Words by Jason Lee. Cover image by Gannon Padget. Photos directly below by Mike Cicchetti & Gannon Padgett.
Disagreeing with a parent was never permitted in my house. No matter how bad it got, there was an understanding to stay mute. And if I didn’t, there were consequences. In the Bible it says your tongue is your sword. My tongue and my sword were me singing. My whole childhood I sang. I sang along with the car radio on the way to dance class. I sang when I was sad. To me, singing was spiritual. — Britney Spears, The Woman In Me (2023)
The first time I witnessed IT’S BRITNEY, BITCH! live it was at an honest–to–God church and not in a drab, fluorescent-lit basement rec room either as the designated entertainment for an AA meeting & mixer as you may expect not that BROOKLYN’S BEST BRITNEY SPEARS TRIBUTE BAND couldn’t deliver the goods in such a setting cuz I’m sure they could…
…it’s just they’d run the risk of the AAers heading straight to the nearest bar directly after in order to try and replicate the pure adrenaline rush of what they’d just witnessed and no one wants that besides under no circumstances should a recovering alcoholic be exposed to even a single song off from Britney’s magnum opus Blackout recorded at the height of her public-image nadir back when Paris and Lindsay were her L.A. clubbing besties…
…so it’s a good thing IT’S BRITNEY, BITCH! played in the sanctuary instead, under a stained glass window of Jesus looking beatifically down upon his lambs and upon the band—fronted by singer and dancer, drummer and pianist, actor and comedian, game show host and fashion stylist, Pilates instructor and scene supporter, bartender and all-round polymath but not sociopath Charmaine Q a/k/a CHARMANIA—as she nails the dance moves from Britney’s iconic video for “Oops!… I Did It Again” as choreographed by Tina Landon (love that heartbeat move) while decked out in a red latex jumpsuit no less..
…belting out the song’s penultimate line as the melody climbs up into the rafters: “Oops, you think…that I’m sent from above” waving her hands in the air like a snake-handling Pentecostal preacher then with a shimmy of hip turning to stained-glass Jesus to proclaim, “I’m not that innocent!” repeating the phrase in dead-on Britney-esque upspeak and as the band holds out the final chord Char spins back around to confront her congregation directly: “you’re not that innocent either”….
…and at this moment the whole “singing is spiritual” thing suddenly makes sense which not to brag but all of this took place at a DELI DELIVERS booked event with the show in question called NO FALSE IDOLS (clever!) featuring a lineup chock full of cover sets by some of NYC’s finest bands gathered in the church’s sanctuary on a Sunday night thus highlighting how pop stars ‘n’ rock stars are our modern gods and monsters with all in attendance taking the theme to the next level…
…with thumping, throbbing rock lending muscle to the already strong melodic underpinnings of Ms. Spears best material (“Oops!” was written by Swedes-for-hire Max Martin and Rami Yacoub natch) inflused with a new spiritual fervor perfect for Charmaine’s sermon on the subject of original sin as in I’m not that innocent…given the innate inclination of all human beings for sinfulness ever since that sh*t went down in the Garden of Eden and with Britney being downright Christ-like if you really think about it (!) and not just cuz of the washboard abs either (!) but also due to being sanctified in suffering thx to all the “not so innocent” back-stabbing Judases in B’s life like her own freakin’ parents for Crissakes, I mean, even God Almighty never placed J-Dog in a bogus conservatorship for 13 years…
…not to mention the many sins of Justin and K-Fed and the paparazzi and the “legitimate” press alike and all the late-night comedians looking for an easy punchline with the gawking public at large (us!) eating it all up with a spoon and hey you’d probably shave your head and start attacking cars with an umbrella too if it were you with a special circle of hell reserved for the likes of the Dutch interviewer below alongside Diane Sawyer, Matt Lauer, Sarah Silverman, et al. but on the plus side #SaveBritney may one day morph into #BritneySaves cuz who couldn’t use a new and highly relatable goddess to worship…
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The first time I was truly touched and got shivers down my spine was hearing our housekeeper singing in the laundry room. I always did the family laundry and ironing, but when times were better financially my mom would hire someone to help. The housekeeper sang gospel music, and it was literally an awakening to a whole new world. Ever since then, my longing and passion to sing have grown. Singing is magic. When I sing, I own who I am. I can communicate purely.
