy stunts, it’s very rare in music videos to have any sort of double for anything. Especially when it comes to dance choreography. When you work with an artist like Britney, she’s a better dancer than all the dancers, so why would we have a double? We always work with stand-ins that [can] stand in for light and try [on] dresses and stuff, basically to save time for artists and for us. Obviously, for the fight scene, that’s stunts. She did most of those things herself. It was very popular for a while to try to catch faults in music videos, or wrongs in music videos. I remember people going frame by frame looking for something that was wrong. But I have a very clean conscience… I haven’t really done that. I look to my artist and work with what they have, and [make] the best out of it. On that video, we definitely didn’t have any dance doubles.

https://sydurbanek.substack.com/p/jo...rs-of-britneys

[BehindBreakaway]

Enjoyed that interview. Thanks for sharing

[JeremySpears]

"I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman" was released 19 years ago today.

Legendary. I love the song I don’t care that it’s cheesy af. Her body in that video was absolutely insane.

[JeremySpears]

She's so adorable UGH. I want her to be the world's first official Queen.

[barney1814]

So good seeing her happy! Hair still needs a good brush but her and Sam seem to be going well, hopefully this guy is the one, Britney deserves to be happy!

[JeremySpears]

Britney was the most searched female artist on Wikipedia last week.