TV GUIDE -- June 3-10, 2000
TV GUIDE: June 3-10, 2000
BEACH BLANKET BRITNEY
BY JENNIFER GRAHAM
Teen pop Britney Spears goes Hawaiian for her new TV special
Nearly as old as Hawaii’s molten volcanoes is the pun about its tourists "getting lei’d." No one can escape this joke not even Britney Spears. She is standing inside Gate 11A at Honolulu International Airport, surrounded by the host of sidekicks with whom pop icons travel (manager, personal assistant, publicist, journalist, eight dancers, two backup singers and two bodyguards). Outside the gate are 200 radio contest winners. Their prize: a five-second glimpse as Fox’s TV cameras document Spears exiting the plane and receiving a necklace of flowers. She actually slipped into Oahu hours earlier, but for her TV special, Britney in Hawaii, her arrival is carefully being staged anew. And for the second time. On the first attempt, one of her burly bodyguards blocked the Britney-getting-lei’d shot. The producer’s mandate: No walking in front of Spears. The bodyguard’s reply: That’s his job. Her manager, Johnny Wright, steps in and negotiates an angle that both can accept.
"Just stick with me, girl," says Wright. "I’ll get you lei’d." The dancers roar with laughter; Spears grins demurely. She has to save her real smile, all 13 lip muscles, for the cameras. This bit of energy conservation is a wise move. For the next five days, even as lensmen dog her, Spears’s beauty-pageant smile will rival the gleam of Hawaii’s bright April sun, never dimming. Not at the luau; not while swimming with dolphins, parasailing or autograph signing; and certainly not during her one-hour concert on the private beach at the Hawaiian Hilton Village. "She’s such a natural beauty, so fresh and colorful, it was obvious to do the special in Hawaii," says Michael LeVitt, who, along with Bob Bain, produced the show, which features Destiny’s Child and Joe. "Britney, to me, equaled Hawaii." She also equals a phenomenon, one whose record sales (18 million copies worldwide of her first CD, …Baby One More Time, with more expected on her latest, Oops!…I Did It Again) are only part of a bigger story.
"In December of ’98, she clearly changed female pop," says Michele Dix, vice president of music and talent programming at MTV. "The premier female artists were the Mariahs, the Whitneys, the Madonnas. There was also a Lilith [Fair] sound. And then here was this very young performer who broke through the barrier." Today on MTV, the premier female artists are Christinas, Mandys, Jessicas — all of whom fall short of the drinking age. Spears, who came first, is the emblem of this new girl-pop landscape. "That scares me to think of it like that," says the 18-year-old, who, after an all-too-brief nap, is now looking at a glimmering Pacific Ocean from the balcony of her immense hotel suite. She, too, manages to look radiant, even in a faded yellow Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt, royal blue pajama bottoms and golden hair twisted in a makeshift scrunch. During this interview, a makeup artist will turn her face from cute to captivating while a stylist will provide tonight’s luau attire — an ultra- short sarong and half-shirt that ties under her breasts. "People are going to be walking around in their bathing suits, so this isn’t so bad," she rationalizes. Spears has come to rue media scrutiny. With good reason.
At 17, her first video (for …Baby One More Time) had critics scolding her to pull down her tied-at-the-navel Catholic-school blouse. A few months later, when Rolling Stone’s lingerie-toting wardrobe people seemed to mistake her for Pamela Lee, the general public collectively wanted to ground her. ("I was going for an older audience there," she insists.) And when those photos prompted tabloid rumors of breast implants, reactions were more hostile still. ("The worst thing," she says, "was that people actually believed [I] would do that.") So Spears has also become a touchstone for that age-old parental riddle: When and how do you let your daughter grow up?"I just think of it as a costume," says her mother, Lynne. "And I don’t think anything of showing stomach, ’cause it’s so hot down South, where we live [in Kentwood, Louisiana]." Adds Britney: "I think all teenagers want to feel sexy. There’s nothing wrong with that. But I don’t think I dress sexy now." Sometimes friends at her label, Jive Records, disagree. At the video shoot for Oops!…I Did It Again Spears’s professional team nixed a shredded chiffon skirt it felt showed too much leg. "They’re all paranoid," says Spears. Adds her four-time video director, Nigel Dick: "A lot of girls want to wear [provocative clothing]. The difference is that instead of some guys from school seeing you at a party, Britney is splashed across the world." Today, Spears does seem like a teen primping for a party, albeit one in an adolescent fantasyland. At the mention of Ben Affleck (who is in Oahu to film next year’s Pearl Harbor), she shakes her head: "At the Billboard Music Awards, he came into my dressing room. And I was so embarrassed, because I was doing sit-ups on the floor. I was a mess. I’m not good with guys at all. I don’t know what to say."
