Serious Question: Is Post-Meltdown Britney Spears Better Than Pre-Meltdown Britney Spears?

Serious Question is when we pose a question and then try to answer it. Usually the question is not very serious.

Britney Spears released her ninth album a few weeks ago. It’s called Glory and it will probably be considered inconsequential amid the wider Britney Spears catalogue, which is weird, because for better or worse, every Britney Spears album thus far has felt of its moment, somewhat significant, and quite consequential.

Nevertheless, Glory serves as a bookend to an insane pop music career. Britney put out four albums from 1999-2003, had one album released in 2007 right after the whole rehab/shaved her head thing, and now has four albums post-meltdown. The Britney we had before 2007 is a really different Britney than the one we’ve seen since the meltdown, and though they’re different, both iterations of Britney Spears have been hugely influential and important pop musicians. It begs (begs!) the question: Which Britney was better? Pre-Meltdown Britney (PM-Britney) or Second-Coming Britney (SC-Britney)? Let’s dive in.

When approaching such a nuanced, complicated musician like Britney Spears, it’s important that we account for her complexity. That being said, a question such as this one requires a simple, straightforward approach. If we were to employ an intricate scorecard or a multi-dimensional matrices or weave a massive web of formulae, we’d inevitably run into some problems. Britney debuted before the social media era, so how do we calculate her popularity before Twitter follows and Spotify streams? Is there a way to compare iTunes downloads and hard-copy CD buys? It becomes a bit too heady, and frankly, a bit too serious for Serious Question. We’re going by the Eye Test here.

Lastly, you’re probably piping up, “Wait, Dazz. How will you account for Blackout, Britney’s 2007 album that was released mid-meltdown?” Glad you asked. The sneaky purpose of this article is to analyze how Britney’s meltdown affected her music career, so a product of 2007, Year of the Meltdown, will affect how we see SC-Britney. It’s decidedly not PM-Britney. Anyway, let’s ride.

1. Which Britney Iteration Had A Stronger Start? 

Music history is full of mythical young people doing amazing things. Beethoven published his first work when he was 11. Elvis recorded his first song at Sun Records when he was 19. Snoop Dogg recorded “Nuthin but a G Thang” when he was 21. Want to know how old Britney Spears was when she came out with “…Baby One More Time?” Seventeen. That’s borderline inappropriate. But at the same time, dang man, 17 years old? PM-Britney was running the place on Day One. Check out the video:

The whole thing is applause-worthy. The double ponytails. The awkward white guys. The basketball player inexplicably missing the 360-breakaway dunk. Few videos have more turn-of-the-millennium goodies, and that doesn’t even account for PM-Britney’s immortal schoolgirl outfit and overall shut-down-the-block attitude. We have early tastes of everything that made Britney Spears astonishing: The excessive vocal runs, the gymnastics-esque dance moves, and the bare midriffs that made every 90s mother fear for their sons’ premature sexual awakening. “…Baby One More Time” is a pop-music touchstone.

SC-Britney’s debut?

Watching SC-Britney’s live performance of “Gimme More” at the 2007 VMAs feels like a Taken reenactment. The sex traffickers have kidnapped Britney and are forcing her to flaunt and exhibit herself for their entertainment, and all the viewers at home can do is watch through their shame-ridden fingers and pray that Liam Neeson shows up in time to end everyone’s suffering. It’s awful. You want someone to run onstage and rescue Britney and shut it down and take the mic and give a fake laugh and say, “Just kidding!” But none of that happens. It was a terrible look. A hopeless look. SC-Britney was dead on arrival.

HUGE EDGE: PRE-MELTDOWN BRITNEY 

2. Which Britney Iteration Made Smarter Relationship Decisions?

Notice we’re not asking “Which Britney Iteration Had A More Prestigious Relationship Resume?” That isn’t the right question here, because that defines Britney’s success by the men in her company, and if we know anything about Britney, it’s that she’s defined by no one except herself, dammit. What matters here is how Britney handles the ups and downs of romance. The number of relationships doesn’t matter—sometimes people break up because they should break up, yo—but the overall level of savviness and poise does matter. Make sense? That was probably the most careful and intensive gossip-related paragraph I’ve ever written. Let’s examine the resumes.

PM-Britney:

• Justin Timberlake—3 years
• Jason Allen Alexander—married for 55 hours
• Kevin Federline—married, then divorced after almost 3 years
• Rumored: Criss Angel (the creepy magician), Jared Leto (the creepy actor), Fred Durst (the creepy lead singer of Limp Bizkit)

That’s a murderer’s row, man. Britney. Brit. Girl. Take it easy on yourself, a’ight? Mad points are awarded for Timberlake—she had that guy on lockdown for three years, don’t play—but the rest of this crowd is shaky at best. The Federline saga is really tough and really not cool—he’s the guy who waged the huge custody battle with Britney over her kids, and likely prompted a lot of the head-shaving moments—but the tale of the tape here is ultimately one of a young celebrity struggling to find her place in a precarious Pre-Meltdown position.

