By: Elizabeth Day


The trouble with once having been a teenage superstar and the most famous virgin in the world, is that it's hard to grow up. Britney Spears's conundrum, at the age of 29, is how to translate the effortless apple-pie sex appeal she once possessed into a marketable product as an adult performer. Judging by the evidence of her Femme Fatale tour at the O2 on Thursday, Spears has conspicuously failed to do so.

Her sexuality these days seems to consist of having things done to her while wearing very little. On stage she sports a varied array of sequined bikinis and fishnet tights, while she is handcuffed in a cage and a prison guard writhes against her. Later, a mustachioed Hell's Angel spins her round on the handlebars of his motorbike and a series of 1950s-style newspaper photographers jam their cameras up her billowing skirt trying to get pictures of her crotch.

On the hi-tech video screens behind Britney's pliable physical presence, filmed footage of a bizarre villain with a shaved head and an unexplained penchant for cracking lollipops between his teeth is repeated ad nauseam. The idea seems to be that this evil man is trying to track Britney down and kill her but keeps getting outwitted by her extraordinary facility for disguise and running fast in extremely high heels. "Tonight, you and I dance a vicious dance," the lollipop-cracker drones on.

If only Britney were dancing a vicious dance, or indeed any kind of dance at all. Instead, we are treated to 75 minutes of lethargic, dead-eyed routines with apparently lip-synched lyrics and staged spontaneity (every time a "fan" is asked on-stage, they miraculously seem to be wearing a Britney T-shirt). Spears can barely muster up the energy to move from one side of the stage to the other. Instead, a frenziedly spirited troupe of backing dancers is left to pick up the slack, while Britney clambers aboard various moving parts of machinery and is wheeled around like an ancient maiden aunt being taken for her morning perambulation in a bath chair.

For "Gimme More", she is pushed on stage in an Egyptian barge and proceeds to jiggle about pointlessly in sparkly gold pants, going through the motions as though in rehearsal, rather than performing to a paying audience. Presumably, she intends to channel the spirit of Cleopatra. Sadly, it seems to be Cleopatra post-mummification.

For "Don't Let Me Be the Last to Know", she clambers gingerly on to a swing and is winched several feet above ground like a shipping crate. Again and again, Spears is raised and lowered, while the dancers cavort around her as if she is the handbag left on the nightclub floor on a girls' night out.

Even her best songs suffer. During "Piece of Me", the single released at the height of Spears's public breakdown and intended as a riposte to the money-grabbing, fame-seeking celebrity vortex, the background screen is filled with nonsensical images of shotguns and hand grenades. The show tries so hard to portray Spears as dangerous, edgy and sexy that she ends up being none of these things.

It is sad seeing someone who once revelled in performing so uncomfortable in the public gaze. Spears's father, Jamie, was awarded "conservatorship" of his troubled daughter following her public disintegration in 2008, during which she lost custody of her children amid allegations of drug and alcohol problems. Is he the one persuading her to take to the road and raise the necessary funds? Because this Britney, with her robotic smile and listless presence, is a pale imitation of what she once was. It is hard to escape the conclusion that the ceaseless demands of celebrity have taken their toll and she's sick to the back teeth of it all.

And yet her fans continue to love her. They scream when she takes a raincoat off. They scream when she puts it back on. They scream when Britney walks to one side of the stage, lifting her heels high like a Lipizzaner show pony. They scream when she launches into a curtailed version of "Hit Me Baby (One More Time)". They scream long into the night and when they leave, trailing out of the O2 in their pigtails and school uniforms, they are rewarded with free "scented tattoos", distributed by security guards at the exits. The tattoos, we are told, are fragranced with Britney's own Cosmic Radiance perfume, available at a discount in branches of Superdrug. Unfortunately, not even Cosmic Radiance can disguise the fact that this show stinks.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011...-london-review


Is this what passes for live pop entertainment in the 21st century? Despite the usual vast video screens, giant props, costume changes, lasers, pyrotechnics, dry ice, salacious dance routines and thundering sound system, this was the saddest, laziest, dullest and most tawdry pop concert I have ever witnessed.
The most amazing thing about the whole second-rate spectacle was that thousands of people, having forked out around £50 a head for tickets, practically raised the roof, cheering every dismal dance move, roaring for lip-synched vocals and lustily applauding limp erotica. The tour labours under the faux-sophisticated title “Femme Fatale”, but it’s more of a femme fatality.