Some months later, a friend made matters worse, divulging to a magazine that "Britney’s obsessed with [Affleck]." Spears says, "I was like, ‘Why did you say that? I just think he’s cute.’ She’s obsessed with him!" She sighs, adding, "He thinks I’m a psycho, probably." Even in that unlikely event, her fans certainly don’t. "It’s important when I say stuff," says Spears, a Baptist raised in the Bible Belt. "When I was on MTV, I was talking about my prayer book that I write in every night, and someone in the audience was like, ‘That’s so cool.’ And I was like, ‘Oh, that’s so good that I said that.’" A yen for provocative outfits and a prayer-writing habit? Sounds contradictory — unless you have a teenager in your life. Spears’s life began in a quiet, rural area where "Britney always performed at Dairy Day [a type of farm fair] and different stuff around town," says her friend since age 3, Jansen Fitzgerald, 17. (She adds that Spears is "still as goofy as ever, except her vocabulary is, like, huge now.") More impressive fare followed, including a Star Search win at 9 and an off-Broadway show (Ruthless) three years later. Her mother (a teacher) traveled with her, while dad Jamie (a building contractor) stayed behind.
"We weren’t poor, but we weren’t rich either," says Spears, who has a brother, Bryan, 22, and a sister, Jamie Lynn, 9. "To go to New York, it’s so expensive. But my dad worked it out." A rodent worked out the rest, in a manner of speaking. Disney’s Mickey Mouse Club then united an 11-year-old Spears with future partners-in-fame Christina Aguilera, Felicity’s Keri Russell and ’N Sync’s JC Chasez and Justin Timberlake. In fact, both Timberlake and his group mate, Lance Bass, call up during this trip. Earlier, some beach-bathing teen informants authoritatively snitched that Timberlake is not only Spears’s boyfriend but here in Hawaii with her. "The fans want us to be a couple," says Spears, who claims it’s been "a long time" since she’s had a date, period. "His mom and my mom are good friends. And we do a lot of the same TV shows together." On the other hand, she did recently admit to occasionally kissing Timberlake. But this does not, in her view, change the fact that they are "just friends." She does have a favorite false rumor: an e-mail relationship with Prince William. "It’s like, yeah!" she says. "I’m a princess!"
She is, at least, the princess of pop, though Aguilera ruled the day at this year’s Grammys, when she won out over Spears as Best New Artist. Both dismiss any rivalry, with Aguilera saying, "It’s sad how people are really making Britney and me out to be competition, because we are good friends from the Mickey Mouse Club." True, says Spears: "I remember when we listened to Janet Jackson’s CD That’s the Way Love Goes in our dressing room and sang along." For Spears, post-MMC life — school, sports — was like Saved by the Bell: The Boring Years. "I was like, ‘I gotta go to New York again,’" she says. At 15, she hooked up with an entertainment lawyer, auditioned, signed with Jive Records (already home to the Backstreet Boys) and released her debut CD two years later. A coterie of blond, midriff-baring starlets followed, though Spears claims, "I don’t know who came out first. I just do my thing. Doing that, you’re ahead of everybody else." Everybody, that is, except ’N Sync and the Backstreet Boys. Along with Spears, they form the triumvirate of today’s chart-topping acts that critics have dismissed as bubblegum pop churned out by other writers. The spectacle has also vexed a number of today’s songwriting artists. In his video, "The Real Slim Shady," rapper Eminem skewers both Spears and Aguilera. "I think [Aguilera was considering] a lawsuit," Spears says. "But I’ve learned there’s no sense in going there."
Besides, she adds, "I don’t think I’m bubblegum. Pop is pop." Indeed, her galvanizing stage show, two nights later, certainly appears to gratify her shrieking audience. She has also responded to critics by co-writing her first song, "Dear Diary," and planning guitar lessons during rehearsals for her upcoming five-month tour. "I’m gonna play the song," she says. Her new message is also more mature, as on "Don’t Go Knockin’ on My Door," in which she reprimands a disrespectful boyfriend. But the CD’s most striking song may be "Lucky," with its lyric, "If there’s nothing missing in my life, then why do these tears come at night?" "I don’t want to sound ungrateful," Spears says. "I feel so blessed by what has happened to me." But she does relate to the song. Why? "I don’t know, I guess it’s being a teenager in general," she says. "You go through so many things." Within minutes, this teenager is up and off to the luau — where a TV camera will roll continuously, two feet away from that captivating face.
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