60 Songs That Explain the '90s - Britney Spears – “Toxic”

Episode Date: February 11, 2026

Before he vows to leave her alone, Rob breaks down the cataclysmic career of a pop star who did it for the love of the game and the disgust of the fame. Britney Spears had the power to shift culture with a single VMAs performance, yet her music reflected a desperation to control her own personal life. Despite the public’s continuous mistreatment of Britney, she selflessly gifted us one of the most iconic bangers of our time: “Toxic.” Afterwards, Rob speaks with music journalist Jeff Weiss to talk about the unfinished evolution of Britney’s career, the difference in today’s celebrity culture, and creation of his book, ‘Waiting for Britney Spears,’ in the time of the Free Britney movement. Host: Rob Harvilla Guest: Jeff Weiss Producers: Justin Sayle and Olivia Crerie Additional Video Editing: Kevin Pooler Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

She is a famous singer. That's all I can tell you for sure. Beyond that, the usual categories, pop star, rock star, ingenue. These categories don't really apply to her. Angenu, that word is French and a little corny and possibly mispronounced, so I try not to say that word at all. No offense, the French people. Words generally feel insufficient with regards to this person,

the infernal mystery that accrues around this person. Even her backstory is suspicious. She came from the American South, but did she, though, really? Are we sure about that? Are we 100% positive she is of this planet? Is it possible she's like David Bowie in that 70s sci-fi movie, The Man Who Fell to Earth, that she's a kind-hearted alien who crash-landed here,

and she just wants fuel for her spaceship so she can get out of here, but we won't let her leave. I picture her like alien David Bowie, right? Sitting in front of that famous gnarly wall of TVs, absorbing all our trash, fascinated but corrupted by humankind, poked and prodded and poisoned, and more or less imprisoned by humankind.

She makes this incredible spellbinding music that feels so volatile, so elusive, so dangerous, though the harm her music allegedly poses to us, us pales in comparison to the harm all our lurid attention poses to her. Her live performances are even more startling. Sometimes they're transcendent. And sometimes on stage, she's outrageously, excruciatingly uncomfortable, compelling even the New York Times, the paper of record, to deploy the term train wreck.

And yet we can't look away. Or anyway, she can't make us look away, even if she wanted us to. They put an infamous, alarmingly racy photo of her in a big magazine once next to the headline, Wayward Girl, and a subhead that announced that she demands attention, then resists it. Meanwhile, her music only got more dangerous and more spellbinding, and at the dawn of the 21st century, at arguably the very height of her powers, she went gunning for Mick Jagger and gently gunned him down. Just the word radio there. The mystery and the rapture and the danger radiating off the word radio when she sings it. Her name is Sean Marshall, C-H-A-N. She is known professionally as Cat Power.

The rapturously and aggressively acclaimed singer and songwriter and quote-unquote indie rock, quote-unquote, shantuz known as Cat Power. Chantus, that is another ill-advisedly corny, mispronounced French word. No offense. She is from Atlanta, allegedly, and she is increasingly debilitatingly famous. Cat Powers' Erie and Astounding Fourth Album, released in 1998 and called Moon Picks, P-I-X. Moon Picks blows up and makes Cat Power at least rock critic famous, right? She's at least medium famous. And that, as usual, is not an entirely positive development for her.

Anyway, now it's the year 2000, and she's covering satisfaction. Like satisfaction by the Rolling Stones. Though maybe you'd only know that if you were listening to the lyrics super hard, which is always worth doing when it's Cat Power singing them. Yes, this is Cat Power's cover of the 1965 Rolling Stones' smash hit Satisfaction. Excuse me, the full title is Parenthood. I can't get no close parenthesis satisfaction. Excuse me.

You will observe that Cat Power's version of satisfaction cuts out the most famous part of the song. And in fact, one of the most famous guitar riffs in rock and roll history. Keith Richards going, Bum, bha-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-that part. Cat Power ain't got no interest in that part. Cat Power is laser-focused on Mick Jagger's lyrics.

on Mick Jagger's various jovially shouted complaints about being overstimulated by advertising and understimulated by the ladies. And Cat Power sings satisfaction the way she sings everything, with this arresting, bluesy, smoky, ephemeral, quavering, but also indestructible voice that makes everyone an earshot lean forward.

But when we all lean forward, she instinctively shrinks away. She shuns the spotlight, which in her line of work only intensifies the spotlight. Meanwhile, by the year 2000, I'd already heard the original Rolling Stones version of satisfaction like two billion times, and I don't know about you,

but I couldn't have picked these lyrics about white shirts and cigarettes out of a police lineup. How white my shirts can be, but I can't. be a man because it doesn't smoke the same cigarettes as me So Cat Power Live in the mid to late 90s is very often straight up

Not a good time for anybody And a truly horrible time for cat power Especially Sometimes the stage lights are dim To the point of pitch darkness Sometimes she mumbles Bantor for so long it feels like she's filibustering her own show

Sometimes she visibly exasperates her own backing band. Sometimes she can't even face the audience. Sometimes she can't even sing at all. Here is the New York Times, reviewing a cat power show at the Bowery Ballroom in New York City in January 1999. Quote, There were a couple of places where Ms. Marshall's concentration held through an entire number. Stepping off the stage and settling down on the floor,

She made it through her song Crossbone Style with her nose pressed to the ground, while fans patted her on the back to comfort her. Later, she sang Dmitri Tiamkins Wild as the Wind, achieving the sad, serene state that admirers of her records came to revel in. But for the most part, they were watching a train wreck. End quote. The show ends like this. Quote, she forgot lyrics, let the simplest

strumming patterns crumble and fall apart, and by the end of her endless set arrived at abject contrition. It's not cool, she said, berating herself. It's not funny. I'm sorry. And then she walked off, leaving the crowd in disbelief. Her guitar player strolled to center stage. Turn the lights on, he instructed. It's over. End quote. I saw Cat Power Live a couple times in this era and I personally never watched her sing with her nose pressed to the floor, but there was always this palpable sense of unease, right? Will she be okay? Will she make it through the whole show? Will she even make it through this next song? Also, why am I here watching this? Because the danger here naturally is that people will start showing up at cat power shows expecting a debacle,

expecting a breakdown, expecting a train wreck. The cringing spectacle threatens to overpower to annihilate the music and annihilate the singer. No wonder we couldn't stop watching her. No wonder she couldn't make us stop. When I'm riding around And I'm doing this And I'm signing that And I'm trying to make some board

And yet Cat Power Kept riding around the globe Doing this and signing that She got more confident in the spotlight Or at least she learned to project more confidence And now here she is In the New Yorker In 2003 with the headline

Wayward Girl lovingly and lasciviously photographed by famous fashion photographer Richard Avedon. This portrait of cat power is pretty famous. I spent several weeks, plural, trying to figure out how to describe this photo to you without actually describing it to you. And eventually I gave up and I made this a video podcast. So I could just show you the photo. Here's the photo.

If you're just listening to this, she's wearing a Bob Dylan t-shirt and her pants are unbuttoned and that's all I've got to say. This is not the usual vibe in the New Yorker, which is, you know, the magazine with the cartoons. There are words also next to this New Yorker photo. Here is famous culture writer Hilton Al's describing, apparently, a much better cat power show. Quote, Marshall was alternately shy and demanding, a solipsist, that is to say, a star.

Her triumphs were as engaging as her disasters. Her long, beautiful body perfectly complimented her long, beautiful hair. She cut her bangs, one young female fan exclaimed after the show. Dressed in jeans in a brown cotton shirt with green stripes, bangles clanking on her wrists, she was at play in the fields of androgyny, impersonating a lonesome cowboy who attracts attention by seeming to spurn it. here was a girl, white trash, scare quotes, who has found her way and articulateness,

the American way of speaking, and made it a powerful form of communication. Marshall's stubborn refusal to be liked seemed to enact the frustration of many American women who feel they have to be seen in order to be heard, end quote. Is inarticulateness really the American way of speaking? Can any lady wearing jeans be said to be at play in the fields of androgyny? Is it possible that this soft corn New Yorker spread might exacerbate the frustration of many American women who feel they have to be seen in order to be heard? Why am I talking so much about this person? Why do so many people talk so much about this person?

