HBO has Britney Spears performing live from the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, on November 18. In case you didn't already know, this show will be her very first live television concert. Las Vegas will be just one stop on Britney's 2001 US Tour.
Britney's Las Vegas show Sunday night gave fans - and 800,000 U.S. soldiers stationed around the world plenty of fodder for sweet dreams.
From her sequence
Elvis white jumpsuit, to the fans dressed as Elvis in the front row, Britney put on definitely Vegas show. The concert began with a host informing the audience of the night's theme: Dream within A Dream. Turning on a metal wheel, that looked like something out of a post-apocalyptic vampire movie, a black lace-clad Britney emerged from the fiery stage singing "Oops I Did it Again." Her black and white-costumed dancers join her for the next number,
"Crazy" After several futuristic dance sequences, the show took a childlike turn as a storyteller (played by Jon Voigt) tells young Britney a bedtime story, inspiring a dream where she becomes a mystical music-box
dancer
With "Lucky", Britney showed her true American colors, wearing a white fur coat lined with Old Glory. Before returning to her music box, Britney re-enacts one of her earlier hits, "Sometimes." Britney shows her dichotomy by following the bedtime story bit with the sexy nightclub act "Boys." The song showed us Britney's naughtier side, with racy dancing and
risqué clubby costumes. Britney paused during the show to give a heartfelt statement about how proud she is of her nation and its brave armed forces. She spoke specifically to soldiers in Texas, her native Louisiana, and California. The troops echoed their support of Britney with shouts and cheers. "It's because of the hard work and the sacrifices you make that give me the freedom to do what I love to do, which is to perform," she told them, before singing her soon-to-be-release single "I'm Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman."
For "I Love Rock and Roll," Britney channeled the spirit of Janice Joplin, trying on the sixties vibe as a style. She and her "band" rose from the stage on a fiery platform, hovering over the audience before bungee jumping into a dance sequence that defies gravity.
She then stopped to ask the audience if they, like her, have ever felt like a slave to the music before delivering a reprise of her jungle-inspired performance of "I'm a Slave 4 U". Although she was without a snake, Britney made up for the lack of reptiles by slithering across the stage and climbing up poles.
The similarities between of Britney and
Elvis
The similarities between the lives of Britney and Elvis, two of the most successful acts in the history of pop music, are striking. Born in Mississippi more than 45 years apart, their lives have followed a similar course, encompassing not only No 1 singles, Grammys, wealth and fame, but substance abuse, divorce and a dubious attraction to Las Vegas. Last week, Spears launched her new album, Blackout, to critical applause, but after a year of increasingly unpredictable behaviour, failed rehab stints, attacks on the paparazzi and an ongoing child custody battle, it remains to be seen whether the Princess of Pop can navigate the immense celebrity - and attendant excesses - that destroyed the King.
Both performers owe much of their ascent to stardom to the marketing of their sexual allure. The Elvis controversy was sparked by a performance on The Milton Berle Show in 1956, during which he performed a cover of Hound Dog, a song which, like Spears' 1998 debut ... Baby, One More Time, carried blatant sexual undertones. But it was the performance as much as the lyrics. With Elvis it was the pelvis, the seductive shake that drove female fans to distraction and saw one of his early TV performances, on the Ed Sullivan Show, censored so that viewers saw only Presley's upper body. Britney, of course, skipped into the public consciousness provocatively clad in school uniform and pigtails. Her currency was raised by the disclosure that for all her saucy cavorting, she was in fact a good little church-going girl and a virgin to boot.
There have been other visual similarities along the way - the hair-cutting for example: Elvis was publicly shorn for his stint in the military; Britney, for less explicable reasons, wielding the clippers herself before the baying paparazzi. They have both, too, demonstrated a love for catsuits and sequins, and last week, as Britney unveiled her newly augmented pout, there was an echo of the King's famous lip-curl.