SC-Britney:

• Adnan Ghalib—a paparazzo, dated ~1 year before he allegedly conspired to gain control of her affairs
• Jason Trawick—her agent, dated ~4 years, engaged before they called it off in 2013
• David Lucado—dated ~1 year but then he cheated and Britney Mutumbo’d him

Right off the bat, this feels cleaner. More controlled. More thoughtful. Is SC-Britney batting 1.000 in the relationship game? No, but she’s showing more discipline at the plate than she did before, when she was swinging wildly and whiffing badly. In fact, the best thing about this relationship record is that it stopped. Britney’s not in a confirmed relationship right now—she’s doing her show in Vegas and making the odd public appearance and through all the quiet post-peak career moves, there’s a general feeling of grace and ease and liberation. Single Britney Spears might just be the best Britney Spears. That’s the best move she could make.

EDGE: SECOND-COMING BRITNEY

3. Which Britney Iteration Owns the “Best Britney Spears Song” Title Belt?

This also serves to answer the question, “Which Britney hit the highest peak?” and in danger of falling down a Timberlake-esque rabbit hole (yeah we’re already doing ATD internal references), we’ll use the Eye Test to examine each Britney’s wider body of work and, as OJ Simpson would say, take a stab at figuring this out.

It’s sort of a no-brainer.

Pre-Meltdown Britney pushes all her chips to the table with “…Baby One More Time,” “Oops!...I Did It Again,” and “Toxic.” Then she adds her supplementary bangers “Stronger,” and “(You Drive Me) Crazy” before closing the deal with “Lucky” and “Everytime.”

How does Second-Coming Britney respond to that? I mean, it’s not a terrible lineup: “Gimme More” and “Piece of Me” were actually pretty exciting sonic swerves, “Womanizer” and “Circus” were strong progressions, and as dance floor anthems, “Hold It Against Me” and “Till the World Ends” probably should have had more legs than they did. But here’s the deal-breaker: If some wacky criminal kidnapped you and said you could only hear three Britney Spears songs before the poison took effect, you’re just not pulling those songs from SC-Britney. You’re dipping back to the permanent classics.

SOLID EDGE: PRE-MELTDOWN BRITNEY

4. Which Britney Iteration Is More Culturally Fluid?

This is a fancy way of asking which Britney has more non-music reach. PM-Britney was in a couple crappy movies, but, while she was certainly pervasive, never really saw much crossover appeal beyond her music. She was a young pop star but never became more than a young pop star. The best thing PM-Britney gave us actually came in the era of Second-Coming Britney, when “Everytime” backed a scene in Spring Breakers to make one of the craziest montages of modern movies.

Meanwhile, SC-Britney had her cameo on Glee (don’t say that wasn’t huge—in fact, that was an entire Glee episode centered around Britney--it drew the highest ratings the show has ever had, by the way), then served as a judge on The X Factor before taking up residency in Las Vegas with her show Britney: Piece of Me. It set a precedent for past-their-prime pop stars like J-Lo and Mariah Carey to also pursue Vegas residencies, and it’s been so successful that the original 100 planned performances have been extended through 2017. SC-Britney doesn’t mess around with her brand. She slays this category.

SOLID EDGE: SECOND-COMING BRITNEY

5. Which Britney Iteration Is More Beloved?

This is the part where we stop messing around and pick a winner. Here’s the deal: We all love Pre-Meltdown Britney Spears. Her music, while so of its era and so predictive of the teen-pop movement, is somehow timeless. Her look, while so dated, is somehow iconic. Pre-Meltdown Britney Spears arrived at the perfect time, but capitalized on that hyper-specific timing to become an immortal musician. It’s really amazing, but, there’s a catch.

That catch is the meltdown, of course. Pre-Meltdown Britney is beloved for her music and influence, but that’s it. Meanwhile, Second-Coming Britney is beloved beyond her music. She’s become a transcendent, important, titanic figure, and that goes beyond iffy vocal runs and high-production music videos. In fact, Second-Coming Britney Spears wins out because she emerged from the meltdown. It takes an immense amount of savvy to become a pop star, but it takes a greater amount of savvy to take a collapse—and a super complete, public collapse, too—and use it as fuel to become a symbol of empowerment, resilience, and strength. Second-Coming Britney was not a reinvention; she was an evolution. Now, fully-formed, she’s more impactful and more undeniable than ever. You can’t top that sort of power. You can’t top immortality.

HUGE/FINAL/UNBEATABLE EDGE: SECOND-COMING BRITNEY