At the heart of this disaster is a vacancy, and it is Britney herself. It is as if, during a decade of extreme fame, including a very public breakdown, substance abuse and ill-judged affairs, something has been beaten out of her. She is dead-eyed, barely makes an effort, and in merciless close-up, on those giant video screens, seems oddly unsure of herself, like a chorus girl who has been pushed to the front of the stage.

Looking just a little bit chunky in a range of bikinis, she skips lazily around, making no visible effort, just hitting her mark while 18 scantily clad dancers throw themselves acrobatically about in a vain attempt to cover her ungainliness.
She has no grace at all, sticking to about three basic moves: an awkward butt thrust, a clumsy hip wiggle, and a jerky fist punch, all accompanied by a simpering, eager-to-please smile.

She can’t dance, and doesn’t even bother pretending to sing. This is the most fake, processed live music show since, well, Britney’s last tour. In contrast to the huge troupe of dancers, there are just two alleged musicians onstage, pushing keyboard buttons, while full-scale recorded techno pop pumps out. Walls of Auto-Tuned harmonies appear without the aid of a single backing vocalist: but then, why bother with that masquerade when even the star is obviously miming?

Only during a ballad, Don’t Let Me Be the Last to Know, performed while seated on an elevated swing, does Britney obviously contribute a live vocal – and it is atrocious: croaky, sharp, nasal and wobbly.
Why would anyone continue to care about such a useless performer, so obviously ill-at-ease with her trade? Well, she’s got big hits, and every time she pulls them out, the mood elevates. Yet Britney’s insecurity is exemplified by the way she prematurely cuts her trademark song Baby One More Time at the second chorus, only to do a cover of Rihanna’s hit S&M instead.

Inviting comparison with a more talented rival is disastrous. Rihanna can actually sing, and dance, and makes an effort to connect with her audience, which might explain why she has sold out 10 nights at the O2, while Britney failed to completely sell out one.

Yet the faithful just don’t seem to care. In thrall to the power of her image and fame, they treat each glorified mime routine as if it were the greatest show on earth.

RATING: 1/5 STARS


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/m...on-review.html

The Guardian
Britney Spears – review
O2, London

As ever, Britney Spears arrives to play live in Britain in a cloud of faux-controversy. Last time around it was the fact that she was supposed to be miming that caused the trouble, but tonight's audience seem to take it as read that the singer is probably lip-synching throughout.

Indeed, her current tour dispenses with the notion of live music entirely: the band consists of a bloke prodding a synthesizer high up on some scaffolding, which if nothing else means you're spared the inevitable drum solo, a reliable low point of any pop gig.

This time, it wasn't all bad news – BRITNEY SPEARS SPLIT UP STEPS read one recent headline – but there were reports that tickets for her Birmingham show had sold so poorly that the promoters had been forced to indulge in what they called "segmented marketing to reach new customers", which turned out to mean knocking £25 off the ticket price. Perhaps the pop fans of the Midlands have a hitherto-unremarked upon regional aversion to lip-synching, or to her most recent album, Femme Fatale, around which her set is based.

Not necessarily bad news – there's a fizzing power about willfully plasticky rave-pop of single Hold It Against Me – but it's lighter on the hits than you would expect: she cuts a version of Hit Me Baby One More Time dead and does a cover of Rihanna's S&M instead.

Or perhaps the slow sales are founded in the fact that Britney Spears hasn't been in the news as much as she once was, her deleterious effect on the career of Steps notwithstanding.

There's a suspicion that the kind of person who goes to see Britney Spears live isn't really there for the music or her sparkling personality: tonight she seems as dead-eyed and distant as ever. What they're interested in is proximity to a global celebrity, something her last live show seemed to understand: it played on her tabloid notoriety, complete with introduction from internet gossip monger Perez Hilton. The theme of the current one is a little harder to divine.