Critics have alleged that Britney’s voice is unnatural or simply weak but we’re not inclined to agree cuz at ten years old Britney was already a preternaturally mature R&B belter just witness her appearance on Star Search below (when Ed McMahon asks the pre-teen if she has a boyfriend (!) Britney replies “No sir. They’re mean!” which proves she was prescient all along) and while you can find plenty of kvetching in the comments section saying Britney shoulda held onto her “natural” singing voice as if singing like her family’s housekeeper is natural but hey that’s the history of American music in a nutshell..
…to the contrary we prefer the sometimes oddly contorted but always captivating Valspeak–via–Louisiana vocal style developed on her earliest records with a majestically unholy mashup of glottal stops, vocal fry, breathy Marilyn–via–London cooing and white-throated-warbler vocal runs cuz really what’s the point of sounding like yet another American Idol clone whose soulless vocal acrobatics cheapen the memory of the likes of Mahalia Jackson and Bessie Smith (but then what do we know, we’ve watched that show like twice ever) with Britney’s unique inflections instead looking forward and defining the Millennial generation…
…and likewise CHARMANIA’s singing voice is a supple instrument capable of rock ’n’ roll belting and emo bleating alike at the weekly Monday night karaoke session held at Our Wicked Lady (btw we forgot to list “karaoke MC” in her resumé above) plus those dead-on Britney elocutions and like any good impressionist Char does more than merely capture B’s vocal nuances but exaggerates them slightly too thus drawing out the fine nuances one may not catch otherwise…
…and speaking of transformational magic one of the most notable things about the cover version of Britney’s tear-jerking ballad “Everyday” that CHARMAINE released just recently (!) is how rather than sticking to the tension-filled “baby cooing” singing style utilized by Britney on the song Char instead elects to cross these breathy tones with the party-girl Valspeak favored on most of B’s other material circa the early aughts…
…like how at around 1:40 when CHARMAINIA sings “What have I done? / you seem to move so uneasy” in contrast to the relatively pure, crystalline tones (for Britney) of the original version, Char instead sings the lines in the throaty moan featured on O.G. joints like “…Baby One More Time” (its verses especially) complete with mottled melismatic flourishes thus making the lyrics sound something more like like “whhuut halve I duh-uh-un / ewe seem t’mawt un-eee-thee-e” but what larger significance could this possibly hold, well, hold your horses cuz well get to that later…
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Singing takes me to a mystical place where language doesn’t matter anymore, where anything is possible. All I wanted was to be taken away from the everyday world, and into that realm where I could express myself without thinking. When I was alone with my thoughts, my mind filled with worries and fears. Music stopped the noise, made me feel confident and took me to a pure place of expressing myself exactly as I wanted to be seen and heard. Singing took me into the presence of the divine. As long as I was singing, I was half outside the world.
…and if there’s one song from Britney’s output that encapsulates this divine mysticism and purity, worries and fears, but equally escapism, it’s gotta be the aforementioned “Everytime” off from In the Zone (2003) or as Britney herself put it, “‘Everytime’ is just a really nice song because it’s…personal in a weird way. It’s one of the songs that when you hear [it], it’s like the kind of song when you go to heaven. It kind of takes you away. It takes you into a very cool consciousness I think”…
…a song that’s pitched half-way between sweet childhood lullaby and verklempt funeral lament, a total outlier released in the midst of Britney’s “Not A Girl, Pretty Definitely A Woman” cycle of naughty aughts albums hellbent on fighting for her right to party with B’s voice molded into the robotic purr of a pneumatic fembot by producers during the era of peak Autotune not to mention being one B’s only self-penned songs (tho’ of course there’s controversy there too)…
…with the haunting piano melody (who even knew B. played piano up to this point?!?) and Britney’s unadorned voice capturing a dark nights of the soul at it’s darkest yet the press and public were more concerned as always with Britney’s “bad influence” on her fans this time for the music video’s depiction of B. drowning in a tub which in a leaked pre-shoot treatment was described as a suicide tho’ not ultimately portrayed as such (she gets resurrected in the end..or her soul gets transferred into a newborn infant..it’s unclear!)…
…and then there’s the song’s lyrics, widely believed to be a response to the Great Justin Timberlake Breakup reported upon breathlessly in the tabloids and blogs for much of 2002 (co-lyricist Annet Antani was likewise coming out of a serious relationship when they co-wrote the lyrics, with Britney’s musical director no less) tho’ it’s difficult to fathom the song’s chorus (“and everytime I try to fly / I fall / without my wings / I feel so small”) not being informed at all by B. increasingly losing her personal autonomy which wasn’t helped by the public flaying she took when her former fellow Mouseketeer launched his own post-NYNC career in large part by turning public opinion against B. via his breakout solo hit “Cry Me A River” and it’s tacky music video…
