Seizures ≥ "Gimme More"

I'll admit it: I like Britney Spears' music. This was really hard for me in high school because I was supposed to be the goth chick that only listened to hardcore goth music (whatever that is... definitely not what I was actually listening to). It was hard because any time one of her songs came on the radio (the upbeat ones, not those lovey slow romantic ones) I really wanted to start grooving and singing along, not sneer in disgust and change the station. I think over the years I worked so hard at not giving the slightest hint of enjoying her tunes that I actually convinced myself that they were worthless pieces of shite, until I relented and downloaded a few of the more popular songs. And okay, maybe they were shite (when compared to really memorable, time-tested musicians' body of work) but I will easily admit now that her stuff was catchy and super easy to dance to. Plus, the videos for these songs were quite hot and, again, inspired dancing.

Until now.

We all know of the debacle that was Britney Spears' performance at this year's MTV Video Music Awards. Most people feel that she looked like a bowl of non-sexy pudding (is there a sexy type of pudding?) as she tried to move around the stage, but that wasn't the worst of it to me. Most women look soft and curvy so that's not where she lost points. No, it was the dancing itself, the half-assed moves and the lame lipsyncing to a--dare I say it?--equally lame song. Yes, "Gimme More" is lame.

In years past, I could justify enjoying Britney's music, despite her less-than-remarkable vocals, because the end product was good. So what if Christina was technically a better singer? I liked Britney's beats. But "Gimme More" just leaves me dead in the water. I don't want to dance to it, and I'm not sure it'd be fun to sing along with the redundant, grammatically bad lyrics ("gimme gimme [more] gimme [more] gimme gimme"). Truth be told, the VMAs were the first time I had heard the song, so I thought maybe her remarkable performance was just overshadowing what could still be a good tune. But then I saw the music video and... I think my love affair with Britney's music is over.



This video is not sexy. The dancing is not hot. And the song is... yeah, shite. As Jezebel said, "You can tell that they had such limited footage to work with, so they were forced to add Photoshop-y effects and filters to break up the monotony of the two or three shots they were only able to capture that day." The end result is more strobe-tastic than an episode of Dragonball-Z and I had to stop watching halfway through. Seriously, I usually don't do that. It wasn't because I was in fear of seizuring out of my computer chair, but because I just couldn't stand it anymore. My benefit-of-the-doubt attitude has finally met its match. And that polework? Puh-leez, I've never even touched a stripper pole but I'm pretty sure I could work it better in my oversized sweatpants than anything that video shows.

Gimme more? No thank you. Take it away, please.