My Journey with Britney Spears Part 3: Britney
As Britney entered 2001 she seemed unstoppable. Oops! I Did It Again was still selling millions, she had the Pepsi commercial and she even appeared on the Superbowl half-time show alongside N'Sync and Aerosmith. Yet it would soon become clear that despite her best efforts 2001 was not going to be Britney's year like 2000 had been.
The first sign was actually with the final single off Oops! I Did it Again called Don't Let Me Be the Last to Know. It did as expected on TRL and was included on Now 7, but it didn't chart at all! In fact, I don't remember hearing it once on the radio. Sure this was the 4th single, but even From the Bottom of My Broken Heart had managed to go top 30. Still the 4th single stalling wasn't hurting the sales of the album, which were coming in at 10 million sold so it was easy to brush off.
Word of Britney's next album started to leak and word on the street was it was gonna see her go in a very different direction from her first 2 albums. She kept saying she wanted to do a more RnB and Hip-Hop sound for her 3rd album. Finally word came that her new single would premiere at the 2001 VMAS. Like previous years the VMAS were still mandatory viewing for me though that would change shortly. Britney looking to top her last performance came out in a cage dressed in what I can best describe as "Exotic Jungle" fashion. There was a tiger, a snake, lots of atmospheric jungle effects and again Britney owned the stage like a pro. Nonetheless I still felt like her 2000 performance was much more shocking and gripping. Also I wasn't sure how I felt about the song either. It was definitely different, but I decided to save my judgement for the music video premiere.
Again like most of her previous music videos I'm a Slave 4 U was set to get its world premiere on MTV's Making the Video. So per usual I watched it ready to the tape the music video like I had done for all her previous engagements on the series. Based on the VMA performance and interviews she was giving at the time I was not surprised to see her push her image into much more sexual territory and try to shed her teen pop girl next door persona. If anything I had been waiting for her to do this. Unlike a lot of my peers I was a fan of Madonna, Janet Jackson and Mariah Carey before Britney came along. I had all their albums and music videos and studied their career arcs closely and they all had that moment where they really started pushing the sexual envelope and trying to change audience's perceptions of who they were as performers. I knew this was coming eventually because Britney was definitely influenced by both Madonna and Janet so this all made sense to me.
What I was not expecting was my reaction to the song. Whereas I loved Oops! I Did It Again as soon as I heard it I still wasn't that enamored with I'm a Slave 4 U after watching the music video. It was not as fun and hooky as I had expected from her. It felt jarring and I wasn't alone. Many fans at the time and some since still don't love that song. I will admit though that the longer I lived with it the more I liked it but only slowly. It would take a few years before I really loved it. Now I think it is one of her best singles. Looking back it was a crucial turning point for her career so she could jump off the sinking ship that was teen pop in 2001. Still it didn't saturate the airwaves the way Opps! I Did It Again had the year before and I wasn't dead set on buying the album either the day it came out like her last album.
What convinced me to buy her 3rd album finally was her HBO special Britney Live in Las Vegas. This is where I got to hear some of the other songs off Britney and the one that grabbed me instantly was Anticipating. That was the kind of bop I wanted from my girl. It was fun, catchy and POP in all caps. I also liked how Anticipating had a bit of 70s disco throwback to it that reminded me of Janet Jackson's All For You, which had been a huge # 1 hit earlier that year and I had loved that song. So one day when I was shopping in Circuit City (God I'm old) for Christmas presents I treated myself and bought Britney's 3rd album. I feel I got it about a month after it came out.
Overall my initial impressions of album 3 was it was good but I liked Oops! I Did it Again more. Still it had songs I latched on to quickly like Lonely, Overprotected and Cinderella. In retrospect I actually like this album even more now. Again Britney was trying to transition out of teen pop here but not all the way so sometimes it can seem confused. Yet now in the grand scheme of her career I can appreciate it more for what it is and I really think it's one of her most underrated albums now. This one got better with age unlike ...Baby One More Time, which I think for all its strengths has a lot of filler in the second half that bogs it down for me now.
I also bought the VHS Tape for Britney which had the music videos from 2001, including the Pepsi jingle! It also had lots of interviews and clips for Britney's new movie Crossroads. Now I'm Not a Girl Not Yet a Woman was the second single off the album and also had clips to the film to promote it as well. I'm Not A Girl, Not Yet a Woman I latched onto a lot quicker than I'm a Slave for You and I still think it's one of her best ballads. Unfortunately, I’m Not a Girl Not Yet a Woman barely scrapped the top 40. I feel like I heard it once or twice on the radio and that was it. It played on TRL longer of course and when MTV did their look back at the videos for 2001 they ended with I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman and it felt like a fitting cap for the year.