For me, it comes down to one word. It's the way Cat Power sings one word. She's almost there. Baby, baby, baby, baby, come back. Can't you see the street? Cat power's version of satisfaction is escalating in a distinctly subtle and yet gargantuan cat power sort of way. Are you aware that can't you see I'm on a losing streak

is Mick Jagger making a little joke about a lady's time of the month? I tried to avoid saying that also, and now I have to say it on K. camera, shit. Talking to Time Magazine in 1966 and marveling that radio stations were playing the Rolling Stones' satisfaction unbleeped, Mick Jagger says, quote, they didn't understand the dirtiest line. It's just life. That's what really happens to girls. Why shouldn't people write about it? End quote, sheesh. The word is trying. The word cat power is about to sing is trying. I need you to stop what you're doing. I need you to stop driving in your car to the grocery

store or folding your laundry or mowing the lawn, whatever you do while you listen to podcasts or watch podcasts. I need you to stop doing any of that. I need you to lock your bedroom door and dim all the lights and lie face down with your nose pressed into the floor. And I need you to concentrate on the way the word trying here bends but does not break. The way the word trying neatly and violently folds the space-time

continuum in half. When I'm riding around and I'm signing that and I'm trying. I think a lot about cat power singing, I am trying. And then singing I am trying again.

I think about the spotlight trying to incinerate her. I think about me as part of her demanding audience, as part of the mob, holding up that spotlight and pointing it at her. I think about how Cat Power is both shy and demanding. You don't get on stage if some dominant part of you doesn't crave the spotlight,

even if you also hate and fear the spotlight. I think about secretly craving the attention that is visibly hurting you. I think about how Mick Jagger defines that Please have sex with me is my sense about Mick Jagger defines satisfaction versus how cat power might define satisfaction or how really any other female pop star might define it. I think about how no one has ever quite stolen satisfaction from the Rolling Stones the way, say, Aretha Franklin stole respect from Otis Redding, though it's certainly notable that a bunch of super famous female singers have tried to steal this song. including Aretha Franklin. Aretha Franklin, 1967.

I love the way she sings the word useless. Aretha sings the word useless like she's trying to destroy it. And maybe that's the right way to sing satisfaction. Maybe the only satisfactory way to convey your dissatisfaction is by singing every word of this song like you're trying to destroy it. Yo, have you? you seen this. This is PJ Harvey and Bjork doing satisfaction on stage at the 1994 Brit Awards.

I had not heard this. This is incredible. PJ Harvey and Bjork sing satisfaction like they do, in fact, understand Mick Jagger's dirtiest line. This is my only exposure to the 1994 Brit Awards. And yet I feel confident in stating that PJ Harvey and Bjork provide the undisputed highlight. of the 1994 Brit Awards, which apparently also included performances from Bon Jovi, Meatloaf,

Elton, John, and Rupal, Van Morrison and Shane McGowan, the Pet Shop Boys doing Go West, that's cool, and the English boy band take that doing a Beatles medley. That's not cool. No, yice, I'm not looking that up.

You know what won British album of the year at the 1994 Brit Awards, connected by the stereo emcees. Those guys. Good for them. Meanwhile, Bjork is going off. And it's a simple thrill, but maybe it's the purest thrill

of a gender-flipped cover of satisfaction. When you get to hear a beloved female pop star just go off. This particular thrill has endured. Get a load of how Dolly Parton sings the word annoyed. I love how annoyed Dolly Parton sounds

when she sings the word annoyed. A word that notably does not appear in the original Rolling Stones version. This is Dolly covering satisfaction very recently in 2023 on her double album called Rockstar, one word. We got Pink and Brandy Carlisle backing Dolly up here.

And there's no need to ask if Dolly gets the joke. Because Dolly's whole thing is that she gets every joke, ever. And that's why she's the best. And so, yeah, we're still doing this today. Nearly 60 years after the original. We're still weaponizing this song. We're still mining the pathos and the griminess and the annoyance of parentheses, I can't get no close parenthesis satisfaction.

And it's not a contest, right? Really, no one is trying to steal this song from the Rolling Stones, per se. But if the satisfaction wars were, in fact, warlike, if this were in fact a competition to determine whose satisfaction reigned supreme? Well, her version might not win, but at the dawn of the 21st century, I think it's safe to say that nobody was a bigger star and nobody found the experience of stardom more. annoying. And there she is, Britney Spears, on stage at the MTV Video Music Awards. No, not the VMA is where she's wearing a giant snake, the other one. No, not the one where she

kisses Madonna, the other other one. No, not the one where she does give me more in Las Vegas in 2007 and it's a huge, wild, super awkward disaster that even the New York Times, the paper of record, even the New York Times calls it a rain wreck, the other, other, other one. This is Brittany Spears at the 2000 VMAs. This is only your second time on the show. She is performing between Cisco and Eminem, who will eventually win video of the year. Eminem will win video of the year for the real Slim Shady, not Cisco, no offense. Brittany's wearing a sparkly Michael Jackson-esque suit and fedora, and she's going to do satisfaction for less than 90 seconds. And then she's not going to be wearing the

suit anymore and she's going to do oops I did it again and it's all going to go great it's going to be fine it's going to be unremarkable if only unremarkable compared to every other Brittany VMA's performance and that's pretty remarkable in and of itself how high the remarkable bar is for this person on this stage the sigh really works for me there though the sigh speaks volumes A sigh from Britney Spears generates volumes of discourse, present company included, I suppose. Brittany is descending a winding staircase in the sparkly Michael Jackson outfit as she sings, And I try, and I try, and I try, and I try. And Britney Spears trying sounds different from Cat Power trying, or Aretha Franklin trying.

But the attempt is universal. The frustration is universal. And also, Brittany's frustration is fueled by her own particular brand of dissonance. Brittany's going to introduce some new words to this song as well. Instead of driving in her car and a man comes on the radio to talk about white shirts and cigarettes, now it's a girl on her TV talking about skirts. For you audio-only folks, the crowd is cheering because Britney Spears has begun tearing off the Michael Jackson suit, just FYI. the specificity here of Brittany singing when I'm watching my TV and that girl comes on and tells me.

This is remarkable to me. That girl, a specific girl, is on the TV addressing me, addressing Britney Spears specifically. And what's extra remarkable is that a girl on TV in the year 2000 is statistically most likely to be Britney Spears herself. And so hypothetically what we have here is Britney Spears on TV arguing with the Britney Spears on her TV about who she should be. We got Britney Spears on our TV telling the Britney Spears on her TV that she's got her own identity. This is only the year 2000. Not a whole lot has even happened to Britney Spears yet relatively. Yes, already she has become incredibly, disconcertingly, you might even say perilously famous.

Her 1998 debut single, Baby One More Time, hit number one. Her 1999 debut album, also called Baby One More Time, also hit number one, and will eventually sell more than 25 million copies worldwide. Britney Spears has already appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone in 1999, lovingly and lasciviously photographed by not Richard Avedon while holding a telotubby next to the headline, Britney Spears inside the heart, mind, and bedroom of a teen dream. We're a video podcast now, which means I can show you this magazine cover, but as the father of a daughter, I also feel compelled to censor this magazine cover.

You feel me? Here's the cover. I'm just kidding. I'm blurring this cover because there's a headline that says, Bill Maher, what he won't say on TV. The first six words of Britney Spears' first rolling story. Stone cover story, written by someone who is not Hilton Al's, are as follows, quote, Britney Spears extends a honeyed thigh, end quote. It goes on. All of that already happened.

Yes, the Britney Spears on stage, singing satisfaction at the 2000 VMAs, has already scrambled the distinctions between pop star and rock star. Between a 20th century tabloid icon and a 21st century tabloid icon. Between the girl on TV and the girl being scolded by the girl on TV, between the spotlight as deification, and the spotlight as near total incineration. Brittany Spears is going to make a great deal of fantastic music in this century, but it's a volume issue, right? Volume as in, you know, loudness, signal to noise. Every successive new fantastic Britney Spears song is going to have to be loud enough to be audible over the increasingly deafening noise surrounding Britney Spears. Eventually, all that deafening noise is going to engulf

her and us. So especially now, let's cherish these moments when the Britney Spears song of the moment is so perfect and so seemingly universally beloved that it drowns out the worrisome Britney Spears discourse of the moment. That has an happened very often. But it happened at least once. My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 32nd episode of 60 songs that explain in the 90s, colon the 2000s.

