Pop - Britney Spears

Choosing a single picture of her was hard...

All right, I'm just going to get this one out of the way first thing. She's the biggest thing of my generation as Lady Gaga is for the generation behind me [we'll get to her later].

I first heard of this female when I was in third grade, I believe. All the guys thought she was hot, all the girls knew her song lyrics, etc...I've always been avoidant of mainstream things, so I played it off as not being super into her, but in all honestly she was best thing next to Pokemon. I wanted to sing as well as her, dance as well as her, look as good as her. I got to fourth grade and remembered learning a lot about her from a TV special at the time that was accompanying her concert that was on TV. I remember what really got to me about her: the story of "Lucky" was about her. All I knew was fake music and fake art and fake everything. Seems ironic that Britney Spears was the one to make realize that raw meaning and emotion was far more intriguing than looking good and being perfect. I remember her...million dollar smile...to have parents who loved you that much to allow you to have something that would prevent you from being made fun of and really work on it...and to have the result successfully. It...was an inspiration...to be real and honest with my emotions and in result art. After all art is the expression of yourself, yes?

And here's where everyone says she went downhill -even in her music, not even talking about her life; but how did she? Yes, the music is repetitious and can be annoying and auto-tuned and lip-synced and whatever else, but the composition is what I'm referring to. It's still about her, still has meaning, and still has poetic elements. It is still art. Everything about it. It's simply accompanied by being pop and dance. It's what they were aiming for -it's intentional. It's marketing. It gets stuck in your head whether you want it to or not and THAT.IS.POP.

Now for my point- it's why I generally don't like pop unless I feel like dancing. I do not wholly respect pop as a true art form, but more crafty business that has artistic elements. Like advertising, it's really more business than it is art.

I suppose my other point regarding Spears is that as a child, she was the best. As an adult, she's fun and not as fake as people make her out to be, but still moderately. Purely fake would be...unexpectedly, Regina Spektor. We'll get to her later, too...

- Min