Name: Britney Spears
Audit Date: August 26, 1999
Age: 18
Occupation: Singer
Experience: Time served on The New Mickey Mouse Club; one album
Assessment
Oh, Britney. We're glad we haven't had to take as much crap over the past six
months as you have. The ostensible blossoming of our bosoms hasn't caused the
international press to speculate about whether or not we, at the tender age of
eighteen, had gotten breast implants. We haven't been tarred by unfavourable
comparisons to Tiffany, the teen star of yore. We weren't photographed for
Rolling Stone in a variety of poses juxtaposing our youth and our sex appeal,
inspiring hard-hitting Entertainment Tonight Cover Stories with titles like "Is
Fametracker Too Sexy?" Don't worry, Britney; Fametracker isn't here to debate
whether you're too sexy. All we want to know is whether you're too famous. We
have a feeling that you are.
After all, what have you really done to impress yourself on the public's
consciousness? You've only released one album to date. You haven't even padded
out your CV with a CD of Christmas carols the way Hanson did. And even though
your album has only spun off two singles so far, and even though I never listen
to the radio and seldom watch MuchMusic, I know both your hits. I even know that
you're terrible at lip synching. How can you justify your ubiquity, given the
paucity of your actual artistic production?
We think that you were lucky enough to piggyback onto a trend that first
sprouted in 1996 (when you were only fifteen! Were you ever so young?) with the
release of Scream, flourished in 1997 with the launch of Teen People magazine,
came into full flower in 1998 with the premiere of Dawson's Creek, and is now on
the point of being mulched with approximately forty-seven new hour-long TV
dramas this fall: the rise of teen consumerism. And while you're the teen queen
now, you weren't exactly in the vanguard; rather, you've been riding the
coattails of the pioneers who came before you. In fact, many's the time that, in
the past few months, The Backstreet Boys have hung up their coats only to
discover you clinging to their tails with such tenacity that they had to call
for a bellman with a broom to knock you free.
Live by the Boy, die by the Boy. You'll be consigned to flames of woe when the
inevitable reckoning of a Backstreet Backlash comes to pass.
Assets Liabilities
No one ever went broke betting on jailbait
Like Madonna, has dancing to fall back on
Could still decide not to follow Brandy to either the small or big screen
Young enough to affect an Alanis Morissette-style career makeover
Her voice
Her newsworthy rack
Will probably end up on Dawson's Creek this season
More people have heard the rumours about her breast implants than could identify
her music
Fame Barometer
Current approximate level of fame: Céline Dion
Deserved approximate level of fame: Kylie Minogue