Niagara Gazette

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November 1, 2007

LANE: Oops, album-buyers are doing it again

By Paul Lane/lanep@gnnewspaper.com

Oops, album-buyers are doing it again

Let’s say over the course of a year you:

• Dropped out of rehab after a day.

• Cut your hair off in a fit of insanity.

• Went to/left/returned to rehab again.

• Lost custody of your children to the only male to rival O.J. Simpson as the world’s most horrible human being.

• Attacked a photographer with an umbrella.

• Gave a musical performance on live television that makes Roseanne Barr singing the national anthem look like Pavarotti ... wait, she kinda does ... make that SOUND like Pavarotti.

• Got charged with being in a hit-and-run after having your license suspended.

Would you be a candidate for extermination for the greater public good? Perhaps. Would you be allowed to keep your job? Only if you’re a Cincinnati Bengal.

Britney Spears can’t throw a spiral for anything, but the troubled pop star is set to rake in millions more despite her wealth of troubles with her album that dropped this week.

Spears — despite having a computer-aided voice that’s indistinguishable from the ’80s game Simon — has received rave early reviews for “Blackout,” which features the chart-topping single “Gimme More.”

Aside from the fact that ants whisper with more authority than she sings and she’s never met a synthesizer she didn’t abuse, Spears has no realistic business residing atop the Billboard charts once again.

Spears was losing her sharpness four years ago when she released “In the Zone” (which debuted at No. 1) and has continued to dull by the day mentally since then. Yet she’s set once again to bring home some platinum in a few weeks and cash in on the inevitable tour (people might go just for the train wreck factor of how much farther she’s fallen, but that’s money for her either way).

If there’s one positive about failing to wear underwear in public, it’s that your name at least gets in the paper (Lord knows The Backstreet Boys, whose “Unbreakable” also came out this week, could use the publicity). It seems unfathomable, though, that fans will continue to crawl back to Spears.

The question we have to ask ourselves — aside from, “You mean The Backstreet Boys are still together?” — is why we continue to accept this garbage from stars. You can’t blame Britney for that; even Michael Jackson sold 8 million copies worldwide of his “Invincible” album in 2001, years after his status as a Martian was verified.

To be fair, people deserve second chances, and those struggling with life issues deserve to get the help they need. But that’s where it should end — help. If you keep telling someone you’ll accept them, they’ll never change.

Ignore her, and she might just go away.

It could also be that Spears’ struggles have humanized the pop icon. Perhaps, but the tribulations of hundreds of rock bands across the region and nation who have to sell equipment for food and cram eight people into a car to a gig are way more real that most anything Spears has seen.

Seriously, what does she offer anymore?

Quality vocals? Sure, if you’re an “American Idol” reject.

Meaningful lyrics? You be the judge: “Gimme gimme more/gimme more/gimme gimme more.”

Innovative dance moves? Compared to a beached whale, perhaps.

Role model for children? Umm, next.

Yet she’ll sell big because someone put a dance-hall hook behind her insipid singing that makes her album ideal for “play today, forgotten tomorrow” status. That’s fine if you’re the Baha Men, but Spears has way too much money and past success to sink to “Who Let the Dogs Out” level.

Like Todd Bridges, Danny Bonaduce and countless other youth stars, Spears as a teenager already had no higher to go. Still, who would have thought she’d sink so far?

Perhaps it’s a bit of jealously speaking, but there’s no way someone who’s tried to destroy herself (and others) the way Spears has in 2007 deserves a giant bag of cash to be dropped off at her door. Hopefully she’ll at least use that money for something positive and begin to turn herself around.

But if not, just imagine the bender you can go on with that kind of dough.

Why not jump onto MySpace for the third time today and check out Night and Day. Don't be afraid to ask for a friend add — we're just as anxious to raise our count as you.

Contact reporter Paul Lane at 282-2311, ext. 2251,or lanep@gnnewspaper.com.





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