January 2, 2010
#16: 1999
THE NINETIES-IST
Welcome to another edition of Brook Pridemore’s The Nineties-ist. This edition discusses 1999, Britney Spears’ responsibility for the downfall of the music industry, Limp Bizkit and cock rock, and the death of Mark Sandman. For earlier installments, go here.
Okay, so I posited a long time ago (I don’t expect you to remember), that Alanis’ Morrissette’s Jagged Little Pill is the exact moment when the music industry started to fall apart, and that the real tragedy is how good the Morrissette album really is. Turns out, I got the year, album and artist of the downfall wrong, but I got the gender (half) right.
One bitter cold morning in January 1999, I’m over at my friend Rob’s house, imbibing in a wake-and-bake before class. Rob’s got MTV on in the background. All of a sudden, this gay disco (gay disco as a genre, not a slur)-sounding dance tune pops on the screen, amid this Catholic School setting, led by a Barbie Doll-looking girl in pleats and pigtails, moaning about something vaguely sadomasochistic (and yet completely homogenized). I spit out a heroic lung of pot smoke and doubled over, choking. I’d lived through the Spice Girls before, but they were at least sexual creatures: I felt like Humbert Humbert, ogling Britney Spears, and she was only 17 to my 19 at the time.
It’s a really dirty trick to play on a straight nineteen-year-old male, to make him feel like an old pervert for checking out a curvaceous, pretty and perky young woman on television, but Britney Spears’ handlers made it happen. Plus, the questionably sadomasochistic themes in her debut single, juxtaposed against her saving-herself-for-marriage public statement provided plenty of water cooler fodder for at least the next couple of years. Parents had something new (and Disney-sponsored) to deprive their children of, young dudes had a new fetish object, seemingly everyone had a new record to buy (…Baby, One More Time has sold an estimated 25 million copies worldwide), and young women had a new model of physical beauty they could never possibly live up to. This was a far cry from the promise of the Riot Grrl movement only ten years before, or even, for that matter, the batshit crazy Courtney Love, who at least occasionally acted in a good movie, and turned out three albums that she co-wrote and played on.
In the end, Britney Spears is like a Happy Meal from McDonald’s. Let me explain: in his book Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser contends that the McDonald’s Happy Meal is set up as such to overload a child’s system and leave him neurologically confused. The caffeine and sugar in the soda mixes with the fat in the fries and the burger, coagulates with the sweetness of the cheese and ketchup, and a kid’s bouncing off the wall, already looking for that next awful cocktail. Plus, it comes with a free toy.
More on #16: 1999
Virgin Megastore Closing Brings Us St. Vincent [Brooklyn Vegan]
Nine Inch Nails App Rejected by Apple, But Reznor’s Getting Married! [Prefix]
Tupac Twin or the Real Thing? [The Tripwire]
Fiery Furnaces Back in the Fray [Brooklyn Vegan]
Another Sweet 90s Revival [Prefix]
Coldplay, Get Your Copyrighting Straight [The Tripwire]
New Music Preview: The Cool Kids “Popcorn” MP3 [Prefix]
R.E.M. Reissue [Pitchfork]
Dark Was the Night Does It Right [Stereogum]
Britney Fans Getting All “Crazy” On Her [NME]
compiled by Elana Jacobs
February 14, 2009
Britney Spears | “Toxic”
HATE TO ADMIT IT, BUT…
“Toxic”
Britney Spears
In the Zone
2003 | Jive
I can certainly remember where I was the first time I heard Britney Spears. It’s hard to remember now, because she’s been more or less ubiquitous since that last, relatively care-free morning in January 1999. My friend, who was six years older than us, but somehow a college freshman, and a bigger general fuckup than the rest of us, turned on MTV. Something I hadn’t seen in years stared back at me: a made-up, head-cheerleader-cute, schoolgirl-costumed young woman, about my age, writhing in a high school hallway set, speak-singing a completely-innocuous-yet-masochism-playful song that she clearly didn’t write herself. Her teeth and complexion were unblemished, her grin indicated that she had only the vaguest idea what the words in her melody meant. I remember thinking to myself that, either we’d accidentally turned on VH1 Classic for Paula Abdul day, or we were in for a long ride of stupid, generic pop music by vapid, soulless people. Shoved down our throats ad nausea for time immemorial.
More on Britney Spears | “Toxic”
HATE TO ADMIT IT, BUT…
“Toxic”
Britney Spears
In the Zone
2003 | Jive
I can certainly remember where I was the first time I heard Britney Spears. It’s hard to remember now, because she’s been more or less ubiquitous since that last, relatively care-free morning in January 1999. My friend, who was six years older than us, but somehow a college freshman, and a bigger general fuckup than the rest of us, turned on MTV. Something I hadn’t seen in years stared back at me: a made-up, head-cheerleader-cute, schoolgirl-costumed young woman, about my age, writhing in a high school hallway set, speak-singing a completely-innocuous-yet-masochism-playful song that she clearly didn’t write herself. Her teeth and complexion were unblemished, her grin indicated that she had only the vaguest idea what the words in her melody meant. I remember thinking to myself that, either we’d accidentally turned on VH1 Classic for Paula Abdul day, or we were in for a long ride of stupid, generic pop music by vapid, soulless people. Shoved down our throats ad nausea for time immemorial.
More on Britney Spears | “Toxic”
December 15, 2008
Song Review: “Circus”
Fresh Baked:
“Circus”
Britney Spears
Circus
2008 | Sony
F
Sincere kudos to Britney for surviving and moving on from her recent, all-too-public troubles. Considering how much the tabloid press, paparazzi, and, let’s face it, American consumers sadistically savor such misjudgments and meltdowns, it’s quite an achievement for her to start piecing her career back together. My only gripe is the vocal talent qualification for the career part. Britney, for all the hoopla surrounding her “comeback” album Circus, still cannot sing. (Though having been pimped out by her backstage mom since a child, she can certainly perform. I once watched in a nail salon a television special she did. The choreography and dancing were incredible, and, since the volume was on mute, the show was quite enjoyable. Or, maybe it was all those polish fumes getting to me.) “Circus,” the title track, has a couple of okay-ish points, but it’s really not so bad that it’s good. It’s below the guilty pleasure bar. What ostensibly is Britney’s voice is nothing more than a computerized suggestion of her presence. There are segments with cheesy computerized clownish laughs. All intimations of musical instruments sound borne of computer technology. Sorry, but, at least as a musician, Britney is still not a ringleader. Perhaps she is a robot.
by Alicia Dreilinger
