Can We Finally Give Britney’ s Music the Credit It’s Due?

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This Week

My biggest takeaway from Britney’s memoir.

Christine Baranski in a fancy hat has returned!

Round of applause for Kyle Richards.

Weirdest movie ever.

A question to ponder.

Me Against the Music

I don’t want to shock anyone, so perhaps make sure you’re seated when you read this, or at least have something to hold on to and brace yourself. Here it goes: This flaming gay geriatric millennial (may God smite the person who came up with the term “geriatric millennial”) who sought a career writing about pop culture is a massive fan of Britney Spears.

I remember going to her concert (my first!) and seeing groups of grown men there, and thinking it was strange and creepy. I now understand that (many of) those men were the future versions of me and all my fellow gay Britney obsessives—and, oh, how I was obsessed.

I did choreographed dances to her songs in my bedroom; some were attempts at meticulously recreating the routines from her music videos and some were, let’s say, “interpretive.” (You should have seen my “Sometimes” number.) I had posters on my wall, under the closeted guise of her “being so hot.” When people first started uploading videos to this new site called YouTube, one of the first I sought out was Britney’s 2000 appearance on The Rosie O’Donnell Show, billed as a backstage pass to her concert tour. (I remember this episode because I treated it like my own personal Super Bowl when it first aired.)

This is a preamble to not only selfishly seize any occasion to gush about my pop queen, but also to lend context to why this is such a big week for me. (Again, selfish!)

Spears’ memoir The Woman in Me was published this week, becoming an instant blockbuster success and giving the world, finally, something to talk about besides Taylor Swift and that football man.

The pages have been mined, spelunked, picked over, scavenged, and [insert other synonym here] for juicy revelations about Spears’ conservatorship, her relationship with Justin Timberlake, and any celebrity gossip. Cynically, that’s expected, continuing the exploitation of Spears’ life for tabloid sensationalism. Earnestly, there’s an argument that this vulture-like fascination is refreshing: After so long, Spears’ own voice and perspective is heard.

If you actually read The Woman in Me—and you’re forgiven for thinking there couldn’t possibly be anything left to it that hasn’t been leaked and reported on—you’ll realize something sly about the book. By addressing all those headline-making items head on, Spears is also freeing herself from them. My biggest takeaway from reading the memoir was her voice. Like, literally. The Woman in Me is a great reminder that Spears’ music was and is a cultural force. Maybe now we can return to focusing on that.

After two decades spent at the ready to launch into a passionate, unimpeachable “well, actually…” monologue any time someone dismissed her music or criticized her vocal skills, it was a treat to read the stories behind some of the most pivotal moments of Spears’ career.

You learn how she fought for certain choices. Her label didn’t want to release “Me Against the Music” as a single off of In the Zone, for example, but she was so passionate about it that she personally asked Madonna to guest on the track in order to convince them. The evolution of her sound was purposeful and set musical trends, whether it was the rasp she introduced in “...Baby One More Time” or deciding to work with the Neptunes on 2001’s Britney. On tracks like “I’m a Slave 4 U,” she left behind the polish of an up-and-coming pop vocalist for the softly whispered speak-singing that became the album’s identity. In doing so, she steered the Swedish-pop confection she’d been known for into more of an R&B territory, a move replicated by countless pop stars then and now.

It should be fairly obvious that an artist with such astronomical success approached her sound with a fair amount of ingenuity. But even as her songs became inescapable and changed the musical landscape, Spears wouldn’t get credit. Because of her image and performance style, her music wasn’t taken seriously, and the conversation instead was dominated by her looks, her sexuality, and everything else that went into the business of being Britney Spears. In The Woman in Me, we get to read how Spears herself reckoned with that.

“I was never quite sure what all these critics thought I was supposed to be doing—a Bob Dylan impression?” she writes. “I was a teenage girl from the South. I signed my name with a heart. I liked looking cute. Why did everyone treat me, even when I was a teenager, like I was dangerous?”

And the preoccupation with her body and whether or not she was a virgin wasn’t just misogynistic and demeaning, it was also weaponized to discredit her work as an artist and industry game-changer.

“Yes, as a teenager I played into that portrayal, because everyone was making such a big deal out of it. But if you think about it, it was pretty stupid for people to describe my body in that way, for them to point to me and say, “Look! A virgin!’” she writes. “It’s nobody’s business at all. And it took the focus off me as a musician and performer. I worked so hard on my music and on my stage shows. But all some reporters could think of to ask me was whether or not my breasts were real (they were, actually) and whether or not my hymen was intact.”

Part of the power of confessionals like The Woman in Me is in the shaming. We should be ashamed. We should also reconsider how we viewed then and view now the person who was mistreated. And, in the case of Britney Spears, put on some of her damn good music.

My Beautiful Bad Show Is Back

The most thrilling television event of the year is upon. It is perhaps the tensest, most explosive drama we may see, likely to elicit the most tremorous reactions from those who dare to watch. The Gilded Age is returning, and with it, the series’ incendiary question: Who will cross the street?

