Britney Spears kicked off her first comeback by vacantly intoning "It's Britney, bitch." For her second comeback, however, it seems that her handlers have decided she should be shy, or "clever," or whatever is the best way to describe someone who pronounces "f.u.c.k. me" as "if U seek Amy."
From MTV news:
But what will [radio stations] do with a new single from a major artist that doesn't actually contain a four-letter word, but rather spells it out in a not-so-subtle way? That dilemma is beginning to dawn on top-40 radio programmers across the country as the third single from Britney Spears' latest album, "If U seek Amy" starts to make its way to the airwaves.
The cheeky title (try saying it fast) joins the tradition of album titles like Van Halen's 1991 For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. The chorus doesn't even try to make grammatical sense of the phrase: "But all of the boys and all of the girls are begging to if you seek Amy."
Excuse me, what? That song sounds like a if you seeking pile of nonsensical bull "Shh!" it. Pop songs in general don't have to have the most profound or even cohesive lyrics, but they shouldn't sound like an ESL student's first week of class notes put to song. If Britney, or the team of songwriters who pen Britney's songs (which, don't get me wrong, is ordinarily a fine system) want to use juvenile shorthand instead of actual profanities in her songs, they should at the very least fit into the lyrics without sounding like stilted Chinese-to-English subtitles.
Radio stations are decidedly not enthused about the song, especially after the Black Eyed Peas debacle of 2005:
Sharon Dastur, program director at Z100 in New York, also had not yet heard the song and said she's not sure what the station's plans are for it. She compared its possible problems to those faced by her station in 2005 upon the release of the Black Eyed Peas single "Don't Phunk With My Heart."
"Listeners thought it was the other word, and so we had to change it to 'mess,' " she said….
Well, what do you know? Z100 has standards. Strange to hear considering that listening to Z100 is like being phunked in the ear. Then there's this:
Like several programmers we talked to, Patti Marshall, program director at Cincinnati's Q102, said she had not yet been told that "Amy" was the next single from Circus…Asked if she would play "Amy" if it came to her as a single, Marshall said likely wouldn't. She likened its chorus (which she has not heard) to "a little boy in sixth grade doing arm farts."
Hmm, good point. Of course! The song is clearly a calculated move by Britney's handlers to shift her fan base to the only demographic group that would find "If You Seek Amy" even remotely clever: little boys in sixth grade doing arm farts. It's a bold business strategy that will become even more obvious with the release of Britney's next album Your Epidermis Is Showing, featuring the singles, "See You Next Tuesday" and "I Have 58008 (On A Calculator, Upside Down)."
Britney could be bigger than 1001 Dirty Jokes.