And this week we are discussing Toxic by Britney Spears from her 2003 album in the zone. Remember when Tyler the creator, the rapper, the odd future guy? Remember when Tyler the creator tweeted, I have eight friends for some reason? And then some random dude went viral by tweeting, me, I have nine friends. And then my friend, toxic by Britney Spears, isn't even that good. And then he quote tweeted Tyler saying, I have eight friends. That's one of my favorite tweets ever. Here's that tweet.

I love video podcasting. If you're only listening, I don't know if that tweet translates verbally at all. But it's too late now. It's too late now for a lot of things, I suppose, where Britney is. and Twitter and society are concerned. I don't want to talk about it. I've spent the last several weeks, plural, trying to figure out how to talk about her

without talking about it. I don't even know what I mean by it, precisely. I mean a lot of things, I suppose. The last time we talked about Britney Spears, we did a whole episode on Baby one more time, back when we did the 90s, of course. Last time she came up, I tried so hard not to talk about it

that I ended up rewriting the lyrics to the early Brittany song, email my heart, and then I sang them. Don't go look that up. I could talk for hours, probably, about everything I don't want to talk about. You see the problem here, yes? Oh, thank goodness. It's an ad break.

Fantastic. Okay, let's go to the mall. You want to go to the mall? It is August 1999. We're going to the mall. The mall. A mall. Any mall, your mall. We're at your mall. We're in the food court. You hungry? What do you want? You want Sbarrow? You want Panda Express? You want Antianns? You want Cineabon? You want Orange Julius? Is that still a thing? You want bourbon chicken? I want bourbon chicken. You want pre-chalupa-era Taco Bell? Taco Bell introduced the Chalupa in 1999. I looked it up. Okay, so we're throwing down on some bourbon chicken at the mall in late summer 1998. And, weird. There's a state.

set up next to the food court. And there's a singer and two backup dancers on stage. And the singer is Britney Spears. Nice tie, Brittany. Summer 1998. Britney Spears is 17 years old. Born in McComb, Mississippi, raised in nearby Kentwood, Louisiana in a chaotic family environment. I don't want to talk about it. Young Brittany is talented and precocious in the extreme. According to Britney's 2023 memoir called The Woman in Me. She was three years old at her first dance recital and four years old when she sang her first solo. What child is this at a daycare Christmas program? Britney also says that at this time, as a little kid, she liked to hide in various cabinets at her aunt's house and make her whole family search for her because, quote, I wanted to hide, but I wanted to be seen. End quote. Now, at 17, Brittany Spears is a singer, a dancer, a stage actor, a veteran of the Mickey Mouse Club, and an exciting new recording artist with Jive Records, currently headlining her very first tour, which runs from August 1998 to January 1999 when her debut album comes out, and this tour is, famously, a tour of shopping malls. officially this is known as the L'Oreal Hair Zone Mall Tour

Brittany's set lasts about 20 minutes on average and concludes with her debut single released in September 1998 and mysteriously titled Dot Dot Dot Baby One More Time But first she's going to sing us this sunny little love song called Sometimes With a chorus that starts

Sometimes I Run Sometimes I Hide Sometimes I'm scared of you Baby all I need is time sings young Britney Spears, but time is something that young Britney Spears does not have and will not get. Sometimes is the song that really gets me on the first Britney album. Sometimes bums me out. Sometimes it's a song where Britney literally sings, if you really want me, move slow. And she sings it like she already knows that moving slow is not an option for her,

for anyone who wants something from her. There is no such thing as an overnight success in pop music or in anything else. And indeed, young Brittany had already been working for years to reach this point, but it is incredibly hard to overstate how huge Britney Spears got and how fast it happened. And I say that as someone who overstates things for a living.

Brittany starts touring shopping malls in late summer 1998. By the end of 1999, she's, will be unequivocally the best-selling artist of 1999 and the first female artist in history to have the number one song in America, that's Baby One More Time, the song, and the number one album in America, that's Baby One More Time, the album, at the same time. Her debut album and her debut single will top the Billboard charts simultaneously. The L'Oreal Hairzone Mall Tour, therefore is the first and last time that Britney Spears will be singing her songs on stage

while she is not astoundingly debilitatingly famous. So this split second, this woefully insufficient period of time, where Britney Spears is singing Baby One More Time, but Baby One More Time is not blown up yet. Here is how Brittany describes this woefully insufficient period of time in her 2023 memoir. That's probably the moment in my life when I had the most passion for music.

I was unknown and I had nothing to lose if I messed up. There is so much freedom in being anonymous. I could look out at a crowd who'd never seen me before and think, you don't know who I am yet. That's famous actress Michelle Williams reading the audiobook version of Britney's 2023 memoir, The Woman in Me,

which is the superior version, the audiobook, getting Michelle Williams to read this is going to pay off real soon. But see, even by the end of the L'Oreal-Harezone Mall Tour, Brittany is confronted by screaming crowds who sure seem to think they know who Britney Spears is.

Here's another show on the Mall Tour. This is January 1999, and it's already happening. It's already happened. She's already out of time. Yeah, it's a whole. over. Britney Spears being anonymous and free, that's over. You know what else is over? The 90s. As we've discussed, decades do not necessarily culturally begin on January 1st, 1990 and end exactly

10 years later on December 31st, 1999 or whatever. One popular argument is that the 90s began officially in September of 1991 when Nirvana's smells like teen spirit came out. That's the true moment the 80s ended and the 90s began, hypothetically. My colleague Nora Prenziotti recently published a fantastic book called Hit Girls, Brittany, Taylor, Beyonce, and the women who built Pop's shiniest decade. And Nora argues, convincingly, that the very first time Britney Spears sang the words, Oh, Baby, Baby, on the radio somewhere in the fall of 1998, that's the moment the 90s ended and the 2000s began.

The moment the aughts began. The moment Pop's shiniest decade began. So forget the calendar. It's the 2000s now. Teen Pop is huge now. Teen Pop preferably featuring bizarre and nonsensical and vaguely unsettling lyrics written by mysterious Swedish dudes.

That's huge now. Teen Pop, preferably sung by Britney Spears, is huge now. In May of the year 2000, Brittany puts out her second album called Oops I Did It Again. Oops! exclamation point dot dot, dot, space, I did it again. And she knows she's absurdly famous now. And she knows that you think you know who and what she is now. How did she get up on that giant star and how is she going to get down? Lucky concerns me.

Lucky is the song that really gets me on the second Britney album. This one really bums me out. Ostensibly, Lucky is also a sweet love song or a sweet pining for love song. Typically, when you hear a pop song in which a young pop star sings about how she cry, cry, cry, cries in her lonely heart, pop music has trained you to just assume that the pop star is cry, cry, cry, crying in her lonely heart because she is pining for a special someone. Yes, she is lonely because she needs someone else to be there with. her. But Britney Spears never actually says that in the song Lucky. What Britney Spears does instead is she sings the word why, like she is howling into the void of her own crushing celebrity. The way the word why bends but does not break. The way the word why neatly and violently folds the space time continuum in half. In the video, her face does not especially change expression.

when she hits that why, but you'd better believe that her soul changes expression. The melodic leap up to the word why there is technically sound. It is technically and mathematically correct in the melodic math sense that these mysterious Swedish songwriter dudes are so famously fond of. But Britney's leap up to the word why also freaks me out every time I hear it. There is something so painfully, helplessly human, it. Same deal with the whole second verse. In the video, her only friends, her only companions now are phantom versions of herself. And I can feel myself overdoing it here

in terms of pop star subtext and pop star melodrama. And I don't want to overdo it. And furthermore, I don't want to talk about it. But while I'm somewhat prepared now today for the way Britney Spears sings the word why, I was far less prepared for the true beautiful, the precisely half-naive and half-resigned way, Brittany Spears sings to herself, the words, and the world is spinning and she keeps on winning, but tell me what happens when it stops. Don't answer that. Let me give you an example. Justin Timberlake, I don't want to talk about it. I have precisely one thing to say about Brittany's ex-boyfriend, Justin Timberlake. Brittany's memoir, The Woman and Me, is rough going, often, obviously.

