So Long, Britney.

You heard it here first, ladies and gentleman.  Britney Spears career is thankfully over.  The progression isn’t hard to discern.  A young girl enters the music business, sells herself as a candy-pop sex symbol, grows up, can’t adjust, becomes a parody of herself, spoils her fame in wantonness, finally marrying someone far outside what her sex symbol status would dictate, and ultimately becoming pregnant.  I just want to point out, as humbly as I can, that I called this.  (See this entry for where I called it.)   Let me expand on this a bit for you.

First, Britney Spears was never a superstar because of her voice.  She had clever songwriters, she wore provocative clothing (from her first video all the way on out), and she could dance, well sort of.   This means that entire career was based on the predication that she could be sexually alluring.  The beauty of this sort of marketing campaign is that it works tremendously, as long as you’re actually ungettable.  The minute you trade in that gettableness, the strategy doesn’t work.  So, what did Britney do?  She got married in Vegas, and then quickly got it annulled, only to get married to a guy who didn’t match her star status.  Getting married is a devastating blow to the marketing campaign that had always worked so successfully for her in the past, namely, the “I’m going to seduce you and then leave you hanging” model.    The final blow to that “ungettable teen sex goddess” image is getting pregnant.  Understand me well, I think pregnant women have a beauty that is uniquely theirs.  But that kind of beauty doesn’t sell CD’s, and it doesn’t keep the 18-25 year old age bracket’s attention for very long.  So, getting pregnant is the last stroke of destruction to a career that had already stalled.

Second, Britney tried the inevitable jump to film, with disasterous results.  See Crossroads for more on this.

Third, her own record company has given up on her.  Proof positive is the Greatest Hits collection that they released about two years ago.  They saw it coming, and they looked to cash in before it got as ridiculous as it has now become.  They sold her out.  They got their mileage out of her, sold her sex, and now they’ve washed their hands of her.  This isn’t uncommon in the Music biz.   But a greatest hits collection ALWAYS signals an ending to a career, either a part of a career, or the closing of a chapter.  (As an example of the chapter ender, see the two CD U2 Greatest Hits collection.  They ended the “With or Without You” part of their careers and moved on to All That You Can’t Leave Behind and now, more recently, How to Diffuse a Nuclear Bomb, or whatever it’s called.)  A Greatest Hits collection is a sign that something else is coming. For teen pop stars, that something else is almost always obscurity.  I’d be very surprised to ever see her release another CD.

Fourth, she lost her market.  Jessica Simpson took her spot.  Period.  She’s cold product.  The music biz found someone new who possessed more marketable “assets.”  No one wants Britney Spears anymore.  No one cares. 

So goodbye Britney, you’re ironic, tragic, amusing reign as queen of teen pop is over.  Your volume in the “Irrelevant Popstars of the Past Encyclopedia” awaits you.  Happy Trails!