Why did Britney Spears' career go straight down the shitter?

Because God is merciful.

She actually stayed pretty relevant thru her Femme Fatale album, which I think is later than most people remember her being relevant. After that, she collaborated with Will I Am on the unfortunate Britney Jean album and kinda never recovered. Though she made money hand over fist during her Vegas residency, so maybe she doesn’t need to burn up the charts anymore.

Poor Brit.

She happened to be one of the most famous people on the world right when the internet was just kicking off and it did her in.

Those paparazzi were merciless and no one really protected her, not that she would have let them after a certain point.

But I think the real reason she shaved her head is because she dyed it back and forth so many times it had to be hacked off to get a fresh mane.

She should do a memoir because she never really explained herself or whats been going on behind the scenes.

The yellow shirt thing was very creepy.

How many times are you guys going to start this thread?

The day she was born a woman. Britney has been tampered with her whole life. No talent of course. A least they made a lot of money off her. She was never more than pedophile pretty, with fat ankles. A worse singer than Madonna. Yes that is possible. So basically her career when down the shitter when she turned about 26. She looked like an old dog who'd had too many litters by then. It's a tough life. Ratty extensions.

No talent.

You must be new here, R8.

That song "scream and shout"--really terrible--was a huge hit. It was played constantly. Her song "work bitch" was a joke.

She sucked.

That MTV performance killed her career.

Her music just wasn't fun or enjoyable to listen to past Circus, and even that only had a couple of decent tracks.

A better question to ask is why she ever had a successful career in the first place.

Britney defined the Millennial sluttery that would epitomize the next fifteen years.

This was her last fun song.

Leave Britney alone!

Besides the widely publicised breakdown, her music became very very bad. She was no artiste but her early songs were undeniably catchy and she was a high energy performer. Later on, the singles became strangely tuneless. You know how you can't get some songs out of your head? Her later music had the opposite effect, they had no "catch ". Just a synthetic beat and her whispering in the background.

R20 exactly.

The MtV performance did not kill her career at all--after that, she had a bunch of number one songs and hit albums for 5 years. It was after Scream and Shout that it went all downhill.

Luckily for Britney, she has hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank, so she financially stable. But I don't really think she wants to be in showbiz anymore.

At least not to the extent she once was. It's not like she needs the money or anything.

Britney can still sell out shows, unlike Madonna

Uh, Britney isn't even 40, Madonna was selling out shows with record numbers into her late 50s. Nice try though.

Your pic sums it all up OP

Loon spotted at r25

R9 shut the fuck up you piece of shit Jan stan. Madonna can sing. She isn’t in the small voiced diva category like Janet, Britney, j-lo, Paula. We see what you’re doing you fucking loon.

R27, you're trying really hard.

R27 whore you’re the loon with your ant- Madonna agenda. Look at your posting history. Nothing but bashing Madonna and stanning Janet/ Gaga. Crusty ass cunt.

r5, she had individual extensions, and they do not feel good at all:

R9 go to 6:50 of this video. Janet could never. Britney, who can sing better than Janet, could never come close.

Girls, girls! They all suck.

OP = Xtina

Yes, a better question would be "why are Christina Aguilera fans dumb enough to think Christina is a legend?".

Why do any of these trashy bitches still have fans in 2020? Get a fucking life. Failing that, learn to play an instrument.

Britney is a much better singer, dancer, and actress than Madonna

Britney deserved an Oscar for Crossroads. One of the great thespian performances of our time.

HAHAHAHA. r37, r38, that was good

It went straight down the shitter cause the bitch is crazy.

Chile done covered herself in henna tattoos

That picture speaks a thousand words, OP.

What do you mean the NEXT Madonna?

Madonna is up there with Elvis and the Beatles in the way she altered the course of music. Unlike other stars like Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey and Celine Dion who merely took what was there and rode the current wave.

Mental health issues and having no rights/freedom/protections/autonomy of her own.

R43: Madonna created nothing and stole everything. Her repertoire is so dated she doesn’t acknowledge most of it in concert. That is, when she bothers to show up.

R41 her instagram is depressing.

Her team has really messed up her career for her last two albums. Britney Jean was rushed to come out prior to Vegas, was by far her worst album with Britney not even doing a lot of the vocals, and she did almost no promotion including no TV performances.

With the Glory album, the original David LaChappelle video for the 1st single was pulled and replaced with nonsense well after the song initially came out, which impacted its charting ability. They also wasted the big "Britney returns to the VMAs to perform!" moment on a night when Beyonce was going to close the show with a 15-minute performance that would make Britney look meh in comparison no matter what she did. Decent management would've had a good video ready to go and would've never agreed to perform if someone else was getting bigger billing/time/production. The VMAs performance could've been a huge comeback moment but it amounted to nothing. If her team had gotten Britney's long Billboard Music Awards performance from earlier in the year with the new single added in, there would've been a ton of positive press that would've sold albums/tickets.

