Womanizer – Britney Spears
Apparently Britney Spears is nuts.
Personally, I don’t spend enough time in supermarket queues to remain fully abreast of the day-to-day Britney soap opera. But tap ‘Britney is nuts’ into Google and in 0.09 seconds you’ll find over 2.5 million compelling reasons why she’s completely cuckoo.
Britney’s minders obviously have their protege’s best interests at heart and have taken matters into their own nurturing hands — all for the good of the lass, of course. For her own sanity it’s clearly the best thing to exploit the unrivalled tabloid profile with a new pop song. It’s just as obvious that, to shore up Britney’s slender toe-hold on reality, the song be about Britney repeatedly flipping out. And, to return a scintilla of self respect to the set-upon Britney — what with all those paparazzi shots of her sans pants, sans bra, sans hair and/or sans brain — it’d clearly be a great thing for this music video to feature her squirming butt naked in a sauna.
Really, you’ve got to wonder.
If there’s any good to come out of the whole sorry Britney saga, I guess it’s prompted pop stars the world over to ring home and pose an important question to their significant others: “Honey, if I happened to go stark raving mad, would you book me into an expensive sanatorium, or would you ring Entertainment Tonight?”
Womanizer is straight out of the R&B Lite, painting by numbers, songbook — a few crafty production tricks, not much actual singing, and the repetition of the word ‘womanizer’ instead of a chorus. Britney changes wigs and clothes (when she’s wearing any at all) with the regularity of a shopaholic strumpet in a props department, and spends most of her time terrorising some gormless be-suited jerk. Neck ties are yanked like there’s no tomorrow. Waitress Britney exacts her revenge by yanking bloke’s tie in a restaurant and pinning him to a stainless steel servery with a cherry stalk. Chauffeur Britney scares five types of heck out of bloke by yanking his tie, and steering the limo with her foot. Girlfriend Britney mystifies bloke by not yanking his tie and serving him a square fried egg. Secretary Britney shakes up bloke’s office by leading an ‘oops, I did it again’ dance routine among a sea of angle-poise, before yanking bloke’s tie and photocopying his head.
I’m not sure if you’re spotting a trend here, but none of this is particularly sane behaviour.
The clip concludes with all the Britneys yanking neck ties and pinning bloke to his bed in what looks like an act of retribution, but it’s hard to tell if bloke is terrified or can’t believe his luck. Regardless, the morality tale of ‘flirtation gone wrong’ plays not just second or third fiddle but maybe ‘fourth bassoon’ to Womanizer’s main game: Britney is nuts… apparently.