If you don’t know how to feel about Britney Spears’ new song ‘Mind Your Business’, you’re not alone

[willys]

If you don’t know how to feel about Britney Spears’ new song ‘Mind Your Business’, you’re not alone

We are supposed to celebrate Britney’s newfound freedom, but as she releases a song with Will.i.am, it’s hard to not feel conflicted about the new chapter in her career

 

In the past seven years, since her ninth studio album Glory in 2016, Britney Spears has released only four songs. The first two were additional album tracks for Glory’s reissue in 2020 – one with the Backstreet Boys, and one solo (she did not have a writing credit on either).

Then, last year, she featured on “Hold Me Closer” with Elton John – again, a track from a reissued album, this time John’s collaboration record The Lockdown Sessions (originally released in 2021). Today, we can hear her again on “Mind Your Business”, a generic, grating track by the producer and Black Eyed Peas star Will.i.am (which leaked on social media earlier this week).

While many fans are happy to have her back, hearing her voice – and after so long – also brings up mixed feelings. The main context in which we’ve heard about Spears in the last few years is, of course, her conservatorship under her father, and the legal battle to have it removed following the fan campaign #FreeBritney (she was ultimately successful in November 2021).

But even since she has been “free”, there has been a tension: how can Spears’s fandom and icon status be maintained without simply perpetuating the cycles of overexposure – by the media as well as her industry – that led to so much harm?

Nobody could dispute that removing the conservatorship was the right thing to happen. The question is simply: what now? When a person so beloved, so obsessed over, has been previously destroyed by media attention, it is difficult to know how to celebrate them without succumbing to giving them the same sort of attention as before. We want to enjoy her presence and be happy she’s making music again, but we worry whether she is happy herself. How can we know we are doing things on her terms when she exists in a world that has only ever pushed her into boxes? A pop-EDM song telling paparazzi where to get off doesn’t wholly clarify things.

In the absence of musical output to scrutinise, in recent years it has been Spears’s highly erratic Instagram presence that has caused people to question her wellbeing. She frequently posts videos of herself dancing in strange outfits at strange angles, with messy hair and smudged makeup. Because she is “free”, and doing as she pleases on her own platforms, you feel you are not allowed to say there is anything inherently wrong with this – and there isn’t – but it is undeniably discomfiting.

Maybe she’s just being authentic, and we’ve grown too accustomed to a super-filtered version of celebrity to appreciate it – but maybe it gives away a sustained vulnerability, too, or just a sense she is slightly at odds with the world she’s in.

Maybe, at the very least, the hyperexposure that comes with posting videos of yourself in your underwear to 42 million followers is not necessarily the best medicine for somebody who has experienced great hardship due to hyperexposure of a different kind. You find yourself wondering, if not actually verbalising: is Britney really ok?

Similarly, it feels like there is more to the Will.i.am track than meets the eye. The artwork for “Mind Your Business” shows Spears, who is 41, at age 20 – a 2001 image of her at her most Britney-esque and iconic, the same she uses as her profile picture on social media (Will.i.am, who is himself 48, also does not look his age on the cover).

Her voice, heavily manipulated, repeats the phrase “mind your business” over the generic, abrasive synths. (The song is artificial, forgettable and harsh, probably written in about 15 minutes and, despite Will.i.am’s professed admiration and support for Spears, clearly almost entirely cynical.)

Rather than being expressive or even performatively “empowering”, it’s the most perfunctory kind of pop music you can imagine – a word that sits a little uneasily when it concerns a star who has spent her career doing others’ bidding. There is little to celebrate about Spears being back in the pop limelight if she is simply being used as a puppet of her former self, in order to further other people’s commercial agendas. Tellingly, she hasn’t done any promo for the song on her own social media.

While Spears is free of her abusive father, she has been released back into an industry that we cannot trust to treat her much better – one that was arguably responsible for the conditions weaponised to justify the conservatorship in the first place.

Do we, her audience, have a responsibility to call out when we are concerned? The power of the #FreeBritney movement certainly showed the effect a supportive public can have. What that support looks like now is another question.

Is it a violation of Spears’s autonomy to express concern based on the limited information we have about her life? Or is it worse to perpetuate the self-fulfilling cycle of the “Britney” image by endorsing it unconditionally? It’s impossible to know – but it’s worth bearing in mind that we also cannot know for sure if Britney is truly free.

If you don’t know how to feel about Britney, you’re not alone

INEWS.CO.UK

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We are supposed to celebrate Britney's newfound freedom, but as she releases a song with Will.i.am, it's hard to not feel conflicted about the new chapter in her career

 

[jordeezy tm]

I just think it's not single material. I wouldn't care if it was an album track. I love the beat and the "uptown, downtown" verse tho. 