Still there was no denying it now, Britney was disappearing from pop radio. TRL kept that album propped up longer than it would have been in all honesty. By the time Overprotected came out I remember a local radio station did an audience poll for the song. They asked if they liked it or not and the outcome would determine if it was added to regular rotation. The audience made their voices heard and they did not like Overprotected. I never heard it again on the radio. By the time Boys came out I a pretty sure it didn't even chart and I barely remember seeing the video on MTV or VH1 at the time. I think I heard most of it in Austin Powers Goldmember, which the song was also attached to that summer in 2002.
In between all this Crossroads came out and the critical reception was mixed and the box office did not impress. It didn't launch her into films as expected. I didn't see it till years later in college when my roommate rented it for me when I was sick one weekend and had lost my voice. I think it's a nice little film that's a little darker than I expected it to be. Crossroads didn't deserve the hate it received, but I could also see why it didn't light the box office on fire either. The film was another sign that a public backlash with Britney was brewing. I did love the scene where Britney sings Madonna’a Open Your Heart in her bedroom because I may have done that myself in middle school.
Britney’s third album just completely fizzled out by 2002 and the teen pop bubble was considered popped. Now we had Pink, Michelle Branch, Vanessa Carlton and Avril Lavigne instead. They were basically marketed as anti-pop pop stars, which actually rubbed me the wrong way. I never like when pop stars act like they are above pop music and look down on other artists. There was a lot of that with this new crop of girls especially Avril, who kept insisting she was so much more real and authentic than Britney. I wasn't impressed.
At the same time though my own musical taste was going through some major changes during the Britney album cycle. I started getting into 90s alternative and grunge and over the next few months my interest drifted away from modern top 40 radio and I started listening to classic rock and alternative rock radio stations solely. So as much as I think the backlash against Britney was unwarranted back then, I did turn away from pop around this time too. The Britney album seemed like the long goodbye to my first era of pop music fandom where I exchanged Britney, Madonna, Janet, Mariah, & Christina for Stone Temple Pilots, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, Nirvana and The Smashing Pumpkins. Britney's 3rd album was a transitional album for me just as much as it was for her.
At the time it felt like that was it for Britney. In late 2002 I saw part of TRL one afternoon where they showed what was in the top 10 the year before and there was a clip of I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman. I remember the VJs (who were not Carson Daly anymore) saying that seeing Britney felt like a real throwback and to appreciate seeing that clip because we probably were not going to see Britney again on TRL. Knowing what we know now this seems ridiculous seeing as how Britney's best work was still ahead of her, but in 2002 everyone declared Britney was over.
Still I didn't fight this perception at the time either because I was too busy getting into rock music to defend Britney's honor. In all honesty I thought she was over too since teen pop stars usually have an expiration date. I had made my peace with Britney Spears. We had had a great 3 years together but I was moving on. This feeling strengthened as 2003 got under way as her ex-boyfriend Justin Timberlake became the boy band breakout solo star that survived the teen pop bubble. He was even dissing Britney in the music video for "Cry Me a River." Beyoncé also launched her solo career too and we all know how well that did. There was also a little show called American Idol that hit the air in the summer 2002 and became a pop culture institution launching Kelly Clarkson to super stardom immediately. Kelly seemed like the new Britney. An authentic southern girl but with stronger pipes than Britney. I also can't deny how catchy I found Miss Independent in the summer of 2003 even though I didn't admit it because I was a rock fan by then. Between Justin, Michelle, Avril, Pink, Kelly and especially Beyonce it felt like Britney was being left behind to eat all these other pop star's dust in 2002/2003.
One has to wonder though if Britney never did make a comeback if she would have been left alone to live out her days the way she wanted. Would that have been better for her as a person in the long run if she never released another album and quietly disappeared? Would she have avoided the 2007 meltdown if she just retired after her third album faded away? We will never know, but at the time it just felt like everyone had moved on from Britney and there was no way she was gonna reclaim her throne.
Then a shocking lip lock and an epoch defining pop song put Britney back on top which managed to grab my attention at the height of my all rock/no pop music phase. That story next time.
