There’s a Black Mirror episode — “Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too” — where Miley Cyrus plays singer Ashley O, whose minders distil her consciousness into a range of interactive dolls (the Ashley Too) for retail. As the real Ashley grows hostile to her bubblegum-cute persona, her aunt-slash-manager decides that she should be put in a coma and replaced with a hologram. A rogue Ashley Too recruits a fan to save the real Ashley, the hologram scam is scuppered, and the real Ashley gets even realer with some black eyeliner and nu-metal-ish music. Strike one for authenticity, guitar-based celebrations all round.
Except, if you knew about the #FreeBritney campaign, this felt like something else. Not a tech-flavoured parable about the commoditising effects of the pop industry, but a straight-up retelling of a story about Britney Spears, who for the past 12 years has had no legal control over her life while her family has made every decision for her. In 2008, Britney — who by then had been shockingly famous for a decade, since the release of “… Baby One More Time” — had a very public breakdown. She shaved her head. She attacked the paparazzi. She lost custody of her children for a time. She was taken into hospital strapped to a gurney, and all this was harrowingly documented by the eager press.
Around this time, I woke up in the middle of the night, turned on the World Service, caught the latest update on the Britney situation, and semi-consciously decided that the first thing I would do the next morning would be to write Britney a letter inviting her to stay with me. She just needed someone to look out for her for a bit, and boy am I good at looking out for Britney, who I’ve loved since the first time I saw the “Baby” video. I put a poster of Britney in her teenage bedroom in my own teenage bedroom and had to, excruciatingly, un-out myself when this led everyone to assume I was mostly into girls.
No pop star has ever arrived with such a perfect statement of what they are, and what they mean. Here’s the former Disney Mousketeer, now 16, surrounded by a pounding Max Martin production, big-eyed in school uniform and moaning out every word, absolutely desperate with desire — with love, because Britney’s S&M-skirting invitation to hit her (figuratively!) one more time is all directed at one baby. And of course, we all knew she was a virgin. That was part of the sell. She had to be in on it, didn’t she?
Maybe my 17-year-old self was making some generous assumptions about how far Britney was directing this, but don’t teenage girls always make generous assumptions about their command over the world? Anyway, the Britney template was established: half unstoppable purpose (hit me!), half hopeless supplication (when I’m not with you I lose my mind!). On top of this, by her second album, the irresistible phoniness of this confection was being acknowledged in songs like “Lucky”, a ballad about a “Hollywood girl” who’s “lost in an image, in a dream.” She had to be in on it. Didn’t she?
The best of Britney’s fame songs is probably “Piece of Me”, which was released in November 2007. In it, Britney — by then well into her “hot mess” era, with two broken marriages and one abortive rehab stint — goes in on her tabloid image. “I’m Miss American Dream since I was 17… Mrs She’s Too Big, Now She’s Too Thin,” she chants. The refrain is classic Britney, part come-on and part threat: “You wanna piece of me?” It sounded like someone throwing her own coverage back in the media’s face and taking charge.
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