Oh Baby, Baby

Britney. Freaking. Spears.

“But dude…. you went from punk with ‘The Descendents’ to classic rock with the ‘J. Geils Band’ to soul with Stevie Wonder and Motown. How are you supposed to justify going from that stuff to Britney Spears? She’s one of the cringiest people ever. I can’t believe//////

STOP RIGHT THERE YOU BASTARD

Britney Spears was a pioneer into a culture that we very much live in today in 2017. I guess you could say that she SPEAR(s)headed this diva culture. HA. I know, I’m funny. You think I’m just being stupid to get your attention at this point and I’m gonna switch over to hosting a roast fest about Ms. Spears. But no, I’m being legit here. Britney Spears created a large part of this music culture, because of not only her musical choice, but also her personal ones.

Get ready for a trip.

Britney Spears was born on December 2, 1981, in McComb, Mississippi. At eight, Britney tried out for “The All New Mickey Mouse Club”, but was turned down due to her young age. This directed her to an off-Broadway show, "Ruthless", for a 2-year run as the title character. At age 11, she again tried for “The All New Mickey Mouse Club” again and, this time, made it as a mouseketeer alongside many stars of today like Justin Timberlake, Ryan Gossling, and Christina Aguilera.

Sound familiar? A Disney star gone off the tracks? *cough* Miley *cough*

Britney Spears was used to success. Early success. After the show's cancellation in 1995, Spears focused on developing her musical career. She eventually landed a contract with Jive Records. In September 1998, Spears released her first single, "...Baby One More Time." AT AGE 15. At 15 I was trying to get first place in my online match of Halo: Reach on my Xbox 360. She was making a single that reached the top of the Billboard 200 Charts and won her 4 awards at the 1999 Billboard Music Awards.

Sound familiar? A young pop phenomenon? *cough* Bieber *cough*

Her music talent wasn’t the only thing that propelled her into fame. Some would say her music wasn’t even the main reason she got to be famous. Britney learned very quickly that sex sells. In her award-winning single “… Baby One More Time”, Spears danced in a skimpy version of a Catholic schoolgirl uniform. Although the racy outfit drew sharp criticism from the parents of her young fans, Spears claimed to be a sweet, innocent Southern girl at heart. Yeah. Okay, Brit. Sure. Spears released “Oops!... I Did It Again” in 2000, when she was 18. The recording was an instant No. 1 hit on the album charts, selling more than 1 million copies in its first week. At this point, not only was her music career under a microscope, but also her personal choices, especially her music video choices. See. Britney was in a pickle. Her audience was younger, and obviously when you have a young audience you can’t just cater to the young people, you also need to take into account the thoughts and preferences of parents. Which Spears seemed to do, but only in word, not in deed. So, on one hand, she said she was pure, and a virgin until marriage, but on the other hand, you have all these music videos coming out of lil’ miss thang going kinda slutty to a degree.

Sound familiar? A star become sexualized and everyone judging them for it? *cough* every star under the age of forty *cough*

Britney Spears changed. She changed a lot. The exact moment where this change occurred is up for debate. But let’s start at 2004.  She married her childhood friend, Jason Alexander. Yay! The girl followed her heart and married a sweetheart she’s known since almost birth! No. The marriage lasted 48 hours. The she moved to backup dancer Kevin Ferderline. Kevin was a player himself. He had a pregnant girlfriend at the time. But alas, a mere eight months after she married Jason… she married Kevin. As if Britney needed yet another way to say a big “screw it”’ to her critics, she covered Bobby Brown’s “My Prerogative” shortly after the wedding. The cover wasn’t a failure, selling millions of copies, but it wasn’t as popular as her earlier music. Her music wasn’t as popular as before, her sales were declining. The shocking part was, she didn’t care. She seemed content. She even got a reality show for icing on the cake.

Sound familiar? Musicians having reality shows? *cough* Ice T, Jessica Simpson, the queen herself Paula Abdul *cough*

After this. Shit got cray. She became pregnant and a mother in 2005. Got caught in a national debate on parents endangering their children after she was caught on film driving with her child in her lap. Welcomed a second child. Two months later, shockingly filed for divorce. Went clubbing regularly with Paris Hilton and other famous friends. Then the all-too-famous 2007 hair-shaving incident.

Sound familiar? Shaving your head in front of paparazzi? *cough*…

Wait that’s just a Britney thing. Sorry.

But yeah. She got in a custody battle for her kids. She had a fallout with her mom. She tried to do musical things. Her sister got pregnant. She failed at lip synching. The media was foaming at the mouth every time she walked outside because they wanted more dirt. Britney tried to do more musical stuff. But no one cared about that anymore.

AND THAT’S THE POINT OF THIS POST.

Britney Spears was a leader in changing the pop culture and in part the entire music culture to become, well, less musical. Look back at this post. Like actually scroll up and look. What do you see more of, her music career or her personal life? Yeah. That’s the point. I’ve talked more about her struggles and her fame than her music, and it was intentional.

As a culture, we like dirt. We like to live vicariously through others. In in the case of the media’s perception of Britney Spears, we all made it very clear that music isn’t the only thing we look for in musicians anymore. You need to look the part and more than ever, you need to be dramatic and catch our attention.

We are oversaturated with magazines and TV shows whose prime objective is to talk about celebrities’ lives. I don’t know what’s more saddening: the reality that what a musician does off stage is more important than what they do on it, or the fact that we encourage that.

I don’t know Kanye’s albums. I don’t know most of his songs. But I know he’s called out Taylor Swift.

I don’t know about Miley Cyrus’ newest music. But I know about her weird VMA performance where she twerked and groped a foam finger. I know about her nude photoshoots.

