| I just want my life back. | | | | |  | While Britney Spears testified by phone in her conservatorship case, her fans testified outside. Los Angeles, June 23, 2021.
(Rich Fury/Getty Images) | | | | | "I just want my life back." | | | | Overprotected
In a summer in which livestreaming platforms, social media companies and subscription music services are fighting for control of the live audio market, there may be no hotter piece of live audio than the one that originated from a Los Angeles courtroom Wednesday afternoon—BRITNEY SPEARS pleading with a judge, via telephone, to free her of the conservatorship, run by her father, that has controlled her life for 13 years, while fans around the world listened in. Courthouse Clubhouse. What everyone in the virtual room heard was horrifying—one of the century's most iconic pop stars telling a judge she had been drugged with lithium against her will, had been forced to use birth control even though she wants another child, and had been abused by a therapist. She detailed those and other allegations large and small in an impassioned 24-minute plea with one simple objective: "I just want my life back."
Spears wants control of her art back, too. I found this complaint, small as it may seem in comparison, telling: While rehearsing for a Las Vegas residency that ended up being canceled, she tried to veto one particular dance move. "It was as if I planted a huge bomb somewhere," she told Judge BRENDA PENNY. "My management, my dancers and my assistant... all went into a room, shut the door and didn't come out for at least 45 minutes. Ma'am, I'm not here to be anyone's slave. I can say no to a dance move." It wasn't long after that she was put on lithium. Which is to say, a woman whose singing and dancing earns her tens of millions of dollars, of which her conservator father gets a healthy cut, is living and working under a legal system that doesn't trust her to decide what to sing and how to dance—backed by the threat of pharmacological punishment. Which is some kind of metaphor for a pop ecosystem that seems almost pathologically unable to believe that pop stars, especially young female pop stars, can be responsible for their own success. There seems to always be someone else—a producer or a writer or a Svengali or a marketing executive—to give the credit to. Anyone but the crazy young woman. This, in a sense, is the court-ordered version of that.
As compelling as Spears' entire case appears to be from the outside—after her testimony, the judge shut down the livestream and continued to hear the case in private—most of us are in no position to fully understand all the factors in play. But many of us have a pretty good understanding of what Britney Spears does, and is capable of doing, on record and onstage. And I think we can say, with a high degree of confidence, that the idea that she needs a court-appointed conservator for that is as laughable as it is appalling. It's time to free her.
Dot Dot Dot
"The way to think about it," said BILL ACKMAN, whose PERSHING SQUARE TONTINE HOLDINGS paid $4 billion to buy 10 percent of UNIVERSAL MUSIC, "is if you own Universal Music Group, you own a royalty on people listening to music." Ackman's audience Wednesday was his own shareholders. "And I can't think of an asset that I could have more confidence in being consumed over time—other than food and water." The $4 billion question of course—or at least one of the $4 billion questions—is what will people pay for that consumption and where will that money go?... LORDE's album SOLAR POWER will be released on vinyl but not CD. In place of the latter, she'll offer an eco-friendly "music box"—a download card for a version of the album with two bonus tracks, packaged in a plastic-free box with a variety of other exclusive content. No disc, no jewel case and "because of the digital nature," Lorde tells Billboard, "I can add to the world of the album all the time, without anyone having to go back to a store"... Just launched: Season 3 of SPOTIFY's MOGUL podcast, which is about the late "chopped and screwed" pioneer DJ SCREW, and season 8 of the classic album deep-dive series DISSECT, whose subject is KANYE WEST's YEEZUS... SCOOTER says he offered to sell TAYLOR's catalog back to her but she and her team wouldn't even meet with him. Everything that's happened since "has been very confusing and not based on anything factual," Variety's Mogul of the Year tells the magazine. Taylor's response, perhaps, is the 30-song remake of RED she's putting out in November... Was the man behind "AMERICAN PIE" an abusive father? Yes, says DON MCLEAN's musician daughter JACKIE in chilling detail in this Rolling Stone longread, which also gives Don, who denies it, room to tell his side of the story... "The EVE 6 guy" ranks his very best tweets, including the one where he accused MUMFORD & SONS of being narcs based on how they pronounce the F-word.
Rest in Peace
GIANNA ROLANDI, American soprano who sang with the New York City Opera and the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
| | | | Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator |
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