…and worst of all losing custody to her two children to a Z-grade rapper on the heels of her declaring in interview she was thinking of leaving the music industry altogether to raise a family and then there’s the recent revelation in The Woman In Me regarding (spoiler alert!) the abortion she had at Justin’s behest a few years earlier while they were still together thus leading to widespread speculation (as always!) that “Everytime” was in reality written for Britney’s unborn child tho’ her co-writer denies it and Britney’s never confirmed it…
“and everytime I see you in my dreams / I see your face, it’s haunting me / I guess I need you baby […] my weakness caused you pain / and this song’s my sorry / at night I pray / that soon your face will fade away”
…so it’s perhaps no surprise that IT’S BRITNEY BITCH doesn’t perform ‘Everytime” as part of their live set cuz people might start thinking about aborted embryos and douchebag boyfriends and psychological breakdowns and who needs any of that at a fun coverband show tho’ co-vocalist Briana Layon does wear the iconic untucked white dress shirt from the “Everytime” video on stage…
…which is perhaps why CHARMANIA elected to record her own version of the song instead in collaboration with producer SHOPJAIL_ a/k/a/ Samuel Krebs who (if we got our facts straight here, always a maybe!) worked with Char before as one-time bassist for Nevva for whom Charmaine still pounds the skins (an online reviewer calls the band “super fun, energetic snotty punk rock with a bubblegum attitude” which is about right) plus according to the highly reliable Full Time Aesthetic music blog: “Krebs is a cinematographer, and shot the “To Us” video for CHARMANIA” which can be viewed below…
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Artists make things and play characters because they want an escape into faraway worlds. And escape was exactly what I needed. I wanted to live inside my dreams. My wonderful fictitious world and never think about reality if I could help it. Singing bridged reality and fantasy—the world I was living in, and the world I desperately wanted to inhabit.
If Britney’s original version of “Everytime” is arguably the most real song she ever recorded then we’re gonna keep speculating and say that CHARMANIA and SHOPJAIL_’s version is more like the “fantasy” version of the song, or one particular fantasy of it anyway, which takes the voice of the brash IDGAF Britney and beams it into her most “adult” songs as if latter day Britney-as-victim has been infused with new vitality and strength and maybe she has…
…which just goes to show how some songs are more than merely songs but instead more akin to cultural totems growing and evolving over time and taking on a life of their own in the public imagination which is one reason why we find things like cover songs and tribute bands so fascinating esp. when they’re brave enough to really switch things up cuz it can be downright revelatory of the inner life of a song in someone’s imagination…
…with “Everytime” certainly fitting the bill what with it being back in the spotlight after the publication of The Woman In Me thus causing it to re-enter the top 100 chart twenty years after the fact and yeah we’re talking iTunes chart but still why not that counts with the other major outside intervention impacting its reception among a new generation being its memorable use in the 2013 film Spring Breakers with Harmony Korine wisely playing off the key dynamic as in rapturously beautiful surfaces and a deep spiritual rot underneath or to put it somewhat dramatically “loss of innocence” in one of the best uses of a pop song in a contemporary film of late whose cult popularity has endured…
…and at last we oughta talk about the music itself, specifically the production, which in Britney’s original version is provided by Guy Sigsworth (known for his ethereal work for Björk, Madonna, Alanis Morissettem Robyn, Imogen Heap and many many others) layering discrete layers of harp and music box, swelling strings, and backwards tabla onto Britney’s piano and vocals all of which only pushes the knife in further when it comes to the song’s heartbreaking sense of fragility tho’ also the strength when it comes to confronting fragility so directly…
…while SHOPJAIL_’s production retains a certain airy quality but it’s definitely got a more earthy sound to it as well (grounded, in other words) that puts this listener in mind of artists like Goldfrapp (first album), Lamb, and How To Destroy Angels which especially in its chorus and bridge sections pulls the original arrangement out of it’s fractured fairytale safety zone with pounding drums and buzzing synth tones
…which of course one could never replace Britney’s original of course but it’s rewarding hearing another take on the iconic song from a couple of talented artists active on our own little scene from their own point of view or as Britney puts it: “You have to speak the thing that you’re feeling, even if it scares you. You have to tell your story. You have to raise your voice.”
IT’S BRITNEY, BITCH! is Charmaine Q, Briana Layon, Mevius, Cassie Ramone, Kevin Blatchford & Tayler Sepulveda-Beck
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