It’s not a secret to anyone who knows me that I have a slight fascination with Ms. Britney Jean Spears. So when the opportunity came about to see her in concert, I ran with it.
Let me just preface this by stating that the last time Britney came to Boston, it was 2001, with her “Dream Within A Dream” tour, and I was a junior in college who just happened to be walking by the then-Fleet Center as droves of mothers and tweenaged daughters headed into the arena, tarted up and covered in sparkles, ready to scream along to “Oops, I Did It Again.” I distinctly remember turning to my boyfriend and snarling in my best 20 year old hipster bullshit voice, “More like Nightmare Within A Fucking Nightmare.” (Hair flip, eye roll, head tilt, pull out a copy of important book so everyone knows what you’re reading, etc.)
But the world has become a different place for both me and Britney Spears over the past 8 years; when I was 23, I had a nervous breakdown, and Britney’s life seemed to hit a serious meltdown phase as well, including shaved heads, failed marriages, bad managers, and a swelling of tabloid interest that led her to be a virtual prisoner in her own home. I think this is the reason I am so fascinated with her, why I root for her; I know how hard it is to pull your shit together once your entire universe goes on the blink, and I can’t even imagine having to do it in front of an audience of millions.
Over the past year, the Britney Recovery Train has been rolling strong; she appears to be in better mental and physical shape than she’s been in in years, and she’s currently in the middle of her first tour since 2004’s disastrous Onyx Hotel tour, which was pretty much the beginning of her long and increasingly bizarre downward spiral. The Circus tour, however, is a different story. So how was the show? Let’s break it down:
Pre-Show: My sister and I hit some random bar to find that the entire place is filled with women in their 20s who are also going to the show. My sister points out two guys sitting at the bar who look both terrified and elated. “Dude,” my sister says, “want to meet girls? Hang out at a Britney show. Put that in your review.” Done and done.
The Scene: TD Banknorth Garden, Boston, MA. Sold Out crowd of 17,804. Homemade t-shirts my sister and I saw: 8. Number of said t-shirts that read “It’s Britney, Bitch!”: 6. Number of women who pulled out their Britney-as-a-schoolgirl costumes from 1999: 2. Number of shirts emblazoned with “You Want A Piece Of Me” in red glitter that my sister and I bought: 0. Sorry, B.
The Audience: I’d say 75% of the audience was women in their mid 20s-early 30s. We saw a few men here and there, and only one or two tweens with parental escorts. This was an audience of Britney’s peers, people who had grown up with her music and were there to support her. With one or two exceptions, most people were dressed as if they were going out for a laid-back girls’ night; jeans, cute tops, boots. No glitter, no belly shirts; the tweens who showed up in 2001 have either moved on or grown up. Britney, however, was still rocking the belly shirts and feathers and glitter and sassy pants. She only played one song from her pre-2000 days (Baby, One More Time), but her outfits are still as ridiculous as they were in 1996, though they fit the Circus theme.
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