Primer: Britney Spears

Formed: Out of the clay of Louisiana, Jive Records blessed her with the gift of fame, and so Britney Spears was loosed upon the earth. 

Sounds like: Twenty-second-century Nashville.

For fans of: America, motherhood, apple pie...and the complete opposite of all those things. 

Latest release: Femme Fatale, her seventh album (the sixth to debut at No. 1, a record among female artists), continues the platinum blueprint of club beats, sugary hooks, corn-pone lyrical tropes and breathiness Auto-Tuned beyond recognition.

Why you care: Because there are second acts in teen pop lives. Because 100 million album sales featuring a vocalist who cannot, in point of fact, sing requires songcraft approaching wizardry. Because, now and forever, it's Britney, bitch.

Twelve years since the lovely girl with the porny name and milk mustache won America's hearts with "…Baby One More Time," four years since the head-shaving, cooter-flashing, seemingly eternal K-Fed hole, it's easy to forget that the girl with the most Cheetos has yet to turn 30 or suffer a sustained career downturn. Britney's acrobatic carnality shan't age well, and save a peculiarly distinct dumb-blond-savant take on third wave Lolita-isms, she's never offered much else to the world. But by all accounts, she's whipped herself back to top shape for this tour: a typically Technicolor affair boasting 20-some (including Rihanna and Madonna) numbers. 

There's a reason such a sparkling array of writers and producers are ever eager to invest their richest efforts upon a recording artist with such vivid limitations. There's a reason she's launched a thousand women's studies theses. Spears conjures the parameters of the real, and we must confess, we still believe.


SEE IT: Britney Spears and Nicki Minaj play the Rose Garden on Tuesday, June 28. 7 pm. $29.50-$350. All ages.

WWeek 2015

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