Talking About the Princess

Did you know, still I miss you somehow? We could have worked things out, taking time is what love's all about.

Nope, I'm not heartbroken, thank you; in case you haven't recognized them, the opening lines of this post belong to Britney Spears' From the Bottom of My Broken Heart.

Yep. Britney.

The girl needs no introduction, methinks, other than simply her name.

The other day I had my iPod on shuffle mode, and it went something like Thru The Eyes Of Ruby (The Smashing Pumpkins), Gallows Pole (Led Zeppelin), Hallelujah (k.d. Lang) - so far, so good. Then all of a sudden my iPod started letting me down: Mmmbop (Hanson), which I skipped before I could be seen muttering the lyrics; but when it got to I Need You Tonight (Backstreet Boys) I was seriously disturbed.

I know, I know, it's my own fault. He (it's green-ish blue, therefore, my iPod is a he) wouldn't have given me those songs hadn't I fed him with stuff like that (there. I have this one too).

Anyway, after giving me Heartbreaker (Pat Benatar) - talk about the 80's, huh? - I could hear the first words of Overprotected, by Britney. One of my guilty pleasures.

Following the inevitable scent of nostalgia, I took him off the shuffle mode, and started listening to all Britney's songs I have in there. And boy was it a trip down Memory Lane!

I saw the Sometimes video on MTV for the very first time when I was 14, and I fell in love with it. Yes, I've always been a softie! I asked my parents for her cd; my dad wanted to die: his only daugher was not asking for The Nutcracker or The Four Seasons anymore, but for some "American pop crap", as he called it. But mom laughed it off, and I got the cd as a junior-high graduation gift.

My first high-school year started in March, 2000, and I could sing all the songs in the goddamn cd. 

(I owe a lot to Britney, by the way: Britney and all those boy bands taught me a lot of my English!)

My first broken heart came a couple of months after that, and the soundtrack of the whole process was, of course, Born to Make You Happy, and the whole thing couldn't possibly get any cornier! Why do teenagers have to be so so damn dramatic? My world was falling apart.

Then, Brazilian Valentine's Day came (on June 12th), and MTV Brasil had a special, showing only videos of cheesy romantic songs. And, obviously, it included From the Bottom of My Broken Heart. 

I started crying. 

The guy I liked wouldn't have anything to do with me anymore, and because it was my own fault - I'd toyed with his feeligs, and gotten a deserved reward for that. 

We ended up being friends again, and we're still in very nice speaking terms. All the uncalled-for drama!

That same year I'd buy, as a Christmas gift for myself, her second cd, Oops!... I Did It Again. 

With her third cd, I confess, my 16-year-old prudish mind was shocked: what was she doing, with that I'm a Slave 4 U thing? Oh god! (I was an extremely well-behaved 16-year-old.) I liked the song nonetheless - but I simply loved Overprotected. And I wouldn't stop listening to it for a very long time.

By that time, however, I was already growing out of pop music; my journey towars rock had already begun, and I was starting to despise all things Britney and 'NSync-like.

Because, of course, teenagers usually know no middle-ground. You either hate or love something. It doesn't occur to you, when you're 16 going on 17, that two completely different music genres can be good.

But no matter how much I worshipped Foo Fighter's Times Like These, I still loved Britney's Toxic.

The years passed, and while I was saving money to buy Green Day's American Idiot and chasing down Jewel cds in every single store (Jewel is hard to find around here), I heard everywhere about her first marriage, the annulment, and her second marriage. And all the time there was this thought in some corner of my mind "Why did she break up with Justin in the first place? He's way hotter than any of these guys!"

I still have a crush on Justin Timberlake.

I also have a crush on Paul Bettany - you can't help those things.

But a crush on Justin is way more understandable than on Bettany.

It's just that Bettany got the accent, you know.

Jennifer Connelly is one lucky woman.

Moving on: as the scandals involving the pop princess kept on coming, I got more and more disappointed - where was that cute little girl from Sometimes? And I guess I can say her personal life and the all problems that followed tainted the whole pop thing for me for good back then.  

Yeah, cause rock stars do it all right, and never ever screw up. No scandals in the rock world.

Nowadays I'm ok with Britney, and I'm slightly curious to listen to her new songs. But I still have no idea what 3 and Womanizer sound like - as I said, I'm only slightly curious.

I've been looking more and more towards the past to find music I really like - there are few artists still recording I'm actually a fan of. Most of my favorites are now either dead, retired or disbanded.

And while I have dismissed ...Baby One More Time and Oops!... I Did It Again entirely, while some of my favorite cds are Nevermind (Nirvana), Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness (The Smashing Pumpkins) and Physical Graffiti (Led Zeppelin), I still can't stop listening to Overprotected. Because the song and the girl are just that good.

My friend Massimo has also talked about this song - brilliantly, I should add - in his great blog (albeit kinda on a break, it's still great), and you can both listen to the song and read his smart and enticing post here.

Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'll wrap this up and download Womanizer, to see what the fuss is all about.