There is a certain bliss to a series like The Gilded Age, which returns Sunday for Season 2 on HBO. Like its spiritual prequel Downton Abbey, which was also created by Julian Fellowes, Gilded Age builds a minor soap opera around a central foundation: rich, old-money folk who are aghast at modern interlopers who don’t abide by their traditions. I kid you not, the main concern of the first season was whether or not to attend social functions at the neighbor’s house across the street. Not since Sybil wore pants on Downton has there been such hysteria surrounding matters so trivial-seeming or mundane.

But that’s the beauty of these period series. (As its title suggests, Gilded Age is set in 1880s New York City, when a financial boom allowed new-money robber barons into the previously fortified walls of high society, where its members were at odds about how much to accept their presence.)

In The Gilded Age there is, of course, the high-stakes drama and intrigue that you would expect from Fellowes—secret romances, secret babies, and secret death coverups. But they are, gloriously, treated with the equal heft of an afternoon tea gone wrong, a chef serving the wrong soup, or a woman seen conversing with someone who is beneath her station. The Season 2 premiere triggers two narrative earthquakes: A fancy lady is horrified to learn that her niece is teaching art classes—not a woman having a job!—and a bunch of people are thinking about going to a different opera house. It’s so silly as to be utterly riveting.

Through it all, Carrie Coon delivers one of TV’s most transfixing performances, in that it is both utterly bizarre and absolutely brilliant. Her character and her husband, played by Morgan Spector, have electric sexual chemistry, making you yearn for this series to turn into a (literal) bodice-ripper. Christine Baranksi gets to be pretentious and cranky and yell at Cynthia Nixon. The always flawless Audra McDonald is there. Is any of their material good? No! But the fun is watching thespians elevate garbage into fabulous garbage.

Season 2 opens with a minutes-long montage of all these women (and several others) putting on ornate hats. That’s the big hook to draw you into the new season: Ladies donning hats. And you know what? I’ve never been more sold.

She Really Did Mention It All

There are people who don’t know who Kyle Richards and Mauricio Umansky are, and there are people like me, who think about the married Real Housewives of Beverly Hills’ stars separation multiple times a day, as if it’s my own parents who have decided to break up.

There have been dizzying reports about who may have had an affair, whether Richards is now a lesbian, if Umansky is seeing his Dancing With the Stars partner, or if all of this is just made up for a juicy RHOBH storyline. I’m as mentally and emotionally out of shape as I am physicall;: I don’t have the stamina to keep up with this.

But, in a surprise move, Richards appeared on Bravo’s Watch What Happens Live this week and answered every single one of Andy Cohen’s to-the-point, brutally personal questions about all of this with unexpected directness. (Watch the clips here.)

Celebrities can be obsessed with controlling their own narratives, often twisting it for their personal benefit. Reality stars, especially, often bend the truth or straight-up lie in response to tabloid reports, when they acknowledge them at all. So for Richards to answer Cohen’s questions, when so many others would just say, “I don’t want to talk about that,” is remarkable. But I was shocked that she was so truthful about everything.

I am usually of the mind that celebrities’ relationships are none of my business, but the caveat to that is reality stars, who turn those relationships into TV that they profit from. It’s crass to feel “owed” explanations for the gossip surrounding Richards’ breakup, but there’s no doubt that many RHOBH fans felt they were. And Richards delivered.

I Smell an Oscar

The more I read the plot of this new film Wicker that Olivia Colman and Dev Patel have signed on to star in, the less I understand it—and the more I want to see it.

According to Variety: “On the outskirts of a village by the sea, lives a Fisherwoman (Colman); smelly, single and perpetually ridiculed. One day, fed up with her stuffy, small-minded neighbors, she commissions herself a husband to be made from wicker (Patel). In an otherwise conservative town, this unconventional romance sparks outrage, jealousy and chaos.”

So basically, a smelly lady (Colman) romances a wicker basket (Patel). I am there.

Provocative Questions

I have not stopped laughing at this tweet from RuPaul’s Drag Race winner Trixie Mattel about an interaction with his partner, David.

Makes you think!

More From The Daily Beast’s Obsessed

To celebrate the release of 1989 (Taylor’s Version), we threw it back to 2014, when the original 1989 was released, to relieve everything that Taylor—and the rest of pop culture—was up to. Read more.

There’s only one good reason to watch the otherwise-awful new season of Loki. Read more.

Anatomy of a Fall is in the running for best film of the year, and there’s a key lesson other crime dramas can learn from it. Read more.

Fellow Travelers: It is sexy and historical and important and did I mention sexy? (Now on Paramount+ With Showtime, Sun. on Showtime)

Suitable Flesh: Trippy, full of mayhem, and featuring a fantastic Heather Graham performance. (Now in theaters)

The Gilded Age: Just give into the silliness! (Sun. on HBO)

Five Nights at Freddy’s: And yet not a single night of fun. (Now in theaters and on Peacock)

Pain Hustlers: Another lazy attempt to turn Big Pharma into juicy entertainment. (Now on Netflix)

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