[itsxrichiexbish]

i for one cannot believe the outcry people are having over this track. like wow… did u read this article??  it’s another “i don’t like the song, so britney is not free” motives. there is a lot of good things written yes, but most is weird and speculative…we should all just accept that old britney is never coming back, this is her now… and i think she is just saying **** it 

[radiantradar]

At first I hated Marjobi but it grew on me

weshigo weshigo weshigo 

[Naes614]

I’m gonna mind my b ✌🏻

[Martian_M00d]

How does one gather all that information from one song? 

[Britney2001]

It's hard to say for sure about this song. Blood Orange (a producer for Britney Jean that unfortunately didn't get any of his work used) himself stated that he didn't think will.i.am had Britney's best interests at heart (or something like that).

[ThisMeowBiteback]

I hate this fan base that’s why I don’t bother to come here often. Y’all are just like her family wants something from her when she just wants to do her own thing. This is where she’s at musically right now. If you pay attention to her you can see this is not just reject from 2012. The lyrical context is very much what is happening with her today. I thought y’all were going to get the dog reference (her dogs had been roaming the  neighborhood), but y’all are so stuck on its will.I.Am & mad it’s not a bigger artist, which is making y’all not appreciate the song. The song has the same structure as Beyoncé break my soul. 

She has been known for dance music her whole career why does she have to sound like everything on the radio? I think this sounds great & has so much attitude. Seeing those black dudes react to it was my same initial reaction. I smile because I went in with an open ear not expecting anything & she gave me everything. She wrote about what she’s going through. 
 

 

Edited July 21, 2023 by ThisMeowBiteback

[Emil87]

Manjubi be like:

 Manjubi remains unbothered.

[itsxrichiexbish]

18 minutes ago, ThisMeowBiteback said:

I hate this fan base that’s why I don’t bother to come here often. Y’all are just like her family wants something from her when she just wants to do her own thing. This is where she’s at musically right now. If you pay attention to her you can see this is not just reject from 2012. The lyrical context is very much what is happening with her today. I thought y’all were going to get the dog reference (her dogs had been roaming the  neighborhood), but y’all are so stuck on its will.I.Am & mad it’s not a bigger artist, which is making y’all not appreciate the song. The song has the same structure as Beyoncé break my soul. 

She has been known for dance music her whole career why does she have to sound like everything on the radio? I think this sounds great & has so much attitude. Seeing those black dudes react to it was my same initial reaction. I smile because I went in with an open ear not expecting anything & she gave me everything. She wrote about what she’s going through. 

glad i’m not the only one who caught the dog thing 😂

[Toy_Soldier_93]

ma'am this is a Wendy's.

[Haha-Hehe-Haha-Ho]

Imagine thinking your subjective personal opinion deserves its own thread..

[agustinmalandra]

manjobimannjobi 

wheshia

[Princessmimi]

You know this is the first time in my entire life that I ever heard a Britney song where I don't know initially whether I like it or hate it.

I am GENUINELY confused and I keep listening to it to see if I can makeup my mind about it but I just can't.

 

I do like the beat especially at the end of the chorus though,

I will say that.

[Matou]

3 hours ago, princessmimi said:

You know this is the first time in my entire life that I ever heard a Britney song where I don't know initially whether I like it or hate it.

I am GENUINELY confused and I keep listening to it to see if I can makeup my mind about it but I just can't.

 

I do like the beat especially at the end of the chorus though,

I will say that.

I think you're too nice to confess inside you that it's bad because you want to give this "project" a chance. This song is bad as S&S, WB, BFB and many more since Circus but we are used to mediocrity and still we want to support her.

[Princessmimi]

4 hours ago, Matou said:

I think you're too nice to confess inside you that it's bad because you want to give this "project" a chance. This song is bad as S&S, WB, BFB and many more since Circus but we are used to mediocrity and still we want to support her.

No its not that.

In fact there are ALOT of songs of Britney that I'm not a fan of and think are bad.

I just cant make up my mind about this song.

 

I will say that its not on the same level as her previous iconic songs, thats for sure.

[BritneyWiki]

This song is a little buzz single for her book release..it's not a first album single with a video and all of that. I don't think the song will do well enough to justify making a video. 

She's free and getting a quick paycheck by releasing this. This is her happy ending. She can do quick easy projects to get cash as she sees fit. At least this song has a statement that is relevant and means something to Britney at the moment. 

Maybe after the book we could get lucky and have her really work on a full length album someday, but it will likely come without all of the big budget videos and promotion we used to see in her career.

[Pablitonizer]

After reading all this, I'll quote the queen herself:

"I think it's just a song"