Britney Spears...What came first? The woman or the merchandise? When Britney Spears first emerged, strutting her stuff in her school girl outfit, she was in danger of becoming an iconic figure. She straddled the divide successfully - providing frothy pop tunes for the girls to do their make-up to, while giving the hairy-handed teenage boys something to think about in the bathroom.
The ambitious Miss Spears isn’t about to let anything like lack of talent or song writing ability stop her from making it all the way to the top. She uses her one or two vocal tricks more in each song, so now her latest output seems almost a caricature of her earlier ’work’. She is clearly very impressed by her own image - watch her repeatedly flash her brand new cleavage in her videos.
It’s difficult to decide whether she has any sense of humour, or any personality at all. In her interviews she is glazed and seemingly operated by remote control. She smiles and gives all the right answers. Her attempts at humour - the Titanic parody in ’’Oops! I did it again’’ provide more gag reflexes than chuckles.
As pre-packaged and phony as Steps or The Spice Girls, is Britney Spears a real human, or a franchised marionette the record company fatbacks keep in a glass cabinet? You decide...