Her team/conservators also won't let her sit down for any real interviews which limits how much magazine/TV press she can get since big/reputable media won't agree to their demands. A no-holds-barred Britney interview would still draw big ratings/attention but she isn't allowed to do that.

[quote] Her team has really messed up her career for her last two albums. Britney Jean was rushed to come out prior to Vegas, was by far her worst album with Britney not even doing a lot of the vocals, and she did almost no promotion including no TV performances.

What really killed the Britney jean album was the fact that her demos were leaked. They revealed her voice was completely destroyed (if she ever had one to begin with). People were laughing at her again.

A whole wave of female singer/songwriters was thrown to the wolves because of her and Beyoncé.

Because her entire catalog is Oops! I Made The Same Song Again. No growth.

Really, OP? You have to ask?

She's BATSHIT CRAZY, that's why.

[quote]What do you mean the NEXT Madonna? Madonna is up there with Elvis and the Beatles in the way she altered the course of music. Unlike other stars like Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey and Celine Dion who merely took what was there and rode the current wave.

Yep.

[quote] Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey and Celine Dion

To Mariah's credit, like Madonna, she did chnage her sound (for better or worse is up for debate). Celine and Michael never did. That adult contemporary shit from the 90s hasn't aged well which explains why Celine is the least streamed of the big 4 female artists on spotify.

Is she still crazy?

Women lose their sexual appeal at 28. Why do women and gay men think that anybody cares after that age.

When she shaved her head was the only time I had a bit of respect for her. I thought, “yes! She’s dropping the Disney/stripper act and is going to be a bit punk, rebellious, and original!” Alas, it wasn’t the case and was once again the same slutty southern cheerleader as before.

Right, r56?!

I was so excited to see her with a pixi cut. But she just wore those stupid cheap wigs and extensions.

Anyways, Pretty Girls with Iggy was a great summer song and guilty pleasure for gay men.

There’s still potential. I would do less sexy adult pop. Wilson Phillips One More Day stuff.

Not for this gay man. Now where are my Mastodon records?

R43

I hate to burst your bubble but Madonna and Elvis changed nothing in music. They were pop stars not artists. Elvis was talented but Chuck Berry, Big Mama Thornton, Little Richard and Fats Domino, his inspirations, were far 1000x talented and influential than Elvis ever was. Frank Sinatra was more influential than Elvis. Madge and Elvis are icons in American pop culture just like Marilyn Monroe and apple pie but marketing and branding helped in that regard.

The Beatles however were heavily influential and were experimental for their time they do deserve their praise. The Beatles did change a lot and their impact is still seen in many pop and rock acts.

Madonna may be smarter at brand management but she isn't that higher than Britney in talent level. I think Janet, Paula, Mya and Jennifer Lopez are better dancers than both. Mariah, Whitney, Celine, Beyonce and Christina are obviously better singers than both. Then you have kd lang, India.Arie, Tori Amos and Alanis Morissette who actually write songs.

OP, your picture answered your question.

Glory wasnt bad and had some fun songs on it. I feel like it was her last effort, though.

I liked Glory, it had a lot of good dance tracks and she sounded way less robotic than she had in years prior. Britney's best album is either In The Zone or Blackout depending on your taste. After Blackout she seemed to be on autopilot, Circus and Femme Fatale she sounded like zombie sex slave and Britney Jean wasn't even her singing.

[quote]I hate to burst your bubble but Madonna and Elvis changed nothing in music.

Madonna and Elvis both changed the course of pop music and culture.

R63 Not music. Pop culture yes. Performance styles yes. But musically, no they haven't. Elvis had the guitarist Scotty Moore who pioneered that rockabilly sound and Elvis's singing and dancing style was taken from black rhythm and blues singers. Madonna had a ton of producers and songwriters and she was just good at working the camera and using music videos to her advantage. Madonna also borrowed heavily from black gay club culture too. You are really selling actual artists who play instruments and write music short. Pink Floyd, The Beatles, David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix and Tina Turner are more influential than both of them combined.

Mental illness.

R5 she shaved her head because Kevin threatened to take her sons away and not let her see them if she didn’t stop using drugs. She was paranoid that his lawyers were going to steal some of her hair to test it without her consent. That’s how far gone she was at the time. Sad.

r66 and she said her extensions were killing her but I actually believe your story since she was on drugs and paranoid.

