CheekyChicago

Britney’s back, bitch… Er, well- sorta back. Let me start this piece off with an honest-to-goodