Madonna's Striptease Tribute to Britney Spears

The following italicized article is from www.eonline.com:

The Madonna and Britney Spears bandwagon rolls on!

Spears not only appears in a video montage shown during Madonna's latest concert tour, but she's also a source of inspiration in Filth and Wisdom, Madge's feature-film directorial debut about a ragtag group of friends struggling through life in England.

I won't give too much away (the movie comes out Oct. 17), but I will tell you that a pivotal scene involves a stripper dancing to Spears' "Baby One More Time." And yes, said stripper is even wearing—what else?—a skimpy school uniform and pigtails just like Britney wore in the song's now classic music video.

Source: E! Online

Britney Cuts A Fine Form In LA

The following italicized article is from www.thesun.co.uk:

COMEBACK queen BRITNEY SPEARS has danced herself back to her slimline best.

The sexy singer wowed LA onlookers outside the International Dance Studio in a figure-hugging top and jeans, showing off her fat-free frame.

Yesterday’s sighting of Britney capped an incredible few months, during which she has ditched her wild ways to focus on reclaiming her hot body and career.

She’s currently busy working on tracks for her new album Circus, which is being widely touted as her best LP yet.

Meanwhile, it’s been revealed that Britney’s music talents can be traced back to her British great-grandmother.

Lilian was recruited to dance the jitterbug at the Royal Opera House in wartime London before falling for an American soldier.

Britney’s great-aunt Joan Woolmore – who lives in a terraced house in the capital – told a paper: “We came from very humble beginnings but we were very happy.

"We didn’t have a great deal and we moved around a lot around London – but what both Lilian and I loved to do was dance and play music.”

I don’t imagine songs like I'm a Slave 4 U feature on Joan's present-day list of favourites.

Source: The Sun

Is There Gonna Be A Tour?!

The following italicized article is from www.x17online.com:

X17online can confirm that Britney was in fact auditioning dancers at IDA in Hollywood yesterday, but we're not sure if it's for a few shows or an all-out world tour. Either way, it's exciting news - it means we'll get to see Brit shakin' it and performing some new songs very soon! We spoke to a few of the potential dancers, but no one was able to dish on when we might be able to see Britney take the stage again.

Though all this dancer/possible tour news is exciting, what's really remarkable is how skinny Brit looks! Though she's definitely dropped some pounds over the past few weeks, this is the thinnest we've seen her in years. It looks like she's getting back down to the size she was when she did her Onyx Hotel tour back in 2004, which is amazing! Also, check out Brit's new necklace with Jayden James and Sean Preston's initials - so cute!

Source: X17

Britney Spears Bans Jamie Lynn's Fiance

The following italicized article is from www.entertainmentwise.com:

Britney Spears reportedly did not want her younger sister’s fiancé Casey Aldridge at her sons’ birthday party that she banned him from showing up to the family do.

Those closest to the Spears family were there to celebrate Sean and Jayden’s birthdays – including sis Jamie Lynn, who flew in from Louisiana with new arrival Maddie.

“Britney had really been looking forward to Jamie Lynn coming with Maddie, but definitely did not want Casey there,” a friend tells In Touch.

Britney has never been a Casey fan, according to insiders, and claims that Jamie’s beau cheated on the Zoey 101 star when she was pregnant haven't brought them any closer.

“Britney just does not like him and everyone knows that. She thinks that Casey is using Jamie Lynn for her money,” adds the source.

Meanwhile Jamie Lynn - who is trying to make it work with her baby's daddy - is said to have enjoyed spending time with her big sister in Beverly Hills.

“It was a good time for her to get away from him and spend time with her family around her,” a friend says.

Source: Entertainment Wise

Lynne Spears: Britney's Fine!

The following italicized article is from www.ok-magazine.com:

In a rare TV interview, Lynne Spears appeared on NBC's The Today Show on Wednesday, where she opened up to host Meredith Vieira about how her youngest child, Jamie Lynn Spears, told her that she and boyfriend Casey Aldridge were expecting a child.

"She hands me a note and tells me to go into the bedroom and read it," Lynne recalled. "It said she was pregnant and everything was going to be okay.... I thought it was a joke. I kept waiting for the punchline."

But after noticing that Casey, who was in the house was the bomb was dropped, couldn't look her in the eye, Lynne realized this was no joke.

"I was in shock... I started to cry," said Lynne, who also revealed that, as a mom, she tends to take the blame for all her children's mistakes on her own shoulders. "What did I do?" she asked herself at the time. "I took all the blame... It's always my fault."

As for her other daughter, Britney Spears, who has seen her life go from the top of the pop charts to the bottom of the tabloid barrel and now once again surging, Lynne says, "She's strong, she's resilient... Britney's fine... She's headed to the top once again."

Source: OK Magazine

Britney Spears Hits The Dance Studio

Here are a few pics of our dear Britney Spears (with entourage/security detail) making her way into the International Dance Academy Hollywood in Beverly Hills, CA yesterday afternoon undoubtedly continuing work on her big musical comeback:
While her Mama Lynne Spears has been bizzy doing promo work for her just-released memoir Through the Storm, Brit Brit was bizzy gettin’ down to biz on her big comeback. As you may recall, Britney will be releasing her new album, titled Circus, on December 2 and I hear that she may be planning a big television performance for New Year’s Eve … and possibly a world tour after? I’m not holding my breath for a world tour just yet but I do believe that Britters is working on a big to-do to ring in the new year in style. I’m so excited, I could burst :) Keep doing your thang, Britney … we’ll be right here waiting.

Source: Pink Is The New Blog

Britney Spears, The #1 Pop Artist Of Our Generation

Britney Spears recently received an extraordinary accolade from the UK’s highly respected top broadsheet newspaper the Daily Telegraph: “Amid all the fretting and frothing about her sanity…it’s easy to forget Britney’s pop brilliance. Sweeter-voiced than Beyonce, Christina and Pink, she has had a string of classics to put the pretenders to shame. Baby One More Time, Oops, Slave 4 U, Toxic… Britney is the pop artist of her generation.

It’s rare for a critic to say something nice about Britney’s voice, but these few words come as an amazing counter-offensive against the ridicule and abuse that is regularly heaped upon her. There seems to be no middle ground – you either love her or hate her with a passion.

Most pop singers don’t get compared to Beyonce, Christina or Pink. But most pop singers don’t get ridiculed and abused for their voices either. Normally, the critics don’t think a pop singer’s voice is worth discussing. It is what it is, it may not be great but it carries a tune and provides an excuse to be on stage. And that’s enough. What a relief for Jessica, Kylie, Geri Halliwell, Rachel Stevens, Emma Bunton and countless others.

Britney isn’t treated with this kind of indifference. Perhaps her critics feel she is such a big target they just have to have a pop at her. Obviously they don’t take the time to listen to her properly and try to find out what it is about her singing that inspires so much devotion in so many people. Why would they? They don’t expect pop singers to be quality singers or worthy of anything more than the most superficial interest.

So, when they take Britney to task, it tends to be for superficial reasons. They’re down on her for what she isn’t rather than for what she is. She isn’t a big voiced diva. She isn’t Mariah Carey or Whitney Houston. OK! So she isn’t the sort of artist who is going to thrill an auditorium of 15,000 people with soaring flights of multi-note vocal fancy. But she is an artist, and a very special one. Like the very best singers of today, she puts her own stamp on every song she sings.

She has a unique voice, of that there is no doubt. But where did it come from? It isn’t the voice of an unschooled amateur, as some people think. Forget any notions that she isn’t deeply enough immersed in the vocal arts to be a quality vocalist. Forget the opinion of some critics that she has little feeling for her music. This is a girl who, as a young child, was (in the words of Larry Getlen in his book “Britney: Not That Innocent”) a “relentless little singing machine, undeterred in her desire to sing everything that crossed her ears.” This is a girl whose whole life is about singing.

Britney’s childhood dentist Michelle LeBlanc said: “When she comes in to have any dental work done, she sings the whole entire time. The radio’s going, she’s singing everything that’s on the radio…When you’re coming in or out of her mouth or whatever, and she’s humming or singing. And as soon as you’re out of her mouth, the words are coming again. She’s the first person I’ve seen who’s constantly wanting to sing.”

A full twenty years of singing have given her plenty of insight into how to handle a song. Technical qualities such as control over pitch and vibrato were there from a very early stage – where you would expect an 8-year-old girl to sound childish, rough and immature, she sounded like a professional. And that was BEFORE she got singing lessons.

When New York agent Nancy Carson took Britney under her wing after Disney decided she was too young to be a Mousekeeter, she felt that Britney could sing well but wasn’t doing it in a technically correct way. Britney then spent many years under the tutelage of a number of vocal coaches. By the time Larry Rudolph sent for her to audition for a recording contract there was very little she didn’t know about professional singing.

By that point, her voice had changed a little from the Broadway-style belting vocals of her pre-teens. In the TV documentary “The rise and rise of Britney Spears” she sings a snippet of “Open Arms” and what you hear is a sweeter voice than before, but still a strong and conventional one, perhaps a little like Leann Rimes. But when her first recordings emerged a year or so later she didn’t sound like that at all.

The voice that rocked a startled world was like nothing we had ever heard before. Where the 8-year-old Britney sounded like she was 21, the 16-year old showbiz veteran seemed actually to have regressed a few years. The fine technique she had spent her whole life developing had been replaced by a much more constricted voice featuring a whole encyclopedia of mannerisms – the most obvious of which were her strange guttural croaks and groans.

There has been a lot of speculation about what went on during that first year at Jive, but we can be sure that no one actually set out to make her singing worse. What we are able to gather is that a great deal of time and thought were expended on figuring out how to market this new artist and ensure she would make a massive impact.

Somewhere along the line, someone, probably Britney herself, hit on the idea of playing a character – an innocent girl with Lolita tendencies. And this character she played would have to SOUND right as well as look right. So what would a naughty angel sound like? Britney came up with a comprehensive answer: a mixture of the youthful innocent, the sweet kid full of love and longing, the little girl with a bruised heart, the not-so-innocent jailbait pr*ck-teaser, and the party girl with a lot more than dancing on offer.

Unfortunately, in adopting this recipe for success, Britney was signing a pact with the Devil. Her strategy would make the desired impact on a world full of jaded listeners who had long since binned pop music. It would get her an audience for her great songs and give her a platform on which to display her gift for performance art. It would also give her an edge over any possible competition. But on the downside, it meant she had to put that beautiful pre-Jive voice away in a locker and pretend it never existed.

She must have known even then that, for everyone who was drawn into her web of fascination, there would be someone saying she couldn’t sing. For everyone who willingly entered her hall of smoke and mirrors, there would be someone making fun of her croaking mannerisms and saying she sounded like a chipmunk. She even said that she didn’t want everyone to like her, and she wasn’t joking - the character she was trying to create would have been a failure if it didn’t produce ambiguity, doubt, and conflicting emotions.

All the same, it must have hurt her many times over the years to know that Disney’s people placed her singing completely on a par with Christina Aguilera’s and well above Jessica Simpson’s, that she had the pure singing talent to take a completely different career path if she had wanted to, and that her career strategy meant trading respect for the mega-stardom she wanted. But Britney was determined that she was going to be a megastar, no matter what it took, and she was prepared to deal with the consequences.

I have often wondered what Britney’s “Crossroads” co-star Taryn Manning meant when she said Britney “had a beautiful voice in real life”, but it dawns on me now – the young actresses spent a lot of time together off-set and in their trailers, and Taryn heard the private Britney take her pre-Jive voice out of the locker for a little dust-down and realized that the public Britney’s vocals were indeed simply part of her act.

This is not to say that she could come out as the new Leann Rimes tomorrow if she felt like it. No, she has been playing the part of “Britney Spears” for too long now. She admitted herself in 2002 that her voice was changing, and it’s still a work in progress, constantly being brought up to date to match the changes in her public image.

On her first album, almost every song contained the basic elements of the naughty angel mixed together. On her second and subsequent albums, the various Britney characters are stranded out more, and additional nuances are added to them. And a new character, the increasingly rebellious, assertive and defiant young woman was beginning to raise her head and now seems to have become the dominant force.

However, although this kaleidoscope of role-play and characterization makes Britney’s recordings fascinating and intriguing, although it creates the constantly changing patterns that dispel any risk of boredom, it would be wrong to say that this is what defines the character in her vocals, for that would make them cold, charmless and manipulative and they are anything but that. In fact, behind all the acting out you can hear the sound of laughter and the beat of a very warm heart.

To get us further in this analysis we need to find some of the musical qualities that make Britney’s vocals so appealing. If we take her faster songs first, we find that the basic methodology has remained a constant over the years. If you follow a timeline from BOMT through OIDIA and Overprotected to Toxic and eventually My Prerogative you can hear that the prototype unveiled with BOMT has been developed and polished and perfected. You will note the steady improvement in technique, the introduction of more variety, and the abandonment of the early “little girliness”.

Always present is her unusual phrasing – it’s as hard to describe this as it was with Frank Sinatra, but it all has to do with how long she holds each word, how long she leaves each space, and the internal rhythm this generates in each phrase. Endless attention is given to the enunciation of individual words and to the ways in which phrases are begun and ended. And then there’s her accent - the many vocal excerpts from “The rise and rise of Britney Spears” reveal that, from mimicking other singers as she sang their songs, she had fully absorbed the professional showgirl’s ability to lose her accent – yet Britney’s Louisiana twang has been obvious since the start of her recording career, and remains with her to this day.

Britney’s slower songs and ballads are even more revealing of her musical intelligence and craftsmanship. What is particularly interesting is that, although these present her best opportunities to act out the various nuances of the Britney character, and although on several occasions (as on “Lucky” and “Satisfaction”) she seems to have made a deliberate choice about which part of her complex persona should receive the emphasis in a particular song, she sings most of them absolutely straight, with fewer mannerisms than in her faster songs, and the listener is left to place his or her own construction on the interaction between voice and lyric and what it means.

If you listen consecutively to four songs from the special edition of the OIDIA album – “When your eyes say it”, “You’ve got it all”, “Heart”, and “Dear Diary” you can listen all you want for signs of a slutty girl looking for - or a Lolita-like teenage temptress but all you actually hear is a sweet, charming and rather innocent girl in love taking four different lyrics and four different tunes and singing them in four different ways.

Very few pop singers seem to have any conception of applying an individual approach to each individual song. That Britney does this all the time tells us that, far from being the rough and amateurish performer some imagine, she is, in fact, extremely professional and surprisingly preoccupied with technique. And she does have plenty of technique to draw upon, from the little sobs and emotive yelps at the end of many lines in her ballads to her perfectly controlled vibrato and the delicately drawn little arpeggios in such songs as DLMBTLTK and “From the bottom of my broken heart”.

Everything about her singing is so graceful, understated and lacking in bombast and excess. There is wonderful delicacy, variety and distinctiveness. However, even this formidable array of craftsmanship would not be enough to make listeners fall headlong in love with Britney’s voice and with Britney herself through her voice. What does that is her warmth, humor and humanity, the sense of a beautiful soul, and the extraordinary emotional connection she makes with so many of her listeners.

I can speak about this from my own experience. I didn’t like pop music at all till my boyfriend wore me down with his constant worship of Ms Spears and made me listen to In The Zone.

I’m not sure that I really got it at first, but I listened right through in one go. Then I listened to it again. And again. And then I asked him if he had any more of her albums and I began listening to them too. I was well and truly hooked. Each time I listened to a Britney album it was a trip. As I listened with my eyes closed my boyfriend watched my smiles, my frowns and my little tears.

And now, in brazen defiance of the ridicule of friends, I will come out and say that no singer intrigues, delights, puzzles and satisfies me like Britney Spears. No other voice opens up such a tide of feeling within me or awakens such love in my own heart. Her voice says what I want to say. She seems to feel what I want to feel. The purity and sweetness and fervor within her expose me to my own passions and make me more spontaneous and impulsive, more generous, and warmer, and kinder.

How many pop singers can change your life and make you a better person? Britney Spears may not have a big diva voice. She may or may not be any good at singing live – who really knows? I’m happy to know that on CD she has one of the most magical and alluring pop voices ever heard since recording began. And to know that, as the Daily Telegraph said, she is THE pop artist of her generation.

Source: Pop Dirt

The New BritneySpears.com To Finally Re-Launch Next Week

According to OK!, Britney's official site, BritneySpears.com, is set to re-launch on Monday, September 22nd. The new version of the site is said to offer exclusive Britney footage from her day-to-day life and more!

Source: U Britney

A Spears Tour? Don't Hold Your Breath

The following italicized article is from www.extratv.warnerbros.com:

Will Britney Spears kickoff her 2009 tour with a New Year's Eve performance at the Palms Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas? Rumors have been rampant these past few days, but no one from Brit's camp has confirmed or denied anything, but the Las Vegas Review Journal is reporting the tour probably won't happen.

The Journal believes the pop star's manager Larry Rudolph knows better than to plop her on a stage in a mere 3 months time. Reporter Norm Clarke writes, "Spears has got to get comfortable with the media again; and my hunch is the timetable involves getting her out there soon for sit-downs and cover stories to promote her new album." Sure sounds logical, but with Britney, anything can happen.

