There’s a lot of talk about how Britney Spears’ upcoming album, Circus, is going to mark the former pop wreck’s rebound from a near-fatal career death spiral. Comeback? Doesn’t the second part of that word imply that you, like, went away for a while? (And we don’t mean those couple of short trips to the hospital.)
To be sure, Spears is coming back from something. Her recent appearance at the MTV Video Music Awards represented her reintroduction to an audience who probably best remembers her for stumbling through a notoriously shambolic “performance” at last year’s VMAs that nearly derailed her pop gravy train for good, not to mention several years of tabloid tawdriness that collectively feels like a Girls Gone Zany greatest hits DVD with too many hours of bonus outtakes.
See, if you’re constantly in the news and are proactively calling the paparazzi to chronicle your barefoot bathroom exploits, it doesn’t count as “going away” just because you’re not actually doing the job we thought we cared about you doing, i.e., singing and dancing and lip synching at concerts.
To be sure, Spears is coming back from something. Her recent appearance at the MTV Video Music Awards represented her reintroduction to an audience who probably best remembers her for stumbling through a notoriously shambolic “performance” at last year’s VMAs that nearly derailed her pop gravy train for good, not to mention several years of tabloid tawdriness that collectively feels like a Girls Gone Zany greatest hits DVD with too many hours of bonus outtakes.
See, if you’re constantly in the news and are proactively calling the paparazzi to chronicle your barefoot bathroom exploits, it doesn’t count as “going away” just because you’re not actually doing the job we thought we cared about you doing, i.e., singing and dancing and lip synching at concerts.
Really going away means either sequestering yourself in your suburban Detroit mansion for several years and rarely being seen in public (Eminem), totally changing up your game in the fourth quarter and polishing an already blinding image (Johnny Cash), not performing together for a decade (but still putting out terrible solo albums) and then triumphantly returning for a sold-out world tour (Spice Girls, Pixies), or walking away mad and waiting more than 23 years to play one last tour (The Police), or waiting 30 years and sounding just as tight as ever (The Stooges). See, we missed them because they actually went away. Come … back. As in, please, we want you to come back from being away.
To be sure, Britney is not the only guilty party on this career staycation trend.
To be sure, Britney is not the only guilty party on this career staycation trend.
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