Pop Rocks

Author: Lanford Beard

Justin may have walked away with a few Moonmen that night, but the minute Britney snatched a kiss from the infamous Boy Toy-cum-Caballah Mama at MTV's 10th anniversary Video Music Awards, we knew that this pre-Madonna was no longer "Like a Virgin."

More than ever she was and is a slave for us, out to get-it, get-it... like that.

Flipping through this week's "Rolling Stone," I rekindled my flame for Britney (Ms. Spears if you're nasty).

I won't lie. It has been tough between Brit and me in the past. She's tried too hard, I've doubted her fidelity, and I was always annoyed by that fickle "Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman" nonsense, but I persevered because I understood that Britney was overprotected.

Now that her new album drops soon and we will all be lost in a deluge of pictures of her half-naked, media-whore body, we must judge for ourselves whether this is the dawning of a new day for Britney or just one more stop on the path to nightclub hell in Vegas.

However, like the Material Girl, Britney's attitude has morphed from "Love me, love me! I'm cute, young and single!" to "F- you, America. I smoke, drink, have sex and am polymorphously perverse."

She dated Colin Farrell and Fred Durst and recently made an unscheduled club appearance in L.A. wearing jeans that had the phrase "No BS" stitched across her derrier, just in case you didn't get it.

Another scoop, she's tapping into her naughty girl roots by exploring the scandalous world of throbbing bass-lines and suggestive lyrics - oh wait, she already did that. She's just being upfront about it this time.

If you follow the examples of stars like Britney, Christina and Beyonce and compare them to the likes of Michelle Branch and Vanessa Carlton, it seems that the only two options for females in the music industry today is to be a dirty, exoticized/eroticized skank or a sugar-coated, angelic-voiced singer-songwriter. (However, record sales will undoubtedly suffer from taking the latter path. With the exception of the ill-fated Whitney, the angels don't get single-name recognition like the great Ms. Ciccone.)

So back to Brit's back.

With rumors still flying around about a Nascar movie and a job replicating the stunning dramatic chops of Daisy Duke in "The Dukes of Hazzard: The Movie," surely the old Brit isn't too far from home.

Only time will tell on all of these conflicting personae and projects, but if Britney's new penchant for the four-letter words and her new found honesty with members of the elite press are any indication, we might as well resign ourselves while the down-home virgin-cum-audio porn star of the American mainstream reclaims her thrown as the reigning princess of pop.

All this being said, I do love some Britney now and again, and I anxiously await the chance for her to hit me one more time or let out a little red-pleather-clad "Oops!" for old times' sake. She drives me crazy.