OP, Britney is suffering from a mental illness so her career will not be the same. I won't say it's in the shitter because she has somehow maintained her fan base. She is the pop version of Jennifer Anniston, no matter how old she gets, America still loves her.

If Britney showed some life again, did PR, called up Dark Child, Calvin Harris, and Max Martin to create a coherent sound, and found some quality writers, she could mount a worldwide tour. Her fans can tell that she doesn't want that. Christina Agulera gets 16 million views on a video and calls it a success. Lady Gaga's career was going into has-been territory before ASIB. I think Britney, while diminished, still maintains a special place in a lot of Millennial's hearts so she can command attention if she displays a bit of effort. As it stands, she's been a walking zombie for a decade.

Some stars are so big that they really can't fail. Her team intentionally shelved Britney Jean and did the bare minimum of concert shows. That album was only created to appease her contractual obligations to Jive Records (whatever they are called today). Her team just wanted to stick her in Vegas but had to go through the motions, her record label was owed an album so the mess that is BJ was pushed out.

Her melt-down was a lot of fun to watch and BLACKOUT is one of my favorite albums. She made little go quite far.

She's beyond loaded. She doesn't want to work anymore. I kind of respect someone bowing out before they've become cringe-worthy to watch. Like Madonna.

She was a dumb white trash girl with no talent who was dragged into show business. She never should've been forced into it, she should've stayed in Louisiana, grew up and married a truck driver and lived on a farm with lots of animals. She would've been so much happier and healthier it that had happened.

Sorry r64 but Elvis and Madonna changed the course of pop music. Their sound and style became the template for so much that followed.

[quote]Madonna had a ton of producers and songwriters

Everybody has producers. Madonna wrote or co-wrote most of her music. Her collaborators have praised her songwriting skills.

[quote]You are really selling actual artists who play instruments and write music short. Pink Floyd, The Beatles, David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix and Tina Turner are more influential than both of them combined.

Tina Turner did not play instruments or write her own songs, except for one or two. Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald did not play instruments or write their songs yet they changed music forever.

[quote]Madonna wrote or co-wrote most of her music

I wouldn't brag about that

Am I the only one who doesn't get what's so amazing about Frank Sinatra?

Well it's stood the test of time for decades, so there's that. A lot of the Beatles' stuff isn't all that great imho. And they aren't held in awe by later generations, their lustre has faded a bit.

Not that Madonna's hasn't as well, of course, but these Boomer artists that are supposed to be worshipped without question did have their share of shit songs and aren't seen as all that by many.

I was in my early 20s when Britney hit and I guess even at that age I was too old to get the hype around her. I just thought she was a dumb whore and her songs were shit, basically pale imitations of much better dance-pop artists like Madonna, Kylie and a few others.

She peaked when she was bald. If she had played into that and maybe released a rap album to redefine her image, she wouldn't have been so one-note.

Here's the thing, a Britney comeback single with the right producers, a great video, and a big tell-all TV/magazine interview where she talks about the whole meltdown period and the conservatorship would do big business. Glory did well for a pop star of her age with only 1 promotional performance and almost no interviews, better than all her late 90s/early 00s contemporaries can manage with much more promo. But her father/management won't let her do interviews because they're afraid of what might come out in the process.

If she does manage to get out of the conservatorship and doesn't decide to just retire and live out the rest of her days in peace, which she would deserve if that's what she wants, I think her next era will be huge if she's willing to put the effort in and there'll be a huge amount of public goodwill for her as some of the crazy shit that happened to her post-breakdown is revealed.

I don't think a Britney Spears comeback is really necessary. She's not some mega-talent whose contributions to the cultural landscape are really needed to return.

[quote] I was in my early 20s when Britney hit and I guess even at that age I was too old to get the hype around her.

I was ELEVEN and I thought she was a joke--I remember people wouldn't shut up about her because of her Baby One More Time song. Then I heard it and I couldn't believe someone was actually trying to sound like that. And then she performed at (I think) the kids Choice Awards without a bra and it made the news (because 7 year old kids are big into tits apparently). And then came the Rolling Stone pics which are really disgusting jailbait. She really did mark the end of an era.

It really was over when Britney, NSync, Backstreet Boys etc. hit. They changed music for the worse.

R81, absolutely. That teen pop that dominated the late 90s and very early 00s was horrible. I hated it then and I can't understand why there's so much nostalgia for it now and I was in middle school/high school at the time.

Britney Spears ushered in the era of no-talent Disney assembly line little shits who were put together by a committee and called "singers." The Jonas Bros. and all the other shit garbage kids that followed began with her. Pop music lost its edge and organic creativity to become a product that was created in a boardroom. Pop music has been awful ever since.

