If you like the Beatles, then Louisian-born teen-idol Britney Spears
is a milestone in popular music.
If you think the Beatles were the biggest rip-off of all times, then...
they were the second biggest. The biggest is Britney Spears, a trivial
singer and a trivial dancer dancer who has mastered the art of copying
the trends,
although a product on which the music industry has lavished millions
of dollars to create an overnight sensation.
And an overnight sensation she became when (barely 18) she debuted with
Baby One More Time, a catchy refrain propelled by martial hip-hop beats
(courtesy of Max Martin,
the same man behind the music of the Backstreet Boys).
The album Baby One More Time (Jive, 1999) will sell ten million copies
in just one year.
The production work was certainly state-of-the-art, but what "sold" was her
image of malicious (quasi-nymphomaniac) teenager and her throaty "oh baaaby".
She became the youngest artist ever to top the charts for both singles and
albums.
Teenagers around the world went nuts, the same way their grandfathers had
done when the Beatles first uttered "yeah yeah yeah".
The media scrutinized her private life and websites overflew with sexy photos
of Britney's tits and Britney's thighs.
Not having left much to uncover, Spears returned with an equally terrible
collection, Oops (Jive, 2000), that includes the new hit, the equally
catchy, romantic and danceable Oops I Did It Again.
But the fans remained faithful: this one sold "only" eight million copies
in one year.
She wore a tuxedo for her 2000 performance of I Can't Get No (Satisfaction) at
the MTV Video Music Awards,
and abruptly took it off revealing an almost transparent body suit to sing Oops I Did It Again.
Her virtually unlimited stupidity was on display at the
MTV Video Music Awards in 2001 when she sang
I'm a Slave 4 U wearing a Burmese python around her neck.
Britney (2001) and In the Zone (2003)
mainly capitalized on her sexy persona (the
"grown up" version of Britney the poster girl).
Spears was slowly evolving towards a Madonna-lookalike
and soundalike.
Swedish producers Christian Karlsson and Pontus Winnberg crafted
her Toxic (2003), one of the most popular dance singles of the age.
At the MTV Video Music Awards of 2003 she let Madonna kiss her on the lips
while performing together.
Her behavior too changed dramatically: after promising to remain a virgin
until she got married, she married at 22 and then divorced a few days later.
Then she got married for real, gave birth to two children, and divorced again
after just three years.
Her escapades became much more popular than her music, whether posing half-naked
for a weekly magazine or being photographed with no underwear.
For millions of middle-class families, she became the poster girl of
everything that was wrong with the middle-class kids of her generation.
In 2007 she returned to live shows after a three-year hiatus, and she launched
a new hit, Gimme More, produced by
Floyd "Danja" Hills and Jim Beanz,
but she caused a furor when she appeared
(overweight, out of shape and unprepared) in a tight bikini at an MTV show.
Blackout (2007) could be her most musical album, thanks to the
songs composed by Danja and Beanz, as well as the songs composed by
the Swedish duo of Christian "Bloodshy" Karlsson and Pontus "Avant" Winnberg, like Piece of Me; but thanks especially to the fact that her voice is dwarfed by the electronic arrangements.
Following a series of nervous breakdowns,
in 2008 a conservatorship was set up by her father to run her business empire.
The new hits were:
Womanizer, off Circus (2008), a song written and produced by the Outsyders (Dean Beresford, Kamran Main, Ervin Ward and Rapheal Akinyemi);
3, off The Singles Collection (2009), a song mostly written and produced by Max Martin and Karl "Shellback" Schuster;
Hold It Against Me, off Femme Fatale (2011), a song mostly written and produced by Max Martin and Lukasz "Dr Luke" Gottwald;
and
the duet Scream & Shout, a song by William "will.i.am" Adams of Black Eyed Peas.
Declining sales became obvious when
Work Bitch, off Britney Jean (2013) and another collaboration with Will.i.am,
and Make Me, off
Glory (2016) and written/produced by Matthew Burns,
failed to enter the top-10 charts, but
by 2020, Spears had sold over 100 million records worldwide, but she
was never more than a voice (and not a particularly original voice) and a face through which producers such as Max Martin channelled their own breed of pop muzak.
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(Translation by/ Tradotto da Daniele Resta)
Se vi piacciono i Beatles, allora troverete
Britney Spears, teen-idol originaria della Lousiana, una pietra
miliare della musica popolare. Se invece pensate che i Beatles siano stati la
più grande fregatura di tutti i tempi, sappiate che sono solo la seconda. La
più grande è Britney Spears,
cantante insignificante e ballerina ancora più insignificante, che ha fatto sua
l’arte di copiare le mode, nonostante sia un prodotto in cui l’industria
musicale ha prodigato milioni di dollari allo scopo di raggiungere un immediato
e strepitoso successo. E il successo arrivò quando – appena diciottenne –
debuttò con Baby One More Time,
ritornello orecchiabile sospinto da marziali ritmi hip-hop (gentile concessione
di Max Martin, colui che sta dietro la musica dei Backstreet Boys). L’album Baby One More Time (Jive, 1999) venderà
dieci milioni di copie in appena un anno. Il lavoro di produzione era
certamente all’avanguardia, ma a vendere erano soprattutto la sua immagine di
teenager maliziosa (quasi ninfomane) e il suo gutturale “oh baaaby”. La Spears
diventò l'artista più giovane che avesse mai scalato le classifiche sia dei
singoli sia degli album. I teenager di tutto il mondo impazzirono per lei, così
come era successo ai loro nonni quando i primi Beatles urlavano “yeah yeah
yeah”. I media vagliarono attentamente la sua vita privata e sui siti Internet proliferarono
le foto osé delle sue tette e delle sue cosce.
Non
avendo lasciato molto da scoprire, la Spears ritornò con un’altra raccolta altrettanto
terribile, Oops (Jive, 2000), che
include la nuova hit Oops I Did It Again,
altrettanto orecchiabile, romantica e ballabile. Ma i fan le restarono fedeli: l’album
vendette “solo” otto milioni di copie in un anno.
Britney (2001) e In the Zone (2003) puntavano principalmente sul suo
personaggio sexy (la versione “cresciuta” di Britney, la ragazza modello). La
Spears si tramutò lentamente nella copia fisica e musicale di Madonna.
Anche
il suo comportamento mutò drasticamente: dopo aver giurato di rimanere vergine
fino al matrimonio, si sposò all’età di ventidue anni e divorziò pochi giorni
dopo. Poi si risposò sul serio, ebbe due bambini, e divorziò nuovamente dopo
soli tre anni. Le sue scappatelle diventarono più note della sua musica, sia
che posasse seminuda per un settimanale sia che si facesse ritrarre senza
intimo. Per milioni di famiglie borghesi, diventò l’icona di tutti i problemi
dei ragazzini borghesi della sua generazione.
Nel
2007 ritornò, dopo tre anni di assenza, a esibirsi dal vivo e lanciò una nuova
hit, Gimme more, ma suscitò scalpore
mostrandosi – sovrappeso, fuori forma e impreparata – con un bikini
ridottissimo a uno show di MTV.
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