Her new studio album, "Circus," is scheduled for release on Dec. 2, Britney's 27th birthday. Clarke doesn't believe a tour is completely out of the question, saying, "...the launch will be closer to February."

Source: Extra TV

Britney Spears’ Entourage

The following italicized article is from www.justjared.com:

Britney Spears is spotted out and about with her entourage in Hollywood on Wednesday.

“She’s working with a team of top-notch producers and songwriters and we’re very excited about what she’s accomplished so far,” her manager Larry Rudolph explained.

Britney will release her latest album, “Circus” on Dec. 2, coinciding with her birthday.

Source: Just Jared

Lynne Spears on Britney: "We Didn't Know What We Were Doing"

The following italicized article is from www.usmagazine.com:

Lynne Spears admitted on Wednesday's Today show that her family wasn't ready for Britney's fast rise to fame.

Asked by Meredith Vieira if she wishes she had done things differently, Lynne said, "shoulda, coulda, woulda."

"It's kind of like Britney was sent out into the world a little bit prematurely," Lynne said while promoting her memoir Through the Storm.

She denied she was ever a stage mom, saying, "Britney pushed me."

When Britney began her career, Lynne said she was a single mom who also had to raise Jamie Lynn, so she couldn't always be there.

"Did I want to be there? Of course!" she said. "Was it feasible? It wasn't."

Lynne compared her situation to when parents send their children off to college.

"You don't really know what they're doing in college ... just as Britney set out two years earlier to be a star," she said.

"She's out there, she's with the crowds and with her peer groups, and she's doing things -- she's a celebrity, for heaven's sake!" Lynne added.

Lynne said she felt she lost control the moment Britney posed nearly naked with a Teletubby on a 1999 Rolling Stone cover.

She said she wouldn't have agreed to let Britney strip down, but "we didn't really know what we were doing."

"We were so in awe," she said. "I never even bought [Rolling Stone], but I just heard this is a really big deal."

"We were kind of in shock at what was going on," Lynne continued. "It was a two-day shoot. Thank god [manager] Larry Rudolph came in and said, 'Stop, that's enough.'"

Lynne added, "We didn't have any choice over pictures ... We had no one who could tell us what we were supposed to be doing."

Did Lynne get sucked into fame?

"It was more of an excitement at first," she said. "It seems like everything's fabulous: Look at the trips she gets to go on!

"There was that honeymoon period where it looked like she could do no wrong," Lynne said. "Then there's that ugly side of fame ... and we weren't ready for that."

As things started to unravel -- Britney's 55-hour marriage to Jason Alexander, two kids in two years, her K-Fed divorce, the shaving of her head, stints in rehab -- Lynne said, "it was so crazy
.
"I don't think anybody was even trying to sit and think of what was going on," she said. "We were praying very hard. It seemed like we had no control over what was happening."

She was so desperate to get in contact with her daughter she said she remembers telling her friends: "If you see my behind going over that wall into the Summit [Britney's house], it's me because it's my last drastic measure."

Looking back, Lynne said, "I have sat for hours, thinking and thinking about everything that's happened. It's been a whirlwind. When you mix extreme heightened celebrity hood and then when you have heartache ... The mixture's just not healthy."

Source: US Magazine

Britney Spears Selling Portrait For Charity

The following italicized article is from www.theinsider.com:

Britney Spears and her family have donated an autographed portrait of the singer for charity, with the bidding starting at $10,000 on her listing at the Internet auction site eBay.

The five-foot-tall portrait of the pop star was given to the Promises Foundation, which provides money for behavioral health services to low-income women and their children.

The original oil painting, titled "Mixed Media Painting of Britney Spears," was created by California artist Daniel Maltzman.

The auction is set to run through September 25, with the lucky buyer also receiving a letter of authenticity from the artist, as well as a letter of ownership from Britney's father, James Spears.

Source: The Insider

Britney At International Dance Academy, Part 2

Britney went BACK to the International Dance Academy after taking some time off between auditioning dancers. After returning to the dance academy from The Mondrian Hotel, she looked at a few more dancers, some of whom we spoke with as they were leaving. Also, Brit's bodyguard's car mysteriously got a ding, and was also the source of one man's rage for blocking the alley.

Source: X17 Video