R18 I refer to that song as "Gimme Less". This is my favorite version.

Britney wasn't the first that has happened with. We've always had vapid teen pop music and studios liked making television/film idols into singers to get squeeze extra bucks out of them but none of them lasted that long and were eventually forgotten (think Leif Garrett, Partridge Family, Debbie, Tiffany, New Kids). But I think what helped Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera have staying power was that teen culture was made mainstream in the 90s and many adults hopped on that wagon with Billboard, MTV and massive ad campaigns backing them.

Before Britney you had relatively big artists like TLC, Brandy, Usher, Leann Rimes, Aaliyah, Hanson, Jonny Lang and Kenny Wayne Shepard who were still young adults and teenagers but were successful on the charts and had the revival of the teen film with Scream, Can't Hardly Wait, Empire Records and I Know What You Did Last Summer. The popularity of teen-oriented shows becoming more legitimized with Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Dawson's Creek getting rave reviews. Many adults around this time wanted to be "hip" too and consumed this stuff and Pokemon.

I guess you can say there was a sort of infantilization of culture that happened.

R85, that's true. And isn't it so weird to realize that we now have grown adults who are obsessed with Disney movies and wear Disney gear. When the hell did that become cool?!

True r85. Teen pop stars were definitely in their own category before Britney and Co. changed everything. They weren't nominated for Grammys or taken seriously. Acts like New Kids On the Block and Debbie Gibson were clearly in a separate category from Madonna and Bruce Springsteen. They had a couple years of success and then faded. Then the teen pop shit got "taken seriously" for lack of a better word and Britney Spears is now a living legend and Justin Bieber the voice of his generation. It's so fucked.

[quote]And isn't it so weird to realize that we now have grown adults who are obsessed with Disney movies and wear Disney gear.

I do not understand this at all! It is so bizarre to me. They are adults and Disney is their main form of entertainment. Not R-Rated movies or cop shows or what-have-you that is in line with adult interests. It's truly strange.

It's funny that MTV would not play stuff like New Kids On The Block or their superior predecessor New Edition but a decade later they were playing the hell out of Backstreet, NSYNC, Hanson LFO and O-Town. Madonna, Kylie and Janet targeted young women and gays in general and mostly made party/club music. They were not specific to teenagers or teen issues like Britney, Xtina and Mandy Moore were.

You see this shit right here on DL with the Jonas Bros. threads, among others.

The reality show that revealed her limited intelligence was a terrible idea. K Fed, the wedding in jogging suits, running around with Lohan and Hilton.... It's terrible what has been done to her.

I thought she was great in The Goonies

[Quote] She would've been so much happier and healthier it that had happened.

Maybe for a while? But she clearly had a messed up childhood. Her mental illness would still be there. She just wouldn't have as many resources to help her manage it.

[quote] I do not understand this at all! It is so bizarre to me. They are adults and Disney is their main form of entertainment. Not R-Rated movies or cop shows or what-have-you that is in line with adult interests. It's truly strange.

Maybe Michael Jackson was more insidiously influential than I imagined...

Posted just a few hours ago. Dancing to Madonna’s Justify My Love. It’s a whore darling

she’s very robotic at r95, but give credit where credit is due, that body is banging for a 40 year old with two kids!

She ain't 40.

Is R95 her audition for The Cheetah?

Ugh tedious r97, you must have no friends. She’s about to be 39

Britney was never a great singer. She's a dancer singing poorly to music written by other people. When her looks faded, so did her star.

R95 she looks whacked out of her mind on something.

I had heard that she was doing a ton of meth and other heavy drugs back when she shaved her head and lost it. Sometimes this can induce a latent mental illness like schizophrenia or just flat out fuck your brain up to the point where it will never be normal again. This happened to an aunt of mine. Sad.

R96, Her boyfriend, Sam Asghari, is a personal trainer. She damn well better look like that!

I really think Britney has schizophrenia. It would explain why she seems worse now than a few years back. Besides the psychotic symptoms, schizophrenia can cause a decline of mental capacity and flattening of emotional affect. These so-called 'negative symptoms' are often irreversible (or at least not fully reversible), and I think in some patients they even get worse with each psychotic episode.

R104 I'm sure she is being exploited by her family to some degree but all these dumb narcissistic commentators who are gunning for her emancipation are unable to recognize clear signs of mental illness. I mean, she was on Instagram a few months ago saying that she accidentally burnt her home gym down with two candles. In the video she cannot stop moving and she talks a mile a minute. She also sometimes makes faces that are reminiscent of tardive dyskinesia meaning she could be on anti-psychotic drugs.