Love her or hate her, Britney Spears is definitely something. It’s what that ‘something’ is that causes a lot of discussion, tabloid stories and back and forth battles between her fans and Lady Gaga’s Little Monsters on virtually any platform you give them. I am a Britney fan and have been since she was every prepubescent boy’s dream in her little school outfit back in the days of ...Baby One More Time. I was more interested in the red cat suit and wondering how I could ever fit into it, but that’s a different story entirely. Things have changed since the early days – the songs are racier (but in a tongue-and-cheek kind of way), the outfits smaller and tighter (with the occasional ‘hello kitty’ moment) and, to quote one of her new songs, Britney’s been down and up and down and up and down.)Being the huge Britney fan that I am I nearly had a stroke when I found out that a new album was in the works. With the release of ‘Hold It Against Me’, ‘Till The World Ends’ and shortly afterwards all of Femme Fatale in its glory I was absolutely blown away. It was nothing like Circus (where you’ll find my battle cry of ‘la la la lalala la la’) and sounded more like Blackout could have been had Britney realised she was recording an album at the time. Then, in an uncharacteristic move for Britney-of-late, she decided to do some promotional concerts before embarking on tour. But she was stiff. You could see she was trying, and ‘Till The World Ends’ wasn’t a hassle, but otherwise it just wasn’t great. Not bad, just not great.
And then there’s the tour. Now any Britney tour brings with it so many questions, the first one being ‘will she actually sing?’ She didn’t during The Circus Starring Britney Spears but, then again, I don’t really expect her to. Girl’s been lip-synching her way across the world for over a decade and it’s never let her down yet. Problem was, if the dancing didn’t pick up and she wasn’t singing, what the hell was the show going to be? But just when you think this southern girl with an unparalleled love of cheese grits might just be heading towards the end, she comes out in full force for the Femme Fatale Tour.
The first thing that was nice about the Femme Fatale Tour that the Circus Tour didn’t have was a lot of material from the album it was meant to be promoting. Starting off with ‘Hold It Against Me’ and going through some of her best material before ending with an amazing performance of ‘Till The World Ends’ with Nicki Minaj it was a new Britney on stage. Can she dance like she did when she was 17? Definitely not, but 13 years, two kids and a broken knee will do that to a girl. What was different here, and something that was missing since the somewhat underwhelming performance of ‘Gimme More’ at the VMAs, was that she was feeling it. She’s having fun and she’s engaging with her audience (and if it means throwing her legs around a guy’s head then a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do). To clinch the deal she also came out of nowhere and started SINGING, despite the fact that her voice is a few octaves deeper before the mastering process begins. But she sounds good.
At the end of the day I love Britney and what she does but more than anything else it’s nice to see someone who truly hit rock bottom bounce back with so much energy, so many hair extensions and so much sparkling goodness!
Blog article courtesy of James Sharp who runs the B-Horror Blog.
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