I could go on and on. We live in a celebrity culture. Not a music culture. You don’t have to pump out hit album after hit album and win award after award to stay in the spotlight. You have to go a little nuts and catch people’s eye.

Pull a Britney. Marry and divorce. Shave your head. Do something stupid. It worked for her and it continues to work today.

No Wonder People Were Dancing in the Streets

Hey you people. So far, this blog has touched on how your life can suck. We’ve touched on relationships, love, coffee, anchovies. Wow, it’s been a ride. But we haven’t really touched on examples of changing your sucky lives. This post is going to change that. Today we’re going to look at a genre, an artist, a music community, and one song that looked adversity in the eye and said Screw It. It’s amazing to see how other people take a pretty shitty time and work their asses off to make it better for them and generations to come, and we can all use it as motivation to do the same thing in our lives. So without further ado, let me all take you on the Soul Train that is Motown.

Let’s start with the basic of what Motown is. I wish I didn’t have to explain it because it’s only the BEST MUSIC EVER. That’s obviously not subjective or anything. But I digress, Motown is an American Record Company that was founded by Berry Gordy Jr. in 1960 after receiving a small loan of 1 million dollars from his family. Um, I mean a small loan of 800 dollars from his family. Detroit had been coined “Motor City”, and Berry thought the word “town” conveyed a better feel of soul and warmth than “city” did, so he called the company “Motown”.

Motown was a new platform to give African-American artist the full spotlight, where before, they would often, at best, take a backseat to white artists. 2648 West Grand Boulevard in Detroit, Michigan became “Hitsville U.S.A”, the headquarters of Motown. There quickly became a “Motown Sound” that was easily recognizable and is described by a style of soul music with a distinct pop influence. Berry Gordy Jr’s first signed act was the Matadors, who immediately changed their name to the Miracles. Miracles lead singer William "Smokey" Robinson became the vice president of the company. They had no idea this small company in a house in Detroit would blow up to be a national powerhouse. They had a dream, and some guts.

Don’t be deceived. This would be no small company. This wasn’t just a hometown outlet to make African-Americans feel better about themselves. This was a breakthrough. Some popular names is Motown are Diana Ross & The Supremes, Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, the Temptations, the Four Tops, Marvin Gaye, Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5, the Marvelettes, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Lionel Richie & the Commodores, and Teena Marie. Yeah. Most everyone will recognize at least one of those names, okay. Motown Records have claimed more than 180 world number one hits.

It would be an injustice to talk about Motown’s history and not talk about the social and political climate that surrounded it. The start of Motown was only part music. Motown stands for more than just music. The Civil Rights Movement was in full swing during the birth of this company. For reference, Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus where the colored people were supposed to sit just a mere FIVE YEARS before Berry Gordy Jr broke ground on Motown. The year of Motown’s creation, sit-ins were happening at colleges all across the south. As if Berry needed a bigger hill to climb starting a new business, he needed to deal with the fact that a portion of America would not listen to anything to come out of his business, just because of the color of him and his artist’s skin.

There was one song that had a momentous part in the Civil Rights Movement. Released in 1964, "Dancing in the Street," by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas emerged at an explosive time in American history. John F. Kennedy had been killed the year before. The U.S. was on the brink of major combat in Vietnam. Racial tensions continued burning hot in the Deep South, and "race riots" were causing chaos in urban areas from coast to coast. The U.S. was like a major shitstorm right now. It was cray.

“But dude, what does a song about dancing have to do with war and racism and assasinations?”

Wooooah, random citizen, I’m getting there.

Civil rights activists began playing "Dancing in the Street" at rallies before they spoke to excite their audiences. In 1965, following another summer of urban racial clashes, an article in the black activist magazine Liberator read, "We are coming up! And it's reflected in the riot-song that symbolized Harlem, Philly, Brooklyn." The song to which Liberator was referring, of course, was "Dancing in the Street”. Of course, reporters were gonna ask Martha Reeves if her tune was "a call to arms”. Reeves didn’t like that question. Berry Gordy Jr and Motown Records agreed that they did NOT want to become political at all. Yet there were still of these accusations that Gordy and Reeves were abusing their platform to force feed white America a pile of nonsense. Um… no. That wasn’t the intention. But activists still took the song as an anthem.

This was a very hard time for Motown Records. It was practically the start of this new project, and success was booming. But all of a sudden, cultural interpretation came into play and Motown was labeled as an invalid business that fights against authority. This could’ve been a crumbling point. Gordy could’ve succumb to the pressure and terminate contracts and burn everything and FREAK. But no. He looked adversity in the face and said, “Screw it”.

On the point of screwing adversity, let’s talk about an artist in Motown that had several reasons to stop trying, but he pushed through and is still prevalent today.

Stevie Wonder is one of the most influential artists in the last century. Let’s address the elephant in the room. Stevie Wonder is freaking blind. He became blind because he was born premature and in the hospital, the doctors gave Stevie too much oxygen and it caused blindness. Talk about how life can suck. Did that stop him, no. He was picked up by Motown Records at the age of ELEVEN. Literally everything about this is crazy. Not only does Stevie sing, he plays instruments and helps produce his own music. He has done some insanely impressive things in his career: the youngest to have a No. 1 album, the first to reach that summit with a live recording, the first American to have an album debut at No. 1, and the only one to receive the Grammy for Album of the Year for three consecutive releases. Okay, I’ll stop fangirling about one of my favorite artists of all time.

Stevie Wonder is a perfect example of the type of hard-working, insanely talented people that Motown produced. Stevie Wonder, Berry Gordy Jr., Martha Reeves, and so many others stood up in the face of danger and loss and poverty and oppression and said “No more. Screw you”.

And that, my friends, is how you deal with the cruddy hand life deals.