But there is one magnificent moment of comic relief in the audiobook version especially. And it starts with Brittany, rather astutely illustrating the difference between Justin's blockbuster late 90s, early 2000s boy band, and that other blockbuster late 90s, early 2000s boy band. His band in sync was what people back then called So Pimp. They were white boys, but they loved hip hop. To me, that's what separated them from the backstreet boys, who seemed very consciously to position themselves as a white group. InSync hung out with black artists.

Now, I personally have never in my life heard anybody refer to Insync as So Pimp. But she's the expert. Never mind that, though. Sometimes I thought they tried too hard to fit in. One day, Jay and I were in New York going to parts of town. I'd never been to before. Walking our way was a guy with a huge, blinged-out medallion. He was flanked by two giant security guards.

Jay got all excited and said so loud, Oh yeah, fooshes, foeshys, genuine. What's up, homie? Amazing. This is famous actress Michelle Williams, acting out Britney Spears' recollection of her dorkess, soon-to-be ex-boyfriend Justin Timberlake's ultra-cringy attempt to ingratiate himself with R&B superstar Genuine.

I love this anecdote very much. If you're going to do this whole audiobook, and painful as it gets, I do recommend it. I also recommend that you somehow bookmark, oh, yeah, four-shears, four-she's, so you can return to it periodically for emotional support, while Brittany describes the truly harrowing last 20-odd years of her life. That's what I should have done anyway. But I don't want to talk about it. The third Britney Spears album is released in 2001 and is called Brittany and kicks off with a song called I'm a slave for you, numeral four, capital you, written and produced by our super producer friends, The Neptunes.

That video looks really sweaty and uncomfortable and features way more wood paneling than I anticipated. The way Brittany's voice wincingly and lasciviously melts all over the word slave is really something. Yes? Yes. What's so striking to me about Brittany casually and succinctly nailing the distinction between InSink and the Backstreet Boys? Insync hung out with black artists, while the Backstreet Boys explicitly positioned themselves as white artists, is that Britney's own music has always navigated that same musical and cultural device. famously back in the 90s when she was shopping herself to record labels

Brittany's demo CD included a song meant for R&B superstar Tony Braxton. Famously, Brittany auditioned in person for record labels by singing Whitney Houston songs. Also famously, the song Baby One More Time was originally offered to TLC, TLC of Waterfalls and No Scrubs fame, etc. And TLC were like, you want us to sing a song with a chorus that goes, Hit Me Baby one more time?

No. I'm paraphrasing, but am I, though? From the onset, there is tons of R&B in Brittany's music, and especially in Brittany's physical voice, but the extremely Swedish pop, the melodic math, the Max Martin of it all, the palpable, medium-funky whiteness of it all

dominates her first two records. It dominates the baby one more time, and oops, I did it again. records. And as fantastic and as world historically successful as those first two records are, it is electrifying, truly, on album number three to listen as Brittany forcibly expands her horizons. I'm so glad that Neptunes are here. That's what I'm saying. I'm always glad when the Neptunes are around, but now I'm extra glad. This song is called Boys.

It is the other Neptune's collaboration on this third album, Brittany. And if you're like me, when you hear Britney Spears gloriously rip the word nasty in half with her teeth, immediately you think Janet Jackson, right? If you personally evoke the concept of nasty boys anywhere at any time, Janet Jackson will instantly teleport to your physical location. That's not true. Janet might teleport to Brittany's location, though. Janet will make an exception.

I would be delighted, actually, if Janet Jackson would physically teleport to Britney Spears' location, especially here circa 2001, because more than anything else, control is what I want for Britney Spears. Always. So Janet Jackson, as you recall, debuts in the early 80s, and she makes some. a couple tentative, underwhelming, teen pop-ish records, but then she blows up for real in 1986 with her God-tier album control. Janet basically fires. She relieves her world famously overbearing father from his duties as her manager, and she hooks up with the producers she wants so she can make the exact kind of music she wants. And it turns out that what Janet Jackson wants

is to make one of the greatest albums of all time. Put Janet Jackson in the headset Mike Hall of Fame, right alongside Britney Spears and Garth Brooks. And look, Janet Jackson's specific family situation, there is no real historical equivalent to the planet-sized shadow Janet Jackson needs to escape from in this moment. And it's not like it's smooth sailing for Janet Jackson from here on out,

But both musically and philosophically, I have always heard a ton of Janet in Brittany. And especially on these next three Britney albums, starting in 2001, I hear Britney reaching for Janet, both musically and philosophically. I hear Britney Spears trying to make her own control. And I hear Britney Spears trying to take control. At this point, even Britney's backup dancers have a vaguely stalkery and high. This song is also in the 2001 Brittany album. It is co-written and co-produced by Max Martin and Rami Akoub of Baby One More Time, Super Fame. And it is called Overprotected, which conveniently rhymes with I Stand corrected.

More importantly though, there's this part. But who am I to say what a girl is to do? Oof. And then she starts dancing with her hostile backup dancers. All she wants to do is dance. This 2001 Brittany record, this is the record with her excellent and grouchy cover of I Love Rock and Roll on it. This is the record with the song, Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman on it. As we have learned, frustration, profound dissatisfaction, these are all crucial elements of great rock music, great pop music, whatever.

But here in Pop's shiniest decade, there is no real historical equivalent for the frustration. the exasperation, the profound dissatisfaction, the attempted infantilization of Britney Spears, and no real historical equivalent for the planet-sized shadow she's trying to escape from, even if it's her own shadow. The challenge, for me anyway, with every album Britney Spears makes in the 2000s, is how long you can listen to it without thinking too hard about the personal and yet horrendous. publicly struggles of

Britney Spears in the 2000s. Justin Timberlake, I don't want to talk about it. Kevin Federline. Kevin Federline is the fucking

compensated spokesman for I don't want to talk about it. Kevin Federline recently published a memoir, and I will read that book if you pay me

$600. I have settled arbitrarily but firmly on $600 as the dollar amount I require to read Kevin Fedderline's memoir. The paparazzi that hounds Brittany Spears relentlessly forever and always,

I don't want to talk about it. The paparazzi variously described in Brittany's memoir as enemy combatants, sharks, an army of zombies, and the ghosts chasing Pac-Man. I don't want to talk about it, if only because Brittany is forced to spend so much of her memoir talking about it. You know what's a low-key, heartbreaking moment in Brittany's memoir? When she hangs out with Madonna. Not when Britney smooches Madonna at the VMAs.

This is another time. This is after that. The fourth Britney Spears album is released in 2003 and is called In the Zone, and it kicks off with a song called Me Against the Music, which features our friend Madonna. Look, we don't necessarily want Britney Spears rapping, nor do we necessarily even want Brittany spending much time in a rap-adjacent environment. But her deft and melodic and mathematically pleasing barrage of syllables there

is my favorite part of me against the music. Brittany's choreography is getting sharper and harsher and more confrontational as well. It's awesome. The part where Madonna shows up is pretty cool, too. Put Madonna in the cane-wielding Hall of Fame. And here's what Madonna shows Brittany about control. In Brittany's memoir, she writes, quote,

On the first day of our shoot for the Saw's video, which was the last two or three days, we were told a seam had come undone on Madonna's white suit and a seamstress had to be called in to fix it. So there would be a delay in our start time. I wound up having to sit in my trailer for hours, waiting for the suit to be fixed. Really? I thought. I didn't even know taking so much time for oneself was an option, end quote. And Brittany goes on, she says, quote, during our shoot together,

I was in awe of the ways Madonna would not compromise her vision. She kept the focus on her. Going along with Madonna's ideas and being on her time for days was what it meant to collaborate with her. It was an important lesson for me, one that would make a long time for me to absorb. She demanded power, and so she got power. She was the center of attention because she made that the condition of her showing up anywhere. She made that life for herself. I hoped I could find ways to do that while preserving the parts of my nice girl identity that I wanted to keep, end quote. And look, it ain't exactly smooth sailing from here on out for Madonna, ever. But the same way it bums me out that Brittany never got to go full Janet Jackson and make her own control,

it bums me out that Brittany never gets to go full Madonna. For various personal and legal and institutional reasons I don't want to talk about, Britney can never quite demand power the way Madonna demands power. power that could have been a huge benefit to Brittany both musically and personally. Plus, incidentally, my favorite moments on this in the Zone record tend to remind me of Madonna's album, Ray of Light. This song is called Touch of My Hand. Lyrically, I think this is pretty easy to interpret,

and I invite you to do that during your own personal private time. But dig the violin there. Dig the blist out state-of-the-art circa 2004 electronic bloops. Dig the genuinely startling, worldly, hypnotic vibes here. We're getting we're getting bolder. We're crossing borders. We're crossing boundaries. We are searching.

