The metaphysics of Britney Spears

Earlier this week, Britney Spears made headlines for smoking a cigarette on a plane. I do not believe in extending grace to mega-celebrities over boneheaded infractions like this, but exceptions are made for Britney.

In recent-Britney fashion, the pop star took to her Instagram, that home of weird-yet-beautiful knife dancing videos, to set the record straight. "Some planes I've been on you can't smoke mostly but this one was different because the drink holders were on outside of seat !!!" I know, Britney! I know.

The headlines and backlash were muted. And Spears, for better or worse, got to speak out about the issue on her own platform, in her own words. It stands in stark contrast to another Britney scandal I talked about this week on the show.

Flashback with me to 2006. Britney Spears is still the biggest pop star in the world, but trouble is brewing. News coverage is turning more negative. Britney’s behavior is becoming more erratic. We’re maybe a year out from Britney, head freshly-shaven, charging an aggressive paparazzi SUV with an umbrella. This was followed, of course, by a years-long conservatorship.

But in February 2006, Britney was a new-ish mother, trying to escape a coffee shop with her first child. As the paparazzi stalked and harassed her, she made a quick escape – so quick that she drove off from the scene with her kid in her lap, not a car seat. The coverage was harsh, insinuating Spears was a bad mother. Even the then-US Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta weighed in. Britney had to issue a statement – through a gossip rag, ironically – explaining the situation, but the damage was already done.

Up until recently, I didn’t remember Britney’s response, just those photos and all the blame leveled against her, even from me. But once you remember it in its totality, it perfectly encapsulates the hypocrisy Britney has endured for much of her career: the same media infrastructure that castigated Britney Spears was the same media infrastructure that forced her into the positions for which she was ridiculed in the first place. And the narrative they set around Britney would always be louder than the one she tried to voice herself.

Jeff Weiss is one of the most established voices in music journalism today, but he started his career grinding for the entertainment rags — including covering Britney back then. That experience is the source material for his debut novel, an autofiction-ish work called Waiting for Britney Spears: A True Story, Allegedly (out June 10!). Ann Powers describes the book as "like a J.D. Salinger novel rolled in Hunter S. Thompson's hallucinogen dust,” and she’s not wrong. Jeff’s bird’s eye view is what makes his telling of this history so special. He understands that the story of Britney can only be told by understanding the media circus that existed around her; the circus is in fact the other main character. Jeff gets that.

Jeff writes of that whole baby-no-carseat saga, “You might think we witnessed something inhuman, but it’s just humanity unleashed on a world where all the guardrails are actively being dismantled.” I think the dismantling of celebrity culture’s media guardrails is a story that can be told completely through our everchanging relationship with Britney Spears. More than any pop star of our time, she is a Christ-like figure. If you listen to me rant about my taste in music long enough you’ll probably hear me say it: Britney Spears is our modern-day Jesus Christ of pop. Not because she's the greatest pop star to ever live, but because she has died, over and over again, for our collective sins. Sins of misogyny and hypocrisy and industry avarice – Britney suffered for all of that, while giving us bops the whole time.

Andrea Domanick, KCRW reporter-critic, editor of this newsletter [Editor’s note: Hi!], and co-host of The Culture Journalist podcast, joined Jeff and I on the show this week. She marveled at how much the media circus surrounding stars like Britney has changed since the 2006 baby incident, and the head-shaving paparazzi attack moment that followed a year later. The biggest difference might be how much stars like Britney have been allowed, through social media, to bypass the old gatekeepers entirely. Andrea wonders if that umbrella attack moment — arguably both tragic and “punk rock,” as she and Jeff call it — would even be a necessary catharsis for the Britney(s) of today. “She may not have even gotten to that point [emotional state] to begin with,” Andrea says. “The only way she could speak [back then] was by shaving her head and hitting the car and being like, ‘Get away from me!’ [But] I don't know that that person would exist at all [today]... because it's just a totally different relationship.” A relationship where it seems Britney can now, finally, take the lead on her own narrative, instead of having to have a public meltdown just to be heard.

Check out this week’s episode to hear more from the three of us on the metaphysics of Britney Spears, why the conversation around fallen women pop stars rarely includes Black women, and how celebrities of our current moment may have just traded the prison of paparazzis for another one they construct themselves.

And if you need even more Britney in your life this week (you do!), revisit her now-classic album Blackout. It was released when her career was at a low-point, but it’s quite possibly the most cohesive and danceable album she’s ever made. “Is this the *best* pop album of the decade?” Andrea wonders. “It is certainly the most definitive and unifying in sound.” Of course, all most remember of Blackout is Britney’s much-maligned performance of the album’s lead single, “Gimme More” at the 2007 VMAs. But the truth about Blackout is maybe the truth about all things Britney Spears: She was always better than what we gave her credit for, and we were usually always focused on the wrong thing.

Long live Britney Spears. See y’all next week.