There's a lot of stuff about breaking the law: an introductory film in which she murders a policeman, a dance routine from behind the bars of a cell. She performs Piece Of Me, the impressively defiant up-yours she released at the height of her public breakdown, backed by footage of guns and hand grenades. There's also a lot of footage of a menacing figure who appears to have Britney Spears under surveillance, no mean feat given that his surveillance equipment primarily consists of a cassette recorder, a typewriter and an old telly, Every time he enigmatic monologue: "tonight you and I dance a vicious dance … it takes a special woman to fight your fight … in France, a girl made her way from poverty into the arms of a king …" The implication seems to be that if he captures Britney Spears he might bore her to death.

Equally, there's a lot of stuff about Ancient Egypt, during which the mysteries of the Pharoes are evoked by Britney Spears doing dance moves approximate to Wilson Kepple and Betty's sand dance while standing in a basket: the grand spectacles the show presents keep turning out to be not quite as spectacular as you might hope, particularly in a world where Lady Gaga douses herself in blood and sets fire to a piano on a nightly basis. Still, the people who have paid for proximity to a global celebrity seem to go home happy.

RATING: 2/5 STARS

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011...?newsfeed=true

THE INDEPENDENT REVIEW:

First Night: Britney Spears, 02 Arena, London

The last time pop star Britney Spears took to the UK stage, in a 2009 tour to promote her Circus album, she was criticised for miming and a lack of personality.

Tonight, on a tour of her latest, and seventh, studio album Femme Fatale, the global superstar who turns 30 in December and has sold close to 70 million albums worldwide, is still lip-synching, auto-tuned to the max, and seemingly unashamedly so. There's no pretence of a live band as a backing tape is played out on a visible laptop by two digital instrumentalists. But everyone knows that it's all about the pop spectacle.

The problem is that tonight's show is not really spectacular enough. Spears' own dancing seems lacklustre, compensated by an impressive cohort of dancers that surround her.

Tickets were slow to shift for this tour but her devoted fans seem determined to have fun. The second half of the show takes it to a new level with I Wanna Go, the album's lead single, a highlight which has whole crowd pogo-ing. "Good job, guys that was amazing, wow!" she exclaims rather robotically.

In the stomping finale, Till The World Ends, Spears is raised on a swing and angel wings burst from her, as shimmering fireworks fall from the stage top like magical stars. She is still a show-woman, but in a world with Beyonce's vocals and Lady Gaga's inventive outlandishness, the bar is constantly raised.

RATING: 2/5 STARS


http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...n-2376987.html

The Financial Times: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/49209ba8-0...#axzz1cMI4z3Bi

The Mirror: http://www.mirror.co.uk/celebs/news/...5875-23519931/

London Evening Standard by Simon Freeman: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/music/...-are-silent.do

London Evening Standard by John Aizlewood: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/music/...rs---review.do

The Financial Times: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/49209ba8-0...#axzz1cMI4z3Bi

Guardian... sis...

How boring. None of the "insults" make me mad. Not even the "Lady Gaga is a great entertainer" one he actually made Gaga look bad.

Yeah, she's been getting atrocious reviews like crazy.

Love these bits from The Independent and The Guardian reviews

The Guardian and The Independent are 2 of their most reputable sources.

I agree.

The fact that you're not even a fan and you post this

this is how they do a review?. he's just mad he wasn't at beyonce and gaga's show.

Correct,


They went in on Britney,



I would be mad too.

They're not even legit

How I love the tour reviews

I'm sure it was just a typo...

That's all that matters.
And the fact that Monsters and Beyonce fans are happy because they mentioned their faves it's pretty funny.

Non-factor review, you're there to review the show not compare it to everyone else's and get facts wrong.

Reported

They really should change the list of reasons why threads may get deleted.

Damn they dragged the **** out of her.

waaaaaaaaaaaaaah. I am hollering.