Internet video at 5 PM!

Trump is a bigger a**then Britney.

Call me slow-witted--I have no idea what sort of publication the NME purports to be--but its seems hypocritical for an organization to publish bitchy little blurbs like this and yet at the same time attempt to distance themselves (and what they write about) from "the tabs"...

As for Britney's reality show--I played the series DVD the other night, and while I still don't consider it top-flight entertainment, it has now taken on a lot of new meaning...We see Britney on tour in Europe, surrounded not by friends, but by staff. She's not evil or mean or obnoxious, but she is bored and arguably spoiled...finally she decides to pay to fly K-Fed over the Atlantic to be with her, and not surprisingly, he agrees to the whole deal. Federline is not the brightest or most charasmatic person to wind up as a reality-TV star, but in retrospect, he certainly appears to be somebody who was actually able to keep her slightly grounded. The most telling moments in the series come when Britney's assistant and her main bodyguard (both of whom have since left her employ) remark in a seemingly lighthearted manner about how Kevin's arrrival in Europe made their jobs so much easier by making Britney easier to deal with...

If Brian Wilson or Syd Barrett become drooling idiots through drug abuse, it's because they are "tortured geniuses"; if Gene Simmons or Steven Tyler make a sport out of fucking everything that moves, they're pursuing the "rock and roll lifestyle"; if Jim Morrison or Kurt Cobain drink or drug themselves into early graves, they're mythologized as gods. In the meantime, Britney's a laughingstock. Is there a double standard at work here?

AMW, where I disagree with you is that BW, KC & SB were very talented writers & producers. I personally see Britney as a marginally talented corporate flavor of the week.
Tyler & Morrison were also very talented artists.

Janis Joplin & Grace Slick are 2 examples of women with drug abuse issues (especially Janis) but they weren't laughed at; they were both talented artists like (most of) the men you mention above.

To me Britney, Lindsay Lohan, Jessica Simpson et al are pretty marginal talents at best.

I have to disagree with this statement to the extent that while Janis has received plenty of critical acclaim, she was (and is) also ridiculed endlessly, mostly for her looks (when she was in college she was nominated for "Ugliest Man On Campus") and what was perceived by the "establishment" as her "hippy-dippy" personality.

It kind of proves my point when it is implied that the industry that has been built around the entertainment value of Britney's self-desctruction is somehow morally justified by the fact that she has no talent.

In my opinion, the music industry in 2007 is mostly built around low talent artists that they feel they can control, & that will mostly have very short careers.

Again, I do not feel that any of the boy.or girl band singers are even in the same ballpark as the 6 musicians you mention above

Milli Vanilli were equally ridiculed, & equally deserving of it.

I also think American Idol is mindless pap. That's part of what irritates me in 2007, the dumbing down of mainstream music. Although it started a number of years back, around the time ex Seattle dj Lee Michaels started programming most of America's radio stations.

In my opinion, we have had 2 periods in the last 100 years where the majority of mainstream popular music in America had integrity:

aprox 1924- aprox 1937 (early jazz & EARLY swing) & aprox 1965-aprox 1974 (adult & psych rock - pre-disco).

While I enjoyed much of the 80's & early-mid 90's, radio was already mostly nationally programmed by that time.

Trump offered: "She's a fucking mess. And that little reality show she had did nothing."

I like that line. Great Donald.

Does Britney have any talent at all? I listen to a radio station that plays contemporary music, and I haven't heard any of Britney's songs played at all. That doesn't look good for her.

Btw, I didn't know she had a reality series. Was it any good?

But what I was asking was: Is Britney is MORE deserving of ridicule for her personal problems because of her (perceived) lack of artistic integrity? Or is she on the receiving end of so much more ridicule for her behavior because she is female? Or both?

Does it really give people pleasure to watch her destroy her life because they hate her and her music?

Apparently it does, and I think it's sad. And sick.

NME has had a sensationalist, elitist, pseudo-intellectual, faux radical, fadhead bent (I could think of more putdowns if I had more time ) since the early '80s, when the last of their pre-Punk writers left and it stopped being solely about new release and tour information and became more of an interview/lifestyle type of publication. That continues to this day, even as they transition to being mostly web-based. Unfortunately it's still one of the best sources of daily, up to the minute news about artists' comings and goings, particularly UK artists. I cherrypick articles from their site that I think would be of interest to our members. The music listening tastes here are such that news of Britney's slow self-destruction draws more participation than news of a new recording would.

From a sales point of view, I'm not sure we're in comeback territory. Her last cd was a big hit, & God knows her name has never left the news.

timberlake is huge right now, huge!

spears could use any positive press she can get.

this was tailor made for her.

what was she thinking?

renny

I think another factor regarding why Britney gets more criticism and attention for her behavior than, say, Janis Joplin ever did is that Britney at one time was trying to present a "good girl" literally virginal persona. No one expected her to keep that image forever, but the fact that she has gone so far in the other direction is a large part of what has made her such tabloid news. Janis Joplin never presented a good girl image, so it wasn't really news when she misbehaved.