We are both further in and further out of control. And boy, oh boy, Brittany speaking. sings about being both in and out of control constantly. It's tempting to tell you that touch of my hand is the best song on In the Zone. Or maybe it's the song called Breathe on Me that I also encourage you to interpret lyrically in your own personal private time. Or maybe it's the one called Early Mornings. that was co-written and co-produced by Moby.

Moby being the bald guy with the tattoos. But yeah, okay, never mind. Let's not kid ourselves. Okay. So, here's how you make one of the raddest pop music samples of the 2000s. All right, so we start with James Bond, right? A classic James Bond, a score from Russia with Love, 1963, Connery era that's Tanya Romanova speaking she's with Soviet Army intelligence

and she's gonna get tricked into a plot to assassinate James Bond but she'd also maybe like to smooch with James Bond and one of those plans will succeed right okay all right now run the clip backward raise the pitch chop it up a little bit and repeat the new last bar three times all right that's dope shout out the YouTube channel and sampling service track lib by the way for this Let's put some cool drums under that and go kick some ass. Hold on now. I'm sorry.

I got confused. That's not, Brittany. Yeah, this is Lincoln Park. The 2003 Lincoln Park song, Faint. And Faint is indeed one of the raddest pop music samples of the 2000s. And Faint does indeed kick tremendous quantities of ass. But that's not what I meant, obviously. I do apologize.

Let's try that again. That's better. All right. So we start with. Hollywood with a 1981 Indian film Egdujic Keele. It's a romantic tragedy,

Romeo and Juliet vibes. Our two lovers are twirling around on a lush hill overlooking the ocean. The lady is beautifully crooning a song called Tiri-Miri Beach Main. And meanwhile, the dude is wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap

under lush dark hair and he's jumping on rocks in time to the musical score. He looks like he came straight from a Chicago Bears game and the Bears won. I really dig this guy's vibe. I'm so glad this is a video podcast

now. I bet this movie rules. He better not die at the end. All right, now jump back 20 seconds or so to when the rad dude picks up the rad lady on his rad motorcycle. There we go. That's more like it. All right, put that

together, chop it up, whatever, and let's go kick pretty much more ass than's ever been kicked by anyone ever. the finest computer graphics 2003 has to offer in the toxic video. I'll tell you right off the rip that what I love the most about toxic by Britney Spears is that I don't know about you, but I personally do not bring any fraught societal Britney Spears type baggage to toxic. Maybe this is just me, but maybe not.

This song doesn't vaguely make me feel gross about the wanton telituby's ass teenage bedroom purviness of, the media circus around early Brittany. Back in the baby one more time and oops, I did it again, era. A Britney song like Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman, in my head anyway, that's more of a dorky rock critic phrase than it is a song title at this point. Or at least, I'm pretty sure I personally have dropped Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman into some dorky article somewhere that probably wasn't even about her. I'm not going to look that up. Every Britney album after this one, after in the zone, and the very next album especially.

They'll all have a terribly sad and complicated and appalling parallel public narrative to contend with that I don't want to talk about, whereas toxic. And this word is not French, but I try to avoid using it, but you'll forgive me for using it now because it's the only word that applies.

Toxic is simply free to be in the parlance of our time a banger. Baby, can't you say, I love it when Brittany sings directly into this stewardess phone. I sound like such a doofus when I say banger. Yeesh. I just permanently aged five years saying that. I just joined the AARP.

All of a sudden, I'm eating dinner at Denny's at four in the afternoon. I'm sorry. I probably won't ever say that again. You know the best part of Toxic? You know my single favorite micro moment? in Brittany Spears's whole catalog. It's one chord change during these verses. It just happened right when she sings,

it's dangerous. C to E7, just the tensest and tiniest step higher. Burr-bran-n-n-n-r-n-r-n-r. It happens again right here when she goes, you're dangerous. I'm loving it. Top five best chord change of the 2000s. Top three, possibly number one.

I'm working on my list right now. I'm scrawling it on a Denny's napkin. I'm scrawling it on a napkin handed to me by one of the other stewardesses in this video. Toxic is produced and co-written by the production and songwriting duo Bloodshy and Avant. And these dudes are indeed extremely Swedish. And yet, from the Bollywood sample forward, there is a global sweep. There is a genre-mashing and boundary-expanding fearlessness to toxic. the James Bond spy guitar action, the slinkiness, the way funkier than medium funkiness.

Vocally, it's the way Brittany switches registers, the way she flips from growly staccato to breathy falsetto, right here, and she drops out for a couple seconds to cede the dance floor to the single best chord change of her career. Unbelievable, that chord change just kills me. C to E7. I can't really explain it, but I tried. The toxic video features at least half a dozen dopey old white guys. Toxic, the song, has four songwriters. We got the producers, Bloodshy and Avant, plus Henrik John Beck, Swedish,

and Kathy Dennis, English, not Swedish. And Kathy's other Big Shot credits include Kylie Minogue's Can't Get You Out of My Head, and Katie Perry's I Kissed a Girl. This is the fourth Britney Spears album. This is S-tier, Best of the Best, Hyper Elite Pop Songcraft. structurally, mathematically, philosophically, but toxic somehow

does not sound labored or focus grouped or song doctored into theoretical oblivion. It's the precision but also the chaos. To put it in Brittany terms, it's the total control

and the total liberating loss of control. This is my second favorite Britney Spears song. Toxic is, canonically, the second best, Britney Spears song.

My big problem, though, with the single best Britney Spears song is that on that song, she is explicitly talking about all the shit I don't want to talk about. Piece of me is the best Britney Spears song. Produced by Bloodshy and Avant again, who co-wrote it

with Klaus Allund. Swedish. Did you know Britney is singing with a kid on my arm? I'm still an exceptional earner there. I didn't know that. I didn't know the last word there was earner. On Peace of Me, Britney Spears sings, unambiguously, about the ludicrous media firestorm that has always raged around her and has by now totally engulfed her. Piece of Me kicks off the fifth Britney Spears album, which is released in 2007 and is called Blackout. it is hard to imagine a better album released by a person having a worse time. Brittany doesn't talk in depth about her music in her memoir. She likes Baby one more time.

She likes me against the music. She likes toxic. She likes quite a few of her songs. Sure. But it's not until she's talking about this era when she starts saying over and over that blackout is the best thing she's ever done. And it is outrageous and tremendously upsetting to her that despite making the best album of her career, Blackout is also the moment where she loses control of everything. I'm Mrs. Lexington. You want a piece of me. I'm Mrs. Oh, my God, that Britney's shameless. You want a piece of me.

I'm Mrs. Extra, Extra. Extra. It's just thin. You want a piece of me. I missis, she's still big now she's still thin. You want a piece of me. So 2000 is the year Britney Spears shaves her head and wax a paparazzi's car with an umbrella and performs her song, Gimmee Moore, the lead single off Blackout, at the VMAs, and it is poorly received. Early 2008 is when Brittany locks herself in the bathroom in her home with one of her two sons because she's in the midst of a vicious custody battle with her ex-husband, Kevin Federline,

and she fears she will never see her children again. Of all the singularly unpleasant public events in Britney Spears' life that I don't want to think about anymore, Britney and her son locked in a bathroom until literally a SWAT team arrives to break the door down, I don't want to think about that the most. February 2008, Brittany is placed in a conservatorship, controlled primarily by her world famously overbearing father, and that conservatorship, in which Brittany entirely loses control over the most minute aspects of her life and career, the conservatorship lasts for 13 plus years.

