Can We Finally Give Britney Spears’ Music the Credit It’s Due?

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I don’t want to shock anyone, so perhaps make sure you’re seated when you read this, or at least have something to hold on to and brace yourself. Here it goes: This flaming gay geriatric millennial (may God smite the person who came up with the term “geriatric millennial”) who sought a career writing about pop culture is a massive fan of Britney Spears.

I remember going to her concert (my first!) and seeing groups of grown men there, and thinking it was strange and creepy. I now understand that (many of) those men were the future versions of me and all my fellow gay Britney obsessives—and, oh, how I was obsessed.

I did choreographed dances to her songs in my bedroom; some were attempts at meticulously recreating the routines from her music videos and some were, let’s say, “interpretive.” (You should have seen my “Sometimes” number.) I had posters on my wall, under the closeted guise of her “being so hot.” When people first started uploading videos to this new site called YouTube, one of the first I sought out was Britney’s 2000 appearance on The Rosie O’Donnell Show, billed as a backstage pass to her concert tour. (I remember this episode because I treated it like my own personal Super Bowl when it first aired.)

Michelle Williams Deserves an Oscar for Her Britney Spears Audiobook Performance

This is a preamble to not only selfishly seize any occasion to gush about my pop queen, but also to lend context to why this is such a big week for me. (Again, selfish!) Spears’ memoir The Woman in Me was published this week, becoming an instant blockbuster success and giving the world, finally, something to talk about besides Taylor Swift and that football man.

The pages have been mined, spelunked, picked over, scavenged, and [insert other synonym here] for juicy revelations about Spears’ conservatorship, her relationship with Justin Timberlake, and any celebrity gossip. Cynically, that’s expected, continuing the exploitation of Spears’ life for tabloid sensationalism. Earnestly, there’s an argument that this vulture-like fascination is refreshing: After so long, Spears’ own voice and perspective is heard.

If you actually read The Woman in Me—and you’re forgiven for thinking there couldn’t possibly be anything left to it that hasn’t been leaked and reported on—you’ll realize something sly about the book. By addressing all those headline-making items head on, Spears is also freeing herself from them. My biggest takeaway from reading the memoir was her voice. Like, literally. The Woman in Me is a great reminder that Spears’ music was and is a cultural force. Maybe now we can return to focusing on that.

After two decades spent at the ready to launch into a passionate, unimpeachable “well, actually…” monologue any time someone dismissed her music or criticized her vocal skills, it was a treat to read the stories behind some of the most pivotal moments of Spears’ career.

You learn how she fought for certain choices. Her label didn’t want to release “Me Against the Music” as a single off of In the Zone, for example, but she was so passionate about it that she personally asked Madonna to guest on the track in order to convince them. The evolution of her sound was purposeful and set musical trends, whether it was the rasp she introduced in “...Baby One More Time” or deciding to work with the Neptunes on 2001’s Britney. On tracks like “I’m a Slave 4 U,” she left behind the polish of an up-and-coming pop vocalist for the softly whispered speak-singing that became the album’s identity. In doing so, she steered the Swedish-pop confection she’d been known for into more of an R&B territory, a move replicated by countless pop stars then and now.

It should be fairly obvious that an artist with such astronomical success approached her sound with a fair amount of ingenuity. But even as her songs became inescapable and changed the musical landscape, Spears wouldn’t get credit. Because of her image and performance style, her music wasn’t taken seriously, and the conversation instead was dominated by her looks, her sexuality, and everything else that went into the business of being Britney Spears. In The Woman in Me, we get to read how Spears herself reckoned with that.

“I was never quite sure what all these critics thought I was supposed to be doing—a Bob Dylan impression?” she writes. “I was a teenage girl from the South. I signed my name with a heart. I liked looking cute. Why did everyone treat me, even when I was a teenager, like I was dangerous?”

And the preoccupation with her body and whether or not she was a virgin wasn’t just misogynistic and demeaning, it was also weaponized to discredit her work as an artist and industry game-changer.

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“Yes, as a teenager I played into that portrayal, because everyone was making such a big deal out of it. But if you think about it, it was pretty stupid for people to describe my body in that way, for them to point to me and say, “Look! A virgin!’” she writes. “It’s nobody’s business at all. And it took the focus off me as a musician and performer. I worked so hard on my music and on my stage shows. But all some reporters could think of to ask me was whether or not my breasts were real (they were, actually) and whether or not my hymen was intact.”

Part of the power of confessionals like The Woman in Me is in the shaming. We should be ashamed. We should also reconsider how we viewed then and view now the person who was mistreated. And, in the case of Britney Spears, put on some of her damn good music.

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