Say what you will about Britney Spears’s musical talent. Go ahead! I want you to say it. Out loud. Okay, now I’ll say what I will about her talent. Her songs (or her hits at least since those are her only songs I’m familiar with) are excellent. Catchy and danceable, these hits still cause every wedding attendee to immediately jump onto their chairs and wave their arms around.

I guess I don’t know how responsible Britney Spears herself is responsible for this. I don’t know if she wrote these songs or had a hand in selecting them or what. I’m certainly not going to try and find out because I’m too tired. Actually, this tiredness means I will try to keep this short and sweet. Anyways, since Britney Spears is the artist I think she is the responsible one. If the songs are good it is because of her. And if they were bad (which they aren’t) it would be her fault. Okay.

The song is called …Baby One More Time. That is strange because it starts with an ellipse and doesn’t contain all the words in the hook. Maybe she didn’t want to call the song Hit Me (Baby One More Time), but she has no problem singing that over and over. I mean, asking to be hit is bad, but I kinda think she doesn’t want to be attacked. It means something else, probably something to do with drugs. Also, the ellipse allows the song to begin with the word baby. That might be significant as we are about to see.

…Baby One More Time by Britney Spears:

At the opening, Britney Spears is bored.

Look at her hair! How old do you think she is supposed to be? 14? 15? I feel like any older than 15 is absolutely impossible for that hair. Now we see why the song is titled “Baby”.

She is a really sexy 15, though.

Are people really sexually attracted to 15 year olds? Or are they attracted to women trying to pretend they are 15? I wonder how old Spears is in this video for real. I remember her being quite young. Even if she was 30, though, the fact that we are supposed to be simultaneously attracted to her and to think she is in high school is ridiculous. What is wrong with us?

For the second verse she switches to a sports bra and sweatpants.

Her hair is different, too, but it is still in infantile pigtail-type things. Now she might be 16. Still way too young for adults. Okay, I understand that the target audience for her music and videos is not adults, but c’mon. Simultaneously dressing her as sexily as possible while making her hair as young as possible is fucked up, right? I don’t think it matters what the audience is. We shouldn’t want to have sex with Shirley Temple. Or at least I don’t. Is she even still alive?

The third verse at first glance makes it seem like Spears has grown up.

Once we can see all of her hair, though, it is clear that she is still sporting pigtails. Does she just have one off-center thing going on there? It is unclear. Not flattering. I think I’d rate this hairstyle appropriate for a 12 year old.

She’s still dressed super sexy, though.

She is also holding a ball while looking at us significantly.

That’s right, hold the ball! Hold the ball! Yes!

I wish that this video could be as great as the song. I have to stress that I really like this song and I think Britney Spears is great. It’s just that the sexy baby phenomenon is really depressing. We should think adult women are sexy and that young girls are not. This is my belief.

I just have more one thing to say about the video, which is about the lip synching. In this song there is one main vocal line and occasional oh yeah yeahs and baby babies that are more part of the beat than the vocal lines.

But for some reason they still show her singing them! It is weird!

Look at her oh yeahing here:

Just pick a single vocal line and have the singer sing it! If you have lip synching then you are presenting a fake live performance. If you then have people deviate from the main vocal line it takes away the veneer of live singing. It means I just get distracted.

Oh well. That’s it, I’m done. I’ll be back next week with more music videos and a whole new weekly format.

Are you excited? Get excited.

-PTD