Brittany is not freed until November of 2021. By which time we've entered a new media era where lots of people feel bad about how the media treated Britney Spears. So people start making apologetic Britney Spears documentaries, but Brittany does not much enjoy. the apology documentary era either. The whole world feeling sorry for her gets to feeling like just another way to control her. And I don't want to talk about any of that

because it feels overdone and exploitative. But then I get to thinking that not talking about any of it and just laser focusing on the music and the chord changes or whatever, I worry that's just naive. And it doesn't give Brittany enough credit for everything she endured while making all this music. And around and around and around.

Toward the end of her memoir, The Woman and Me, Brittany talks about one of the several rehab facilities she says her family forced her into. After what Brittany characterizes as a minor argument over how she didn't want to do one dance move during one of her various blockbuster high-earning Las Vegas residences. The details don't matter as much to me here. What matters is when Britney Spears says, I shouldn't be this strong. I did the program by myself for two months in Beverly Hills. It was hell, like being in my very own horror movie. I watch scary movies. I've seen The Conjuring. I'm not scared of anything after those months at that treatment center.

Seriously, I'm not scared of anything now. I'm probably the least fearful woman alive at this point, but it doesn't make me feel strong. It makes me sad. I shouldn't be this strong. I have spent several weeks, plural, with Michelle Williams as Brittany Spears saying, I shouldn't be this strong rattling around in my head. It's not a pleasant feeling and it's not supposed to be. And maybe it's this simple. Toxic is the one song that can briefly replace the bad feeling with a good feeling. Maybe there is some solace in the fact that some

tiny part of Britney Spears is still on stage at some mall in 1998, already surrounded by screaming fans, not quite anonymous, but somehow still free. Toward the end of her book, she puts it like this. People might laugh because things I post are innocent or strange, or because I can get mean when I'm talking about people who've hurt me. Maybe this has been a feminist awakening. I guess what I'm saying is that the mystery of who the real me is is to my advantage, because nobody knows. But meanwhile, I'm writing all this, and I keep stopping to look up today's Britney Spears headline, because there's always a new.

Britney Spears headline, and then I wish I hadn't looked it up. Let's leave it at that. Let's give her the last word, the last two words. Nobody knows. And if you need anything else from Britney, just go listen to Toxic again. We are so thrilled to be joined by Jeff Weiss, writer, critic, editor-in-chief of P.O.W. Magazine, mayor of Los Angeles, in my opinion, and author of the semi-fictional novel Waiting for Britney Spears. Jeff, thank you so much for being. Thanks for having. me. I'm glad that I ended up from deputy mayor where I'd been until recently, but, you know. Congratulations on your promotion. It's well-earned. Yeah, it was only a little bit of bribery and chicanery. That's politics, man. That's how the game is played. Absolutely. You've been talking

about Britney Spears for the last year or two. Have you encountered anyone, Jeff, who doesn't think that toxic is the best Britney Spears song? Are those people out there? I think there is a contrarian case to be made for I'm a slave for you or piece of me. But, you know, everyone will have their own different answer, but I think, like, the unanimous pick is always toxic. Like, it's a safe bat. No one will argue with you about that. Exactly. What do you think it is about this song specifically? Is it just where it falls in her career? Is it more the beat? Is it more the vocal performance? Is it all of it put together? Like, what makes toxic the one for so many people, for most people, I guess? I mean, it's sort of like a career-defining song that encapsulates everything that people love about Brittany.

Also, it kind of captures that era where everyone was trying to kind of do the kind of post-Punjabi MC, kind of like Raga, post-Timbled. You know, the video is very iconic, you know, where she's, you know, a stewardess slash secret agent. That's kind of like the D.L character from Vineland doing her vibrating palm murder thing on the ex-boyfriend. There we go. And it's just, you know, who doesn't love a banger? It's a good point. Now that you ask that, nobody doesn't love a banger. It's true.

This is the era, you know, the first two Britney records are very, like, teen pop, very Swedish, Max Martin, melodic math or whatever. But then you get into, I'm a slave for you. You know, she's working with a yin-yang twins with Madonna covering Joan Jets. She's expanding her horizons, right? So, like, in the mid-2000s, her third and her fourth record. Like, what's your sense of where Britney Spears wanted to go?

And, like, what do you think Britney Spears ultimately wanted to be? I mean, I think her models are a Janet Jackson and a Madonna, right? And you can see kind of this shift where she goes kind of from the, you know, not a girl, not yet a woman mode into, you know, I'm a seductress in a cosmic harem mode in, you know, 23rd century, like Alpha Centauri. And I think it kind of starts with toxic. You know, obviously I'm a slave for you where she, you know, does the VMA's performance,

you know, with the snake. Banana, the python, we all know and love. And Doc Antle, I think, is his name from Tiger King. It was a real moment in history. But yeah, and I think at this point, you know, Brittany was sort of trying to kind of diversify her sound and make it more adults, so whether that means having the Yin Yang twins, which is really funny.

I think about it a lot because the label wanted that to be the first single. And like, that's kind of one of the funny things about in the zone. There are some tracks that are kind of like preserved in amber from 2003. It's like the idea where you're like, okay, ignition is popular. We must have R. Kelly write a Bollywood song. And we're going to have Snoop Dog play your love interest, which was outrageous. That was the other single.

It's unbelievable that people heard toxic, though, for the first time and weren't like, oh, that's the one. And people didn't think it was. I think of Janet Jackson a lot as well. Like, I think about control. right like a Britney song like overprotected you know she's she's asking for control she's complaining about not having control of her own career and you know I think about how literal the control album was and Janet Jackson saying you know this is my decision now you know in the toxic era you know the blackout era maybe are we the closest we ever got to hearing Brittany the way she wanted to hear herself as close as we

got to her version of a control yeah I mean I think there's like a push and pull there from the very beginning, right? Her image is constructed kind of by these jive records kind of handlers, you know, that are kind of making her the All-American girl, you know, with a Catholic school girl outfit. But even from the beginning, I think there was an agency with her, you know, her first video for, Hey Me Baby one more time. Famously, you know, they wanted to have like a kind of Power Rangers, like animated kiddie theme. And that would have just ruined her career. It never would have happened. And she, of course, was the one that wanted the Catholic school girl at foot, you know. And then, even for the first two singles, I think, off of, in the zone.

Like, Jive wanted it to be outrageous and the Yin Yang twin song, which I got that boom, boom, but we'll just, it's just the Yin Yang twins song. Yes. And Brittany was the one that wanted me against the music. And then they were fighting with her over the second single, which obviously was toxic. So I think she was, look, she was a dancer. And, like, I think there was that kind of uptempo, like, thing about her. And, like, it's sort of Britney being such a good dancer, almost.

gave her like a preternatural sense of what would make a good dance floor anthem, kind of almost in the way that a lot of great rap producers are for DJs because they know what works. Hmm. Now that makes a lot of sense. And I, in her memoir, she talks about Madonna, right? She talks about Madonna, like production on the video is shutting down because Madonna's got some minor wardrobe issue. And Madonna's like, nobody does anything until this is solved. And Brittany being like, I can't believe that you could do that. I can't believe that you can actually like call the shots. and everyone has to listen to you versus me having to listen to everyone.

Like it's, you know, the Madonna song is a great song, but also just the meeting of the two of them. Like, I just want Madonna to transfer, you know, some percentage of her mojo to Britney Spears just to see what would have happened, you know, again, if Britney had the same kind of autonomy.

I mean, she definitely tried with getting her into Kabbala. So, yeah. Right, that's the first step. That's an important, yeah, that's... Yeah. The big red, that was, a big red wristband around your wrist era in Los Angeles, which I love how quaint and charming it is now.

We're like, oh, the celebrity trend was just a weird, overpriced red bracelet. How does being in L.A., you know, the book is so much about the experience of seeing, you know, the pop star machine and the tabloid machine up close? Like, what does being in L.A. teach you about being a pop star? And do you learn anything good from being so close to the action? There's nothing good to learn. It's all a hellish fiery pit of apocalypse. Nathaniel West fan, but there were points to be made in the last scene where the city burns.

