yesterday afternoon. Seriously, once I finished reading it (and I
skimmed some parts of it!) it felt like an hour had passed and I was
thirsty and disoriented. So, if you have some time set aside and you
want to read a really intensive article about Britney’s Las Vegas
residency (an article that barely quotes Britney herself), go here.
The biggest headline out of this piece is that even Britney’s handlers
admit that she’s not singing live. Durr. But there are a few other
gems too. Some highlights:
Journalists always bring Britney food:[From Medium.com]
That’s what the interviewers do. They come and they give her food.
Yesterday had been her 32nd birthday. Mario Lopez had brought cupcakes.
(The month before, a foreign journalist had asked her what her birthday
plans were. “Probably working,” she’d said. His response: “You’re so
American.”)
The X-Factor debacle: She was terrible at the banter
and bitchy sound bites that are so much the matter of those talent
shows. Britney came up in a time of CDs, one of her managers, Adam
Leber, reminded me, before interaction with fans was so unpredictable
and needy and could come at you through your phone. But it wasn’t just
that, really. She told her publicist, Jeff Raymond, that watching other
people perform made her wistful. She wasn’t ready to hang it up in her
early 30s and assume the bizarre position of grande dame judge, trotted
out for her wisdom rather than her talent, like Liza Minnelli or an
errant Pussycat Doll. Britney quit before Simon Cowell could fire her so
she could quit before he could fire her.
Putting together Piece of Me: Britney’s contract for
this show, which pays a reported $15 million (about $300,000 per show),
demands that she create a spectacle that’s bigger than anything she’d
done before, so that people who had seen her live before would still be
tempted to come. (Celine’s first residency featured 53 dancers and a
bunch of clowns, impractical to take on the road, to say the least.)
Fine by Britney. She told Baz Halpin, the show’s creative director, that
she wanted elements: fire, water, snow. She wanted a jungle theme,
which is something she always wants. Halpin loved the idea and gave her a
tree to jump off of in the middle of the third act; it’s 56,000 pounds
and 32 feet high and takes six people to move.
Whether she sings live: Our expectations of a woman
in her 30s who has built two people in her body might be a little bit of
a reach. “To put on the show that she puts on, it’s virtually
impossible to sing the entire time and do what she does,” Adam Leber
told me. “She’s singing on every song, basically, when she has the
ability to sing. There’s no way you can dance for 90 minutes straight
and sing the entire time.”
Her conservatorship: Sources close to Caesars, which
means that they work at Caesars, tell me: that the company had insisted
on the conservatorship just in case, and that it must remain throughout
her contract.
It’s actually a really interesting, well-researched piece, but it’s
verbose. And then some. I found out some new stuff, including the fact
that Britney still pays Kevin Federline $25,000 a month in child
support. I learned that Britney hates crowds and that she has an
excessive amount of managers and “staff.” I also learned that she
really likes her backup dancers and she enjoys being on stage with them.
As far as the “Britney doesn’t sing live” thing… well, that’s nothing
new. It is interesting that Britney’s team is admitting it now. So,
why are people going to Britney’s show again? To see her dance around
(badly) and lip-sync?
Cele|bitchy | Britney Spears’ team finally admits that she’s rarely singing live in Las Vegas
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