Good point. Also true for Lohan. Another thought, I see Britney, Lohan, Jessica similarly to Paris Hilton: celebrities made by the media for the sake of being a celebrity & because of their looks, not due to any talent

If my earlier Joplin/Slick analogy was poor, let's try the 80's. Did Pat Benatar, the Wilson sisters (Heart). or even Dale Bozio or especially Terry Nunn of Berlin (who was more about sex then BS LL & PH combined) get any of this type of press - No. It was noted that Bozio was an ex-stripper, but not all over page 1. Wendy O Williams got a little bit of similar coverage, but she asked for it.

O.K., let me go over this one more time...The fact that Britney has apparently developed an alcohol and/or drug problem in her mid-twenties is entertaining to people because...she was SIXTEEN when her first album was recorded, SEVENTEEN when it was released? Let's face it, we can nitpick the extent to which she attempted to present herself as a "good girl"--have we already forgotten the controversy that has surrounded her from the beginning of her career for her wardrobe and her music?

Forget about Britney for a moment. Let's take Lindsay Lohan: I've never seen any of her movies--but I've been told REPEATEDLY that she has "no talent". Well, then, it must be true, right? She could ONLY have been as successful as she has been up until recently because of her looks...right? It must be true, because that's what "everybody" says, that's all I read...and anybody who thinks otherwise will be subject to withering dismissal by all of the anonymous TMZ and the NME columnists out there.

Let's face it--Lohan did a very stupid thing in drinking and driving. So did Paris Hilton--and so did Mel Gibson. Remember him? His career was supposed to be over last summer when he got pulled over drunk and he went on a rant about Jews? What happened to all of that mess? How much jail time did he wind up doing? (I'll save you the google search--he was sentenced to NO jail time, just three years probation.)

But we like Mel Gibson, apparently. And he's never tried to present himself as a "good guy"--Oh, wait a minute, he did make a movie about Jesus Christ, my bad...

The bottom line is, his career is far from over, and besides, it's just not as satisfying seeing Mel Gibson rotting in a jail cell as it is seeing Paris Hilton rotting in a jail cell. Because Paris Hilton is...Paris Hilton. She has no talent! Just like Lindsay and Britney!

As unhip as it makes me to say this, I do think Britney has talent. More importantly, she has charisma--which is why people feel so strongly about her, one way or another. Which is why 50-year-old white guys feel so compelled to trash her music, and why 200-pound women go out of their way to call her a skank. When I hear over and over and over and over again about how Britney Spears has managed to sell millions and millions of CD's worldwide solely through shrewd marketing, I just think of Steve Allen, and how he spent the last 40 years of his life insisting that Lennon and McCartney couldn't write a song to save their asses.

P.S. Unlike Joplin, Slick, Lohan and Spears, Pat Benatar, Ann and Nancy Wilson, Dale Bozzio or Terri Nunn do not have drug or alcohol problems, so I don't know what they have to do with all of this. It's amazing--some people have these problems and some people just don't. It's almost as though people are born with addiction problems or something.

I can't stand Mel Gibson. Unlike the others discussed here, I don't find him harmless or without malice.

The reason I mentioned the above is I somehow got the idea you were upset that the Women you've named were trashed only because of being Women pop stars who are sexy. Didn't realize you meant Women with drug problems only..

To just further what AMW was saying a little bit... there's a reason why many of us on this board and elsewhere describe the state of Britney's career (and the state of Lindsay's as well) as "sad". It's because, on some level, they do have "something". Britney may not be that great of a singer, but neither is Madonna. Does that mean she lacks talent altogether? For me, they're both more like pop "performance artists." Their concerts aren't about great music necessarily, but rather a great show with music as an expedient. And as a performer, Britney is pretty captivating (and just so you know, this is a gay guy in his mid-30s talking, and not some lusty, dirty old man); and her Max Martin material especially, is some of the best, most spot on, enduring and versatile pop music made in the last 10 years. (I mean, seriously, when a guy like Richard Thompson can cover a song like "Oops... I Did It Again" without irony, I think it's a credit to both the songwriter and the original performer who imprinted that song on so many of our vulnerable little brains).

Britney's situation is sad precisely because she is a talent, and that talent is getting muddled, sidetracked, overshadowed, whatever, by her addictions and emotional problems.

The same, by the way, can be said for Lindsay Lohan... Being a father of two, I've seen plenty of her movies, and she's a very charming actress with terrific presence - if she isn't already, I could certainly see her developing into a significant talent, if only she could just pull it all together.

And I do also think that age has a factor in this. It's a little like Drew Barrymore in the early 80s, where you just have this image of the cute, precocious little girl from those Disney remakes, and it either triggers this really parental instinct that can be really protective, but it can also be very judgmental.

-Paul

Somehow this just seemed to fit.............