But I think growing up in L.A. and being around this, you kind of develop both antibodies and an immunity to fame and an allergy to it, or at least I did. Like, I found it very repulsive, which sort of allowed me to kind of be nonplussed. when I was kind of doing the tabloid stuff because I just was like, oh, this is not cool. But at the same time, I wasn't phased by it. So I think it's weird about L.A. It's that, you know, it's always going to have that, like, light and dark dialectic because there's always going to be all these famous people that come to L.A. to make it. And most don't.

And then you see the ones that do. And I think to a certain type of person, it's incredibly alluring because, like, you know, as you were saying about the Madonna analogy, like, they would get everything. everything they want. Like, you know, they would shut it down. Like, obviously he's not from L.A., but I'll never forget one time. Little Wayne, you know, he was living out here for a long time. And I did an interview with him for like the cover of double XL. And he wouldn't show up unless they had ESPN in his trailer. I'm not doing the cover. And they had to get a whole skate ramp that probably cost them a million. He's like, nope, unless I have ESPN, not shown up.

Just for Sports Center. Yeah. I wonder what the Britney Spears equivalent channel would have been to ESPN. I don't know what that would have been. Yeah, I think she liked kind of like a romance kind of novel kind of stuff. She's a big reader apparently, though, but I don't think people always ask me, like, have you read, has she read your book? And I'm like, I don't think it exists, but I always say the paparazzi, who's the main subject of the book, he's like, he's like, mate, here's what you have to do. And he's like, his whole plan was to have me put the book on Britney Spears's car, so all the paparazzi's would say, whatever holding up the book.

And that would get me like a million. No, it was it was ingenious, but it was sinister. So I, of course, didn't do it. But I like that. That's where his mind was going. Great marketing genius. Your voice, that's exactly how I pictured that guy's voice the whole time reading the book was your impression of his voice. So I'm glad I've confirmed. In the audio book, actually, he reads the real book. Like, it's he does. Oh, I got to do it again then. All right. Yeah, yeah. Early on in the book, you know, you talk, you say you can't explain magic. Like, you're trying to explain why her. Like, you can have the look, you can have the talent, you can have the songs, you can have the machine behind you.

But like, none of that explains how Britney Spears becomes Britney Spears, becomes such a dominant, like permanently fascinating figure overnight. Is there any way to articulate what made this girl make the entire world, like, lose its collective mind forever? Yeah, without being the most pretentious person on Earth, which obviously I aspire to be, there's a Greek word chiros, and I think I mentioned it in the book, but it's kind of like the opportune time. You know what I mean?

It's the moment, I think, like, they talk about it in, like, rhetoric with a moment where, like, a speaker can drive his point home and kind of, and I think it's sort of like the way I interpreted in my own way is, like, just a sort of magic and a kind of timing quality of it, because I think a lot about, you know, the modern analogs, right? who I would say maybe like a Tate McCray and Addison Ray are probably the closest things to it. I thought Addison Ray's album from last year was excellent.

But did it have like the world beating like all conquering, everyone knows her kind of quality of Britney Spears? It didn't. I think Addison Ray, you know, can go. I mean, obviously she's got tons of fans, but it's not, she doesn't, she's not the center of the storm

like how Britney Spears was. You know, Brittany was like that, you know, that proverbial eye of the hurricane for so long. And I just think that it was, she was the, person of their time because like I think you know you've obviously you know not to cast you up to but you are a pop culture expert and um it doesn't make sense right it's just a lot of it is time right right why this person at this time you know and that's sort of why you know I had this like kind of like

half-baked theory which a lot of people are like got mad at me about but I I've I've said that the three most American Americans of the 21st century are Donald Trump Britney Spears and Kanye West. And where the culture goes, they go. And sometimes they're pulling the culture, and sometimes the culture is kind of pulling them. And Britney, in every manifeste, you know, there's different phases of Brittany,

but I think she's always kind of had her, you know, and my other kind of thing now is that our culture is in its knife, weird dances and knives waving in front of its face phase. And, yeah, so I think that's where we're at. Very, like, Lynchy and Laura Palmer, you know, like,

you know, Fred Durst is Dougie. Okay. This is a lot of material to absorb. I agree with your theory, but I understand by the people who are upset by your theory, the Trump, Brittany, Kanye,

that's not. Yeah, it's like a pleasant diagnosis. No, and Britney, of course, being the, the good one of them. You know what I mean? Like, I think Britney's the protagonist of it. I think people get caught up in sort of the, I'm not talking about their morality

or, you know, I think Britney's had pretty much only a positive impact on culture where you can't say the same and the other two. Would you agree with Britney Spears that Blackout is the best thing Britney Spears ever made, the best record album she ever made? It's probably like the best thing anybody's ever made in some respect. I mean, it ties up there. I think, you know. Yeah. There's no question. I mean, she's made other, you know, other good albums. And the stuff actually she made during the conservatorship, the first two albums are pretty good, too. And I think in The Zone's a really good album. You know, there's some kind of sleeper hits like Breathe On Me is really good. I dig breathe on me a lot. It's a really good song, yeah. And there's a funny reggae song on it.

But yeah, I think, which is very like, Sean Paul has a hit. You know, how can we? Gotta get Sean Paul on. Yeah, I got to get the Sean Paul vibe. Yeah, exactly, exactly. We can't afford Sean Paul because we blew your budget on the Yin Yang Twins. But I think it's one of the best pop albums ever. made a blackout. It's just kind of perfect in a lot of ways. And also has like, I always say it has

like one of the great late period Neptune songs that kind of, that's why should I be sad. And it's basically that's Tyler the creator's whole production aesthetic is that song. It's good to have a skeleton key to Tyler the creator's career. That's very helpful. Totally. It starts there. Yeah. No, I'm sure he, you heard it. Like, I mean, I, I love that he was such a completest. I'm sure he. Yeah. Do you think blackout is great because, like, I'm hung up on how great blackout is versus how terrible her personal life. Like this is 2006, 2007, 2008. Like, this is the worst time in the public eye, at least. And she makes her best album. Does she make her best album

because she's, you know, somehow channeling, you know, how terrible her personal life is? Or is she transcending it? Like, piece of me is where she obviously talks, directly about what's going on in her life. Like, is this an album? Is Blackout an album about her personally? Or is it great because she's able to step outside of the personal stuff a little bit? I mean, I think it's a little bit of both, right? She clearly lived her raps.

But there's one thing where, like, Brittany was a professional, right? And, you know, that's something I think about, like, being, you know, a child star. Like, you can deal with, like, unbelievable duress. And she's still, her instincts that have been honed over a decade kind of kicked in. It was like a T-Pain quote where T-Pain was like, I thought she was going to just be eating Doritos, but she came in and just killed it. And which is a great T-Pain quote.

Can I always read. Yeah. But also I think there was an element. Look, it's, you know, do you want to go with the Rimbaudian myth of the artist where it requires like an intense derangement of the senses to produce your greatest work? Possibly.

Or there's the alternative version where it's like, you know, she just was like Doc Ellis, you know, fucked up on acid throwing a no-hitter. throwing a no hitter. There we go. She threw a no hitter. You know, your book is so much about the tabloid era, right? Which is like, it's kind of over, but has just been replaced by the social media era, obviously.

