I just happened across this performance by Madonna of ‘Fever.’ It’s so unlike any Madonna performance I’ve ever seen before. I was so impressed by it I thought I had to post it here. Far from the pointy bra wearing antics, Madonna is remarkably understated but the audience are enthralled. She yields her cigarette like a sword, or perhaps something more phallic. She loses her place mid song and just continues with a wry smile. She exclaims at one point, “I’m not taking anything off, okay?” Her long dress seems uncharacteristically conservative but then they are juxtaposed by some extraordinary set of heels.

But you know what I like most about this? Madonna is actually singing, and her voice is full and rich. She’s not screaming (as she seems to do for some of larger stadium shows) and for a song that’s been recorded by everyone from Elvis to Peggy Lee her phrasing is truly her own.

It’s not you, it’s me… Okay, it’s not just me. You’re downright sexy and I can say matter-of-factly that I had nothing to do with that. Maybe it’s all you. Maybe you’re the one with the problem. (What the hell am I saying…?) As much as I say ‘You’ in the title of this blog entry I don’t have any one person specifically in mind. Indeed I am thinking about a lot of different people I’ve found attractive over the years. I guess lately I’ve been thinking about my own sexuality and about physical attraction and how my personal history and control freak tendencies interact with those ideas.

I don’t like feeling out of control and yet I’ve come to realise time and time again that I can’t control who I am attracted to. There’s a part of me that only wants to feel attracted to the right people. The people who are attracted in turn to me, who have some interest in me as a person, who are actually genuinely nice people. I’ve known people who have been quite horrified to know of my interest in them (and who were quite happy to vocalise this sentiment). I’ve known people who have used my feelings for them as emotional leaverage, manipulating me as they’d see fit. You just do stupid things in the presence of people who you are attracted to and who you might be in love with. You know they’re foolish when you’re doing them and at times you seem completely incapable of stopping yourself. If a confession is met with scorn, then take whatever foolishness factor you’ve been feeling and multiply it by a million. Then add two. No, really.

[ad#adsense250]Then there is the relationship between sexiness and confidence. If you’re not feeling confident there’s a good chance you’re not exuding sexiness. Similarly sometimes people who are uber confident – perhaps overconfident – can seem really amazingly attractive. Even when they’re (let’s be frank) douches. Even when intellectually you know they are not nice people. Even when you suspect they drink kitten’s blood in their spare time and leave elderly people in the middle of busy highways.

Last night I was so bored that I logged into one of those awful dating websites. I had signed up more out of curiosity than anything else, and I check it out about once every six months. I was taken aback when a window popped up with a message from a local person saying something to the effect of, “Want to hook up? Ring this number.” I looked at that person’s profile and there was all this text explaining that they weren’t interested in anything except casual encounters. I was surprised by how little this appealed to me. ‘Hooking up’ with this person in particular, and ‘hooking up’ in general. I scoffed a little when (Australian Opposition Leader) Tony Abott suggested that a woman’s virginity was a gift that shouldn’t be given away lightly, and preferably not given away until marriage. But there is a part of me that really believes a sexual experience should be an expression of some emotional connection, ideally one of love. Infact in my mind if you’re just going through the experience solely for the sensation then… well a Madonna lyric (taken somewhat out of context) comes to mind: “You’ll do much better baby on your own.”

I spend a lot of time around the iTunes store. I listen to a lot of podcasts and will occassionally download music and audio books. Something there recently caught my eye. It was a small advertisement for Britney Spears’ latest single, “If U Seek Amy.” I was intrigued by the Prince-esque spelling of the title. I wondered who this Amy person was. (Britney is usually obsessed with herself, how could another woman enter her lyrical content?) I clicked on the button and listened to it. Grammatically it made no sense. Not that it is really a prerequisite that pop songs should make sense – especially not in a world dominated by the likes of Spears and Lady Gaga - but the sentence seemed to trail off in an odd way.

“But all of the boys and all of the girls are begging to… if you seek Amy.”

I wondered if there was a word missing. I wondered what the boys and girls were begging to do. Though actually on closer inspection it is a play, not so much on words, but on sounds. The nonsensical lyric above is the official version. The ‘preferred reading’ if you will is something more akin to this:

“But all of the boys and all of the girls are begging to F-U-C-K ME.”

Watch it on YouTube

I think Spears presumes too much.

Frankly I’ve never seen the attraction of Spears on any level. Her vocal capabilities are not so impressive. She doesn’t strike me as a particularly beautiful or attractive woman. Even her initial grab for fame as some kind of sweet and innocent school aged cheerleader with some kind of burgeoning sexuality probably worked purely on an archetypal level. Youth and vitality are prized in most modern day cultures, it seems unlikely that Spears brought anything original to the concept except, perhaps, the refrain, “Oh baby baby.”

I once joked about Madonna being a “40 year old virgin with two kids,” and besides the obvious age difference the same might be said of Spears. But, actually, Madonna is still a bit of a live wire. She seems entirely attractive to me. She contorts her body in ways that most 16 year olds probably couldn’t manage. She seems to exercise a lot of creative control too. But more than anything if Madonna has a thought she expresses it. If she’s unhappy, you’ll know about it. She can be controversial. Infact she frequently is. But when I look at Spears I see this kind of contrived attempt to be controversial that has probably made its way through her management and record company before she ‘spontaneously’ lipsyncs to the offending lyric or vox pop.

Infact nobody is really sure where the Britney Spears harlot pop star projected image ends and the actual Britney Spears human being begins. And frankly the more I investigate the more I meet a disconcerting feeling that actually Britney probably doesn’t know where she begins either. She seems to sleep walk her way through life and media appearances. She appears beside Madonna in a concert appearance through Human Nature, the lyrics are quite explicit and Madonna is clearly enjoying herself. “I’m not your bitch!” Madonna exclaims. “Fuck you! Fuck you again!” she continues and laughs. Madonna’s admission that she’s not your bitch is repeated with a sample of one of Britney’s own songs, “It’s Britney, Bitch!” The juxtaposition is hilarious. Yet Spears seems uncomfortable to be receiving attention.

It is interesting too that a lot of these attempts to be controversial seem to miss the mark entirely. (The hidden message in Amy was apparently too subtle for the average Spears fan. So much so that the video features a news reader at the beginning and end of the clip with a caption that reads, ‘Britney Spears song lyrics spell out obscenity in disguise.’) Instead the fascination seems to relate to other, perhaps more genuine, elements of what it is to be Britney Spears. Such as the time a wardrobe malfunction and a microphone mishap resulted in her telling her entire concert audience that her ‘pussy’ was hanging out. Yet the interest here is quite different to other unfortunate things befalling celebrities – such as Beyonce falling down the stairs or Janet Jackson’s Superbowl wardrobe ‘malfunction’. Something truly and unexpectedly newsworthy happened here; we got to hear Britney Spears speak in her own words. For (perhaps the first time) we heard her articulate a thought that originated from herself. There was no PR person or songwriter putting words into her mouth. Then there is the irony of the technical malfunction; she is constantly criticised for lipsyncing and a working microphone brings her unstuck.

Britney Spears really is The Emperor’s New Clothes for the modern age. She is a music industry mannequinn. You can dress her up however you like, put words in her mouth, put music around her and remix her however you will. And remarkably she sells like hotcakes. Fans earnestly assure me that she is still Queen and that they still adore her and her music, though I wonder if ‘Britney Spears’ the phenomena will consume Britney Spears the individual. And will it even matter? Clearly the technique works, clearly it can be replicated with other ‘artists.’