She's workin' our first issue of the new year like only the Queen of Pop can.
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Wow… perfect audience for the 1st #PieceOfMe show! That was AMAZING! I <3 you Vegas!!! pic.twitter.com/7w0mGIH3BJ
— Britney Spears (@britneyspears) December 28, 2013RTWT.
Scheduled to run through 2015, with Spears playing approximately 50 shows a year at the 4,600-seat Axis, “Piece of Me” represents a potential pivot point for the singer and the state of entertainment on the Las Vegas Strip.
For Spears, 32, the steady gig promises a path out of the turmoil and disappointment that have surrounded her since 2007, when she attacked a paparazzo’s car with an umbrella after shaving her head at a Tarzana salon.
Though Spears’ personal life appears to have stabilized, her career is still hurting: This month her album “Britney Jean” opened with the lowest sales of the singer’s 15-year career; it sits at No. 27 on the Billboard 200, well behind records by Katy Perry and Miley Cyrus, both of whom showed up Friday night as a sign of respect to a trailblazer.
Filling the Axis, the thinking seems to go, might restore some of Spears’ luster without her having to engage in direct competition with her younger successors.
Las Vegas, meanwhile, stands the chance to further dismantle its reputation as a home for has-beens. Successful casino shows by the likes of Celine Dion and Elton John have advanced that effort, but with its jackhammering dance beats and recent-vintage radio hits, “Piece of Me” bridges the gap between those old-school extravaganzas and the superstar DJ sets that have increasingly come to define the city’s night life.
In terms of show-business strategy, it seems to make sense. Yet as a concert experience Spears’ opening-night performance came up awfully short....
Whatever the scale of the number though, the singer’s presence felt so diminished -- her dancing a tentative shadow of what it used to be, her vocals apparently lip-synced for the majority of the show -- as if to make the production’s title seem a taunt.
That was never more true than in the song “Piece of Me,” which on 2007’s “Blackout” -- perhaps Spears’ best album, released right in the thick of her public meltdown -- arrived like a searing indictment of the tabloid surveillance state. On record the track still stings, yet here it flat-lined, with none of the intensity, energy or strut that made Spears such a focal point of mainstream pop.
In "Perfume," the latest single off Britney Spears' new LP Britney Jean, the pop star comes up with a brilliant way of letting a mistress know you exist: "mark your territory" on him with your signature scent. And that's just what she does in the video for the song – Britney's the subject of a two-timing, rather chiseled boy who seems to have an affection for jumping in pools late at night, making out on car hoods and (gasp!) brunettes. As Spears runs through the song, she often looks rather glum and angry, a natural feeling for anyone who feels then need to mark someone with their perfume. Will she get revenge, or, at the very least spark an olifactory-based blowout?
12. Britney Spears and her snake (2001). Brit’s celebrated her last few months as a teenager in a big way with her sexiest song yet, “I’m a Slave for U.” From bursting out of a cage with a tiger to slinking around with a giant yellow python. There’s something about a pop princess shaking it with a giant snake that screams legendary.
TIMES FRONT PAGE: Welcome to the world #skypapers #RoyalBabyBoy pic.twitter.com/TmIYTYpH2T
— Sky News (@SkyNews) July 22, 2013
Royal baby: the newspaper front pages - in pictures http://t.co/FGfGWwqZR8
— GuardianUS (@GuardianUS) July 23, 2013
STAR FRONT: It's a boy! #skypapers #RoyalBaby pic.twitter.com/loeNQsDFzT
— Sky News (@SkyNews) July 22, 2013
More at London's Daily Mail, "Britney Spears 'jumps before she's pushed' as she quits The X Factor USA after just one season."
"I'll always adore him and we will remain great friends," Spears said in a statement released to People announcing the end of the engagement. Brit's rep told the mag the decision was mutual.
Added Trawick, her onetime agent who'd popped the question back in December 2011: "I love and cherish her and her boys and we will be close forever."
Brit has two sons, 7-year-old Preston and 6-year-old Jayden, from her marriage to Kevin Federline, which ended.
While sources told TMZ that Spears and Trawick had simply "grown apart" and called the breakup friendly, Radar Online painted an uglier picture, alleging that the two had been fighting for months and sleeping apart, saying Trawick had already moved out of the home they shared.
