Madame Tussaud unveiled a new Britney Spears waxwork in London. And why not? She has yet another hit single with Will I Am. "Scream And Shout" and while I prefer "Big Fat Bass", well, I still don't mind it at all. And Will I Am tweeted they are working together on a third song.
I like Britney a lot though, admittedly, she was kinda lousy when I saw her at the Prudential (with Nicki Minaj opening, who was also lousy). At least, Britney was terrible as far as it goes. She was better when I caught her at MSG maybe five years earlier, swinging from a singing and warbling "Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman".
Brit is a kinda strange story, trailer trash who got her first big break on The Mickey Mouse Club (man, who did the hiring for that show?) and went on to go from jail bait to just simple bait and then dumped her schoolgirl in white panties look to slowly but surely become: white trash in heels hell raiser and then collapsed under the weight of fame and then…
Well, right now she seems like a waxwork any way. There is something about Spears that feels in a perpetual state of over medication and over handling. As if everything in her life is on a short wire that leads to her mouth and Spears herself is bored to death. She has her kids, she has her mansions and she has cut herself off completely from the world. She is like a Howard Hughes type character but it is a Howard Hughes of the mind.
Occasionally the real woman would show up, screaming at a retail employee: "I'M NOT WHO YOU THINK I AM", shaving off her hair (to save herself from a drug test, or so goes the rumor), dating a member of the paparazzi. But that isn't what was wanted from her and she retreated, lip syncing through concerts and sleep walking through talent shows. The only place where there was no question was in her record albums and remixes, always hits and, on Blackout at least, a lot more. After "Piece Of me" -whether she wrote a single letter of it or not, it became obvious she had become what she was.
Meanwhile, Britney is tired. lethargic, not into it. She looks drugged to the eyeballs but perhaps it is more a mental shadowing, a closing down to a public that want a piece of her but only in the worst way.