Britney Spears Comeback Can’t Save MTV VMA’s..
Posted September 10, 2007 — in Music News
The VMA’s looked like a beauty pageant that consisted of 9 year old dysfunctional kids. Is this what MTV wanted? to recruit an out-of-shape, out-of-touch Britney Spears so the public would laugh at her? For goodness sakes, these kids can’t even lip-synch! Does MTV get off embracing human failure?
If you didn’t watch the VMA’s then you were spared because it consisted of boring C-rated comedians and dancers humping each other like rabid animals with pot bellys. It felt like I was watching Animal Kingdom. No wonder why people lost faith in music - who wouldn’t? The entire show played like a drowsy dress-rehearsal.
Kanye West says he’ll never return to MTV…
“That’s two years in a row, man … give a black man a chance. I’m trying hard man, I have the … number one record, man.” - Kanye West to the Associated Press on losing at the VMAs again.
We wont even give this any more press..
I haven’t watched it yet but I want to see what everyone is talking about.
Comment by tim.towner — September 10, 2007 @ 10:01 am
I did enjoy that they played Justice at the show open and nearly every toss to break.
Rihanna video of the year? I dunno….Justice and Kanye’s videos were much better. West would have had a stroke if Justice won again.
Comment by A2daC — September 10, 2007 @ 4:15 pm
hey what about the fight with Kid Rock and Tommy Lee ?
Comment by larry anderson — September 10, 2007 @ 4:51 pm
Saw the fight clip…nice
Comment by Sons of Oswald — September 10, 2007 @ 7:42 pm
well said..
I think I just vomited in my mouth, Bob. This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen. My girlfriend calls me up as Britney’s getting on to perform and I think I laughed so loud the other side of our duplex heard me. I’ve never seen a performance so bad that I actually felt bad for someone before, but this girl made it happen. The whole thing looked like a high school talent show. The dancing was boring, the music terrible and there was no way in hell she honestly thought she looked good up there wearing whatever she was. I remember being a teenager and being wooed by her sex appeal, but this really made me want to puke.
On top of that, the whole show is a laughing stock. Technical problems, boring guest speakers (what the hell was up with Alicia Keyes?) and the worst comedian in the history of comedy as host, Sarah Silverman. Not only can you understand why the music industry sucks so much, but you really feel bad for it. If this is representative of my generation’s music, I don’t want anything to do with it. Give me the 60’s, 70’s or the 80’s over any of this crap. I keep trying to think about who I’ll be able to tell my kids about later in life, but there really isn’t a single one that lives up to anything my parents and older brothers ever told me about.
Please save me, Bob.
Matt Robinson
Student, Belmont University
Comment by leaves — September 10, 2007 @ 9:03 pm
Is It Fair to Savage Britney’s Figure?
“Did she look better than 99 percent of women? Yes,”
But what about the nastiest comments of all - those about her body? “Lard and Clear,” read Monday’s headline in the New York Post. “The bulging belly she was flaunting was SO not hot,” wrote E! Online. And so on.
Was it fair? Did Spears, lest we forget a mother of two, deserve to be held up against the standard of her once fantastically toned abs, sculpted by sessions of 1,000 tummy crunches? Or was she asking for it by choosing that unforgiving black-sequined bikini?
More profoundly, in an age where skinny models and skeletal actresses are under scrutiny for the message they’re sending young girls, what does it say that we’re excoriating a young woman for a little thickness in her middle?
On the morning after what the VH1 channel called Spears’”already historic” performance, the blogosphere was buzzing with opinions. For every “fat” comment there was an impassioned retort. “Give her a break,” wrote one blogger on Aboutthink.com. “The girl’s had two kids - I hope I’m a size 10 after having kids!”
“OK, she isn’t fat,” wrote another. “But she isn’t fit enough to be wearing (or not wearing) what she is.”
For many observers, the issue was not so much the body, but the body in THAT outfit.
“In that ensemble, you just can’t have an ounce of anything extra,” said Janice Min, editor of the celebrity magazine US Weekly. “Many women wouldn’t eat for days if they were wearing that.”
“Did she look better than 99 percent of women? Yes,” added Min. “But compared to her earlier form, she probably didn’t look as good.”
Besides, said Min, “Britney Spears has always been about the whole package. It’s never been 100 percent about the talent. Is it sexist? Probably, but she’s built a career on an image of sexiness.”
