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Britney's celebrity not about her music
Oct 27, 2008 (The Oklahoman - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) --
Britney Spears' new video, "Womanizer," is being praised by a few critics and many more slobbering, testosterone-addled he-beasts as a return to form after her years in the soul-destroying tabloid wilderness. It is seen as a hard-fought pullback from the brink in which the former teen-pop queen boasts a song with actual hooks set to a video in which she looks like her old naked-and-writhing self.
This falls into the category of minor miracles, but only because a healthy or even stabilized Britney means there will be fewer public self-immolations and screechy court battles ready-made for TMZ.com or Perez Hilton.
That noxious element is a cancer on entertainment journalism, and if Britney isn't ginning up VH1's "Best Week Ever," the world is a better, smarter place until the next bottom-feeding news flash on Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson.
"Womanizer" arrives near the 10th anniversary of the Britney onslaught. At the beginning of 1999, I was freelancing, and my toxic time management involved working on various stories and reviews from 10 p.m. Sunday to 6 a.m. Monday with MTV droning in the background. All night, MTV was playing "Baby One More Time" -- no kidding -- once an hour. The video began with a school bell, which made every hour of my slog feel like "Groundhog Day."
At the time, I was convinced Britney would be around for three years at best -- most teen-pop has about a 36-month shelf life before being consigned to embarrassing garage sales. How did she beat those odds and have "Womanizer" sitting atop the pop charts a decade after her first hit? It's simple: It was never about her music.
Britney still sings like she's calling sheep, and in the 10 years since "Baby" arrived, I can scarcely recall the melodies to more than four of her hits.
But that never mattered. She became a star because she was cute, then she was sexy, then she was a celeb-trash disaster.
And now, with "Womanizer," she's the rehabilitated comeback kid.
And next year she'll be something else, because a well-constructed soap opera never wraps up a storyline without introducing another one.
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