Just keep doing it, Britney!

Nabila Habib

It doesn’t happen everyday that someone like Britney Spears makes a comeback, and has all those critics who have been having a helluva time and material all these years at her cost silenced in the beating, maniacal show of her latest ‘Womaniser’ number. The magic is back and this time it’s mature and sexier. The custody circus was kind of aired live for the world to gape at. It was interesting enough a watch with a young pop-icon pining and struggling for her children when she was not stoned. Makes for some spicy blockbuster movie-script! But the girl we were watching was very human. It was pathetic the way she was lapped up as top news material. She was shown as no pining mother, no young girl blinded by the media glare, no talent that had to cope with a blindingly fast rise to iconic stature, not even a bit of hint that when she was just uttering unawares in a dreamy ecstasy that she wanted to be like Madonna, she was already standing beside the ‘Material Girl’ with a place of her own – she was just a good story, an abstract idea with adequate twists and turns in the plot to make evenings interesting. The senselessness makes the comeback in an even stronger exhumation of her buried talent. She has revived her moves, put on the perfect make-up, and is out there belting out another record-breaking number, in that sometimes lovely, sometimes irritating nasal, biting voice. Most of it is lip-synched, critics snigger. Of course, it is supposed to be lip-synched, or those pop acts with dance routines won’t happen at all. The practice videos are there to dust off any remaining doubt about the hesitation that had crept into her performance post her lack of practice. Britney is proving to be resistant to trends or time or taste. She comes, gives what she has, and sweeps you off your feet. And naturally, being so young, she falters and makes mistakes. But she comes up with that uniquely unaffected talent and offers another rhythm. You can’t overlook the piece-de-resistance, you can’t keep yourself off it – you simply lunge for her music! This is the way she does it repeatedly. She has made an unbreakable promise to her fans which, though lesser now than when she was first launched, will make her top the charts again. She will spice it all up with some minor controversy, but be a winner in the end – all over again.