Just like a woman
November 16, 2003
Britney Spears opens up on Madonna, Justin and her 'not sexy' new CD.
By JIM FARBER
Britney Spears doesn't get it.
On her new CD, "In the Zone," she heavy-breathes through 50 minutes of lines like:
"I don't want to be a tease/Undo my zipper please," "Baby don't stop/You're halfway there," and "I got the boom boom/That you want."
But she doesn't see why this makes it a sexy record.
"That's what everyone puts the emphasis on," Spears says with a ticked-off edge, as she sits in the lounge of the Hit Factory recording studio, eating a banana.
"Suddenly they act like, 'Oh, you're this sexy girl.' They're going to misconstrue it in the way they want."
It would be hard to misconstrue lyrics like:
"My sex drive ... Outrageous," "Grab my waist/Take it lower," or "Pull on me baby/I'll take you higher" - each of which is matched to deep-grinding beats and chest-heaving vocals.
Yet, Spears insists the album is "about expressing myself."
"Most true artists get it," she says. "It's like a spiritual experience."
Certainly, it's an attention-getting one. And Spears needs the limelight as she prepares to release "In the Zone" Tuesday. Musically, the album tries to prove that - like fellow ex-teen stars Christina Aguilera and Justin Timberlake (Spears' ex-boyfriend) - she has grown up. Spears does seem much changed from the singer I interviewed two years ago. Then, she was giggly and shy. Now, she's more assertive and combative - if still puzzlingly coy about her sexier displays.
Still, in a wide-ranging interview with the Daily News, Spears opened up about a number of hot-button topics, including:
That Kiss: She says that the much-publicized smooch was "awesome" - and that it was Madonna's idea.
Her Special Relationship With Madonna: "Maybe she was my husband in another life."
Justin's Video That Taunted Her: "I was shocked - sless."
Her Interest in the Kabbala: "I would never do it unless it was working. And it's the only thing I really recommend people get into."
Rumors of Her Relationship With Her Choreographer, Columbus Short: "God, no."
TOUCHING TRIBUTE
Spears will admit that "three songs on the CD are really sensual." One, titled "Touch of My Hand," is about self-stimulation. "It's a healthy thing," Spears says. "It's not about going out and being with a guy and screwing around."
She believes the subject came up because "this time in my life I'm not really with anybody, so I'm curious about the whole thing."
On another song sure to get attention, "Early Morning," she sings of being "passed out on the couch at dawn" after a full night of "shaking my a." Such statements play into the hands of gossip columnists who've paid special attention to the time Spears spends smoking and drinking in nightclubs. Spears believes the reason she gets unusual scolding for such activities is because "I was growing up in the public eye from when I was 16. So they always think of me as 16."
This may also help explain why Spears' open-mouthed smooch with Madonna at September's MTV Video Music Awards generated worldwide chatter, while Madonna's lip action with Christina Aguilera during the same number generated barely a peep. There's more shock value in the worldly Madonna kissing the less experienced Britney than there is in her kissing the more low-down Aguilera.
Spears professes to be baffled why she got more attention than Aguilera. (A well-placed source at MTV says Aguilera's management was none too pleased about it.)
It was Spears who came up with the notion to get Madonna to perform on "Me Against the Music," the first single from "In the Zone." Lately, Madonna has been acting like the president of the Britney Spears fan club."She's like my godmother," Spears says. "When I'm around her I feel very safe, and there are few people I feel that way around. And she's friggin' Madonna!"
Spears has no explanation for why the older singer has embraced her. The possibility that the elder icon may be trying to connect with Spears' younger audience obviously hasn't occurred to her.
Madonna gives Spears a piece of maternal guidance in the song. "Sexy lady," she sings, "I'd rather see you bare your soul." Spears believes the line means that "I should let go, which is hard for me to do."
Madonna has also gotten Spears into the kabbala, the religious belief of choice for today's celebs. The younger singer proudly shows off her red string (a symbol of the faith) on her left wrist. When Spears speaks about the subject, she becomes more animated than when talking about music.
"I was brought up and raised in religion, which is the thing that's causing wars right now," Spears says. "This one person believes this, and another has a different belief, and because of that you're going to hell. Which is so stupid. It's weird making this transition for me to something so different.
"It's a bigger picture even than the Bible," Spears continues. "It's so interesting to me because I've never read stuff like this before."
Media people don't treat celebrity endorsements of the kabbala with quite the same reverence. When Spears appeared as musical guest on "Saturday Night Live" last month, Tina Fey referred to the kabbala as "an ancient form of publicity." But Spears says, "I can't joke about it."
LOVE AND LEARN
She has a better sense of humor about Justin Timberlake's "SNL" appearance the week before hers. He did a parody of Spears' old single "I'm a Slave 4 U."
"It's ... cool that he did that," she says, "because it makes everybody shut the f up about everything."
Spears says that while she and Timberlake no longer speak, she's now unperturbed when he's linked with new loves, like Cameron Diaz. When she first saw him with other women, it was a different story.
"I'd been with him forever and seeing him everywhere felt really weird," she says. But she was downright angry this past summer when she saw Timberlake's "Cry Me a River" video, on which he enacted revenge against a Spears look-alike by having sex with another woman in their bedroom and leaving a tape of it for the mock-Spears to watch.
"He was throwing it out there in a huge way," Spears says. "I was like 'What the hell's going on?' "
She calmed down, she says, after she realized "men have egos, and they have ways of dealing with them. So I think it's inevitable that he would do something like that because he was really hurt."
It isn't the only hurt Spears has had to deal with in the last year. She is upset about being linked romantically with Columbus Short, whose wife is pregnant. She surmises the rumors started because "they're my dancers, so we're with each other 24/7. Plus, I guess people are kind of over the Jennifer Lopez/Ben Affleck think. So they're probably wanting to put me with somebody."
Not that she minds all the rumors. "The one about [me] and Colin Farrell wasn't bad," she smiles. "He's really cute."
Besides, Spears knows that all this talk - like all the sexed-up lyrics on her record - is going to keep people interested. Even more so if she confounds us by claiming to be unaware of the power of it all.
"At this point," she says, "I know how the press works."
Indeed.