Talk of Spears’ physique comes amid an increasingly critical focus on overly skinny actresses in Hollywood, who’ve largely replaced supermodels as the world’s fashion plates. It’s hard to pick up a celebrity magazine without a critical photo of, say, Angelina Jolie’s birdlike arms. And curvy actresses are getting positive attention, from Oscar-winner Jennifer Hudson of “Dreamgirls” to Golden Globe-winner America Ferrara of TV’s “Ugly Betty.”
In the fashion industry, there’s been an effort to promote healthier-looking models. “Girls aren’t looking as skinny this season as they did,” said Suze Yalof Scwhartz, executive editor-at-large for Glamour Magazine. “There’s food backstage. They’re looking sexier.” At Glamour, she noted, a model won’t be featured “if she shows too much clavicle.”
The nastier headlines about Spears are uncalled for, Schwartz said, but at the same time, “when you walk around the stage in a black bikini in front of millions of viewers, people are going to notice.” She added that though Spears doesn’t have the perfect body she once did, “Most women would die for the body she has now.”
An obvious question is whether a male performer would have been subjected to the same standards. Many would say no; Dave Zinczenko, editor of Men’s Health magazine, says yes.
“Listen, any time you go on national television and dance in barely any clothing, you’re going to be facing a lot of scrutiny,” Zinczenko says. “Anybody would be asking for it.” Not that many people weren’t pulling for Spears, he notes: “If she had come back, she would have been the toast of the country.”
And certainly she had a lot to come back from over the past few years: Well-documented parenting mishaps - remember the baby on her lap in the driver’s seat? A messy divorce from husband Kevin Federline. The famous crotch photos. The bizarre head-shaving incident. Rehab.
And now this.
“I kind of feel bad for her,” said Shelley Wade, a DJ at New York City pop station Z100. “She looked really nervous. And then now, I’m looking at all these blogs this morning about how everybody thinks she’s fat and I’m like, ‘What! Fat?’ She wasn’t fat.”
How all this will impact Spears’ career, and sales of her new album, has yet to be seen. “I just felt like that performance was make or break for her comeback,” says Wade. “Now with last night’s performance, she’s just kind of put herself back in the same boat … everybody thinks she’s a train wreck.”
But the single of “Gimme More,” the song she destroyed onstage, is off to a great start in the Top 40, says Sean Ross of Edison Research, which tracks radio play. “A great VMA performance would have probably closed the deal for her, but she’s still got until Thanksgiving to do other good performances and to release a strong album with other hits on it,” he said.
In any case, it seems it would never be wise to write an obituary of Spears’ career.
“With everything Britney, we think this is the last chance,” says Min. “The fact is, it never is.
“At least this puts attention back on her as a performer. My sense is she’d rather be judged on that than on the rehab, the drinking and the partying.”
Comment by meandyou — September 10, 2007 @ 9:07 pm
At least this puts attention back on her as a performer. My sense is she’d rather be judged on that than on the rehab, the drinking and the partying.”
didn’t the “Titanic” stay afloat for 2 hrs before it “sunk”….
Comment by larry anderson — September 11, 2007 @ 4:10 am
Britney Cries after VMA’s…
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/showbiz/article-23411585-details/Britney’s+tears+after+MTV+comeback+disaster/article.do
Comment by koar — September 11, 2007 @ 8:28 am
You know, I finally saw this thing today and thought it was as laughably horrible as everyone else did. But to answer your question, Dean… Yeah, I think this IS what MTV wanted.
What is everyone talking about? How much BRITNEY sucked. They’re scouring the internet for videos and writing blogs about BRITNEY. Very few are making mention of the fact that the ENTIRE show was a complete trainwreck. I think MTV used Britney as a scapegoat. They pulled the plug on the Criss Angel contribution to her performance, which would have surely spiced things up a bit and allowed her to save a little face. It would have at least been somewhat interesting and she would have been DOING something through the whole song. Without that element, the stupid ho was just standing there. No memorized dance routine…nothing to do.
Yes, someone more professional and talented would have made it work anyway even if they couldn’t perform what they had been rehearsing for months, but that’s just not Britney, something MTV was WELL AWARE OF.
I’m not defending Britney or anything. She’s pretty worthless. But I don’t think for a second that MTV thought it would be a good performance. Sounds to me like they did everything they could to make sure it wasn’t.
Comment by AJ-KOAR — September 11, 2007 @ 3:28 pm