Still got that dirrty degree

We approach some ambiguous history, coming upon 2007: the first time anyone heard Britney Spears' "Baby One More Time," which is to say, the resurrection of pure pop, of bubblegum if no other word will do, as the main form of commercial music making.

Remember the first time you heard it? Surprisingly, you might. It had already hit #1 (a feat that happened long before anyone knew what was going on, I might add) before I did, and heard it announced on The Peak 95.1, a "light rock" station in Colorado Springs that abandoned its adult-contemporary format for Top 40 at roughly the same time. I was in a car in downtown Colorado Springs, a Junior nearing the end of my third year in high school. The car was Brandon Camarillo's, a green Celica or Pontiac or in any case, a two-door. The day was sunny. The day before I'd heard Courtney Love mention her unabashed love of the song, and I, despite what I said to the contrary, loved it immediately.

Despite what many people said to the contrary, they loved it immediately. Britney beamed so innocent on the Baby One More Time cover, a smile right off the cover of Barely Legal 14, or worse, as Britney wasn't legal in any way. Today, I heard "Stronger" while walking home from Wallingford, and remembered just what a terrific pop song it was - sexy, propulsive, just the right dash of screw-you defiance in the tone. Friends will attest I was a bit obsessed with it when it came out, downloading the incredibly sexy chair-and-rainfall video and playing it on a dozen dorm computers. I'd say I was the perfect age for the Britney phenomenon - not the least of which is because I was her age. Still, she's significant in those significant years; her VMA striptease came early in my entry into the College dorms, "I'm A Slave 4U" the first song I downloaded at my new apartment sophomore year (my cheese-loving ex-roommate, Peter, was actually a bigger fan of "I'm Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman," the rare Britney song - like "From The Bottom of My Broken Heart" or "Lucky" - that I'd prefer to forget). "Toxic," her absolute best song, induced something like a fever at the party commemorating my graduation from college (which would perhaps be more remarkable if the same fever were not also induced by any song by Outkast, Squirrel Nut Zipper's "Put A Lid On It," and Wilson Phillips' "Hold On").

I bring this up because it surprises me that, despite Britney's importance in the world of pop culture for the majority of so many of our adult lives, she can still inspire intense vitriol. At a party last month, a friend's sister, upon hearing the opening bars of "Stronger," leaped from her seat on the couch to run across the living room and into the bedroom where my iPod was, to change the song - "I can't stand Britney Spears, I'm sorry," she said. Mention her in public these days, and she'll get lobbed with a few familiar epithets - white trash, whore, fat pig. In fact, if it was not fashionable for a while to pick on Britney, who was always an easy target anyway, she seems the easiest of targets these days. Her sin now? She let her hair get long and brown, had babies, married someone who's clearly talentless and clueless. Were this amount of anger given to every woman in California who did those three things, I believe much of the state would find their heads exploding.

I was fascinated by the change in public Britney talk because the opposite has happened to her "rival," Christina Aguilera. In 2002, with the release of Stripped, Christina, revamped in assless chaps with a hairdo looking like a skunk breathing too much spraypaint, earned similar epithets. I loved Christina then, not because her songs were good (although, they were - any popstar would be lucky to make a song half as good as "Dirrty," or "Can't Hold Us Down" or "Beautiful"), but because she was responsible for her celebrity. Britney, catchy as her songs were, acted demure and non-responsive to her songs' contents - "I'm a Slave 4U," she said coyly, was - despite its provocative title, hard breathing in the chorus, and an orgy in the video - about dancing, or, was the product of a sexually promiscuous character having nothing to do with her. Even sexpot Beyonce would rile around and, basically, masturbate in the video for "Baby Boy" and coyly deny its nature, "I like to stay home and read, mostly," she'd say later, when questioned about it.

Christina, on the other hand, owned "Dirrty" and its contraversy, labled herself proudly sexual, wondered publicly and often why contraversy erupted when a woman made a bold and provocative song with hot dancers when men did it all the time. Christina released "Can't Hold Us Down," and made the lyric "it's a common double standard of society/ the guy gets all the glory the more he can score/ the girl could do the same and yet you call her a whore" singable. She took shit left and right and only made her message public. I can't imagne how many insults, how much hate mail Christina received in 2002-2003, the year "Beautiful" hit #1 and "Dirrty" ran on constant rotation at any danceclub in America, and she never once demured from the discussion that that could start.

Christina this year has been greeted like a returning friend. Back To Basics, a smash for a double-record already, revived the old Britney-Christina who-sings-better debate, and produced an instant top-10 hit in "Ain't No Other Man." The record isn't good - each disc has a rather interchangeable nature in its songs - but it is somewhat astonishing, her disc 2 impersonations of Fiona Apple, Etta James, and Bessie Smith calculated, but accurate, catchy, and even in some spots, moving.

I don't expect Aguilera to be a big seller in another ten years, but that she's one now, and only releasing her third album, is a statement to the way she's handled her career. Spears, ever the sucker for the media attention she rallies against, has likely concluded her recording career, at least as far as successful and culturally relevant records go. I don't much care that Spears had a baby or married a dufus, or that Aguilera married a nice Jewish boy and re-imagined herself a 40's starlet (the first time, by the way, the either seemed to have helped jumpstart fashion trends - unless you count schoolgirl outfits or enormous snakes). Looking back, all I wonder is that if Spears had dropped that innocent we-swear-it's-not-porn smile after she made "I'm a Slave 4U," or tried to agree with and not counter the "I'm not that innocent" promise of "Oops I Did It Again," would she have been able to overcome her bad press? It seems that all she knows how to do, anyway, is demure, which is fine, except that it makes me wonder if Spears herself was always a little ashamed of her career and could've used a dose of Aguilera's aggressive, useful egomania all along.