Leave Britney Alone, Bitch!

I’m almost sorry about publicly admitting that I didn’t mind the new Britney single “Gimmie More.” As far as Top 40 goes: it’s catchy, it’s club-y, it may have brought a comeback of sorts for Ms. Spears who really needed a comeback and needed credibility even more.
That credibility crashed during her uber-shitty performance on a irrelevant award show on an irrelevant “music” channel. Clearly, Britney lacked any semblance of passion as she sleepwalked through the dance moves and lip-synching.
By the end, she didn’t even care enough to try.
Even though the actual show she was on was irrelevant, her performance was talked about enough that the movers-and-shakers in the industry will probably discard her as the packaged service that she truly was.
And here I was, for a moment, believing that perhaps Ms. Spears had taken some control (as in using Janet Jackson’s blueprint of the same name) and began a real career in the industry instead of being a pawn in it.
But no, and it has nothing to do with her weight (which is all people seem to be talking about even though she looked great after two kids).
It has everything to do with demonstrating that she’s a credibile artist.
And if she doesn’t give a shit about her career than why should we.

In other surprising news, I’ve hinted at some Top 40 love for one Justin Timberlake but it wasn’t until seeing the Future Love Sex concert on HBO the other night and, let me tell you, this kid is going places!
But seriously, it was the type of performance (killer band, choreography, costume changes, big production values, etc.) that made you want to be part of the event, even if that meant sharing some floorspace with thousands of screaming girls would probably missed half of the complexities happening on stage.
And at center stage was a man on the verge of becoming a long term star; Timberlake seems to understand the role of “credibility” when he plants himself behind a guitar, keyboard (or, no shit, keytar during one song) because he wants you naysayers to know that he’s working on improving his image.
Unlike Britney, I believe Timberlake had a passion about his performance and his music. He’s obviously hired some top-notch musicians to help him execute this, but for him to feel the need to actually use an instrument himself is pretty admirable, particularly when most of those in the audience would have been content with him shaking his ass and lip-synching.