Arts & Entertainment, The Muse

Snap,crackle … POP!

In March of 1999 I was on spring break with my family in Orlando. A few days before we left I made my dad take me to Best Buy to purchase Britney Spears’ ”hellip;Baby One More Time’ album. I listened to that CD the whole flight down, in the car, by the pool ‘-‘- wherever I possibly could. As Britney groaned into my prepubescent ears, I looked around my Mickey Mouse-infested surroundings and thought about a young Britney roaming the Disney premises in her Mickey Mouse Club days and wondered if she did the same touristy things I was doing with my family.

Exactly 10 years later, on a return visit to Florida last week for yet another spring break, I became mildly emotional when I realized not much has changed. I was laying on the beach in Miami, listening to Spears’ latest disc, ‘Circus,’ and looking around to see if she had taken in the same sights while on a tour stop in Miami just a few days earlier. Disney crossed my mind too, because, as her website informed me, she had made a stop there. This time not as a Mousketeer, but as a mother.

I’m fully aware of how ridiculous this might sound, but I can’t help it, and Wednesday night’s show at the TD Banknorth Garden only reaffirmed my love for the girl who swept me’ off my feet when I was only eleven years old.

As I sat in my seat anxiously awaiting the show’s start, a woman in her late twenties seated in front of me was asked by a neighboring concert-goer what brought her to the show. ‘This is something I’m going to tell my kids about. She is the perfect example of overcoming anything,’ she said. A little cheesy even for me, but as soon as Britney descended from the ceiling and cracked her whip to the opening beats, the statement could not have been more true.

It was my freshman year when I stumbled into Warren Towers at 4 a.m. and decided to make a visit to PerezHilton.com, where I was treated to a visual of a teary eyed Britney shaving her head. The beginning of the end, I thought to myself as I crawled into bed, put ‘Everytime’ on repeat, and quietly sobbed myself to sleep. What was happening?

Britney’s horrifying behavior continued over the next year. Despite the turmoil, she managed to release ‘Blackout,’ the best album of her career ‘-‘- which unfortunately was squandered with dismal videos and lackluster promotions. But it wasn’t until the AP prepared an obit for the pop princess did I received a cautionary call from my mother: ‘You don’t really know her, if something happens, don’t be too upset,’ she warned. Blasphemy.

Wednesday’s show put all of my qualms to rest. Britney was back dancing and lip-synching her little Louisianan heart out. And it was more than inspiring. I texted my mother and told her that if she received a call from Beth Israel sometime that night, it is because I went into cardiac arrest due to elation. Her response: ‘Charlie, she’s just a girl trying to make a living.’

Perhaps those words from my mother are the sanest thing in this entire column, but any Britney fan will tell you she’s so much more than that. She’s been toxic and outrageous, she’s been a ringleader and a slave, she’s played with all our hearts ‘-‘- but most importantly, she’s stronger than yesterday.

Here’s to another 10 years.

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