Britney, The Queen
By MARK COOMES
mcoomes@courier-journal.com
The Courier-Journal
Is singer/queen diva Britney Spears' stardom fading? If so, when did it happen?
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Nothing lasts forever, a sitcom least of all.
Even the very best eventually run out of fresh ideas, viewer appeal or both. When that happens, desperate times call for desperate measures.
This turning point is known in the TV biz as "jumping the shark," so named for the ludicrous episode of "Happy Days" when Fonzie, wearing his leather jacket and water skis, jumped over a shark in the Pacific.
That was then. This is now. And this is now the question:
Has Britney Spears jumped the shark, too? If so, when did it happen?
When her third album, "Britney," failed to produce a Top 10 hit?
When she French-kissed Madonna on the MTV Music Awards?
When she posed nearly nude for Rolling Stone and Esquire?
Or was it last Saturday, when she married a high school chum in Las Vegas, then annulled the union 55 hours later?
This much we know for certain: The fewer albums Britney sells, the more skin she reveals and the more lascivious her lyrics become.
Her first album, " ... Baby One More Time," was pure, G-rated teeny-bopper pop. It sold 13 million copies, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.
Each successive album was more overtly sexual, and less successful, than the last. Sales slipped from 9 million to 4 million to 2 million, the last being the latest total for "In the Zone," as of Dec. 16.
For now, however, Spears still reigns as the queen diva supreme. She has sold more albums (28 million) than Christina and Jessica combined. She has a $10 million endorsement deal with Pepsi, a new movie deal and a new star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (the youngest person, along with Melissa Gilbert, to be so honored).
What she lacks is the career trajectory to guarantee that she won't one day be as forgotten as Gilbert is.
During the past five years, the world's preeminent pop tart has morphed from schoolgirl to succubus, a transformation that has so far sold more magazines than records.
Maybe Spears is just suffering growing pains. But with her musical star dimming and her first movie panned, her increasingly randy behavior, lyrics and attire hint at the shrill notes of an all-too-familiar cry:
Look! I'm leaping over Jaws!