You know, like by the end of the book, like people with their own cameras are pushing out, you know, the pros with cameras. Like, has an environment gotten better at all for a pop star for a celebrity, you know, or is it just worse now or just eternally terrible but in a slight. different way. I definitely think it's gotten better actually because there are there are way fewer paparazzi. But and I think um you know this is a thing like but Stan armies didn't really exist in a meaningful way when when Brittany was kind of you know in her prime and there was basically the Lee Brittany alone voice who I think was correct and that that person was pilloryed for it. And now I think, you know, we have these massive million-person strong armies of people screaming to leave the person alone. So, you know, if you attack Taylor Swift online, you might, you know, if you attacked

Nikki Minaj online, like, the barbs will come at you. Don't even say that. Don't even put that thought to the universe. Exactly. But yeah, Brittany didn't have that benefit. But I mean, I do think, and also I think there's just so many more famous people now. I think this was the last era where there were, you know, 100 famous people. And it was. even, and what's I think interesting about this area is you see it kind of like morphing into this modern world, right? Because Brittany, when she becomes a superstar first, you know, it's still very much the end of the 20th century. There are 12 famous people, you know, and then as the 2000s kind of go on, you have this whole class of reality stars kind of... Paris Hillen, etc. Yeah, the people famous for being

famous. And yeah, it kind of goes from there. And that's also why I think, you know, Brittany is still kind of such an iconic figure and because she came out of this world of the monoculture. You know, talking about the free Brittany movement. So like the apology documentary era from a couple years ago, you know, where there were all these movies, you know, as she was getting out of her conservatorship, where we go back, we look at how terribly she was treated and talked about in the early 2000s and we're sort of apologizing. But like, Brittany clearly does not like those movies either. Like they just sort of victimize her. They put her in another box, you know, like have a, we ever figured out how to talk about this person in a remotely sane manner?

No, definitely not. I mean, I think, like, you could argue that my book, you know, like, there, I think that's one the thing the book reckons with is sort of the exploitive nature kind of of like, you know, there's this like symbiotic relationship between, you know, the fan and the artist and the media. And, you know, they all need each other in some way. But, yeah, I mean, I do think Brittany is a person that did have age. I think she probably wants this stuff.

She also, you know, she's kind of also, you know, a master of kind of media in her own way. You know, that was one of the things when I would talk to the executives that worked with her. One of the things that always struck me was they said she just instinctively knew how to move the needle. And I see her very much. And the reason, you know, why I wanted to write this book was, you know, you can't, I mean, obviously some of this stuff, you know, I witnessed firsthand. But some of it is just kind of this like, almost like metaphorical, symbol, symbolic nature. of Brittany, and she really, I think, was like, the Marilyn Monroe of the, you know, millennial culture.

And so, I mean, it's the same thing. It's like, why are they making a Marilyn Monroe movie, you know, in like 2021, you know, even though she's been dead for 50 years. And I think Brittany kind of still kind of has that pop culture mystique that's in short supply. Late in your book, it's sort of right before, you know, the head shaving moment, right before, like, the darkest part of her story. I was struck by a line. you say you can't sell half of your soul.

You know, like, is there any way to write about Brittany, report about Brittany, you know, take photos of Brittany, like to be a part of this ecosystem at all? Is there any way to do that and not feel sort of totally complicit and gross? Well, I mean, that was, I think one of the things in the book that I tried to reckon with, right? I tried to have my character kind of like be, you know, of course, like the real life me recoiled more dramatically probably than the main character. I think the main character in the book had to be kind of seduced by this world.

But then I think the character of the paparazzi Oliver is kind of giving a more pragmatic kind of standpoint of it where it's like, look, A, this is what people want. They want, you know, and I think people like the average masses, you know, they were consuming these tabloid publications, didn't want to, they wanted to just theoretically root for Brittany, but like they're consuming it. They're feeding this ecosystem where you're only going to get more of it. They're supporting it with their dollars. And I think, like, there's an argument to be made that these paparazzi or whoever are just kind of giving the people what they want. I don't think it's a particularly good argument. You know, I think it's very much like, when I was writing the book, I was like, thing about prima, I was reading Prima Levy, who's writing these books about, you know, Nazis. And it was kind of the same mentality where it's like, if I don't do it, someone worse will.

Okay. Yeah. You know, so not to go all the way there, but it was just something that I was thinking of. about, you know, and yeah, I think it's, in general, it's kind of like immoral. But then, but then, but then there's always the question. It's like, well, what do you make of the fact that, you know, you know, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie when they, uh, their relationship was first announced to the world. It was revealed only in the last decade that Angelina Jolie had called us weekly to send a photographer out to Africa to take a photo of Brad Pitt and her there. So there was just kind of

just a weird kind of like, you know, a ruberos in this celebrity world of them devouring each other. Every time I write about Britney Spears, like, and I look up, like, today's Britney Spears headline, because there's always one, right? Like, she's dancing in her house and there's dog poop on the floor. Like, KFED's got a memoir. I want nothing to do it. I think she just announced she will never perform in the United States again for, like, sensitive security reasons.

Like, she'll play in Australia, but she will not play. in America and she won't say why. Like, it's just so crazy to me that we're still doing this. Like, there's still, like, a permanent sense of alarm surrounding this one person in 2026. You know, like, does it affect the way you hear the music? Like, can you put on a Britney Spears song and album and just listen to it as music? But is it impossible to avoid all the context, you know, all the terror and terribleness that comes

with it? So I think that's a really good question. I think, first off, she has kind of eradicated her mystique, but there is still a mystery behind her. We don't know. And that's fascinating, right? How many figures in pop culture

can you really say have like a mystery about them? Like, not many left. I think reckoning, I think that's the million dollar question of the last like maybe 10 years, like post, people factoring pop stars morality into the equation, even though obviously Brittany has no known problems in that respect. There is kind of this circus that kind of runs around her.

But I think what's interesting about the music is she leaned into it. And I think that kind of adds to it. Whereas like, let's say, I mean, obviously, she, you know, we're talking, we were talking about the R. Kelly song, right? The outrageous song that she wrote for her. It's hard to listen to R. Kelly beyond the allegations element of it, which is, you know, everyone's personal moral choice. But he's singing about, you know, sexual relations. And that just kind of makes.

Stuff. Yeah. Like, and you're like, but with Britney's, you know, it's like you have an album called Circus. about how your life is a circus. You know what I mean? Like blackout. And I think there's like, you know, I think the, it's maybe an antiquated phrase, but the hot mess.

Like, and I don't mean that a pejorative, right? Like, everyone has had that lost weekend, that proverbial hot mess moment of their life. It's almost like in the way where like, when people are really kind of fucked up and in disarray, they want to listen to future. I think Brittany almost has that quality. Like, where it's like, you're really fucked up.

You're on a lot. You know what I mean? You're like, okay. I do know what you mean. Yeah, this is Britney's monster is blackout. So many proper nouns to absorb from this. It's just a fascinating recipe. Just to wrap up, do you want anything more from Britney Spears in terms of an album,

in terms of a tour, or is the goal now to get everybody, you know, us included, to just leave her alone forever? Should we expect, should we want anything else from her? Or is this it? And we should leave her alone forever starting now. I'm a little selfish because I got to see Brittany a couple times. You know, I got to see her in Vegas and at the residency. I saw her on the Eminem.

I saw her, you know, the Eminem's tour. I saw her in concert enough time. So I don't really need to see it again. But I do think, and of course, after the book came out, I was like, all right, well, that's it. Nobody should say anything ever again. But yeah, I think she does deserve to be left alone unless she wants to. I mean, at a certain point, like, it's sort of like Andre. 3,000, you know, it's the same question, right? It's like, why does he need to rap anymore? Like,

he already gave us equamini and ATLians. Like, Brittany gave us toxic and blackout. Like, you know, like, hang it up in the rafters. She did all the work that anyone could have asked for her. So I think she deserves a little peace and solitude if she wants that. Or she wants to be like in the biggest star in the world again. Like, you know, that's her, you know, her prerogative too. I would listen to her flute album, honestly. I think that would be a great direction for her actually. Just lean into the L.A. of it all. Yeah, yeah, totally. Like, or like a, you know, flashing symbol. She wants to make, like, an avant-garde kind of noise album in the vein of, like,

there we go. Liars or something. Yoko Ono. There we go. Yeah. Jeff, this is one wonderful. Thank you so much. Thanks so much, Rob. Pleasure to be here. Thanks very much for our guest this week. Jeff Weiss. Thanks very much for our producers, Olivia Creary and Justin Sales.

Thanks to Kevin Pooler for additional production help. Thanks to Sarah Reddy for engineering. Thanks to Chris Callaton for the animations and the graphics. Thanks to Matt James for the additional art. And special thanks to Cole Kushna of Dissect. And thanks very much to you for listening slash watching. And now, let's all go listen to Toxic by Britney Spears. See you next week.