#441: Britney Spears, ‘Blackout’

JIVE, 2007

Writing about pop stars like Britney Spears is particularly difficult for me. I never grew up listening to her or her Mickey Mouse Club crew. I only started really digging into the Britney Spears story when my social media feed was overwhelmed by #FreeBritney chat and conspiracy theories about her clumpy mascara-covered eyelashes spelling out “help.”

 Britney’s fans conjured up a whole thing about her being in an abusive relationship with her father and basically being enslaved by his estate to work for them against her will. Her fans fought and yelled and protested and made signs and cried with big crocodile tears on national tv about how much Britney Spears has meant to them and how much they will sacrifice for her to be free. 

They were right. Britney Spears was in the middle of a predatory conservativeship that even had control over her birth control. 

After being validated in their involvement in Britney’s life, her fans continue to go too far. They called the police on her after she deleted her Instagram account. Britney chastised them in the way an angry mother chastises her adult children. Then she announced she was leaving social media again and begged her fans to respect her privacy and not call the police on her AGAIN. 

How did this all start? Well, it started with this very album. 

Before Blackout, she was the most photographed celebrity. Post Blackout, she was still the most photographed celebrity but this time with intense devotion and concern by all of her fans. 

The album was released in October of 2007. In February of that year, she went through a public divorce, shaved her head on camera during a nervous breakdown and then spent two stints in a mental health facility. In March, she was back to promoting this album wearing a wig and eliciting sympathy and obsession from her fans concerned with her workload considering her very real suffering.

Her fans from this time engaged in a collective parasocial relationship gone too far. (Parasocial relationship meaning a one-sided relationship where one person is invested emotionally and otherwise, often seen in fan/celebrity or person/fictional character relationships). Britney’s fans engaged in the “illusion of intimacy” considering themselves now Britney’s caretakers. They transitioned from fandom to obsessive guardianship. 

Yes, her fans have impacted her life for good but, I think we can all agree, it is getting out of hand. 

When you listen to this album, consider that this was the beginning of the end of her independence both from her abusive father and also now her fans.