Why Britney Spears is Overrated

I'd like to point out that I originally wrote this article in the summer of 2004. One might think me pre-cognitive for how far this young lady has fallen. But certainly nobody is now surprised that this pop princess was little more than a cover-girl. She is still a cover girl now but just of a different kind. I think she may even be another kind of cover-girl before her career is over. It would not be a surprise to me. Big props to Q for his original publication of this on-line. Enjoy the throw-back article.

Britney Spears is the most overrated celebrity in the market. Headlines cannot get enough quotes from this vacuous personality. Consumers cannot buy enough of her talent-empty albums. Men cannot download enough of her airbrushed images from the Internet, and corporations cannot have her artificially sponsor enough of their products.

So why is this vacuous, talent-less, artificial, walking glamour shot in such high demand? Two reasons and two reasons alone can account for this phenomenon. An excellent marketing team and a look that only the best money can buy.

I am sure that the girl can dance with the best of them, and (from what I read and see in the media) she apparently puts on a pretty good live performance. But does this showmanship account for the billions that she is worth? I would imagine that there are thousands of struggling performers on Broadway that would argue against this assumption. If this were the case then every back-up dancer in the theatre would be a millionaire.

No, this is the case of a young girl who was at the right place, at the right time with the right financial backing behind her to springboard a cute look into a billion dollar franchise. Now that the cute girl is a mature young woman, she is lucky enough to not have to tap-dance around the subtle marketing of her as a sex symbol. She can sell her sexuality, boldly going where now woman has gone before (save Janet Jackson and we all know where that got her).

Let’s not pretend this music star is an intellectual giant. Have you seen an interview with this girl? The vocabulary is on par with an eighth grade reading level and the depth of character is about as profound as a Sponge-Bob-Square-Pants episode.

So what is wrong with someone being at the right place at the right time? What is wrong with trading sex for money? I say nothing is wrong with it. So many people have done it before Britney Spears and so many people will do it after she is long gone. What I have a problem with is the misguided accolades that applaud the “lucky-hot-chick” for her talent and power in an industry that is made up of far more puppeteers than possibly any other business in existence today.

If Britney were truly a powerful music mogul then she would probably be able to make more money doing business deals from behind the scenes than out on the stage. And lets not even begin to argue over her talent. Even Britney herself has admitted that her voice is only OK.

So next time we award Britney a platinum record for the number of album sales, lets give it to her agent instead. And the next time Forbes decides to rank her as one of the most powerful people in the world based on her pop-culture exposure, lets take away all the pimply-faced boys that are using her Internet images to live out their unfulfilled prom-night fantasies. They are a fare-weather bunch that will quickly tire of her and move on to the next latest and greatest beauty anyway.

I’ll not argue the pervasive popularity of Britney. I just see a whole lot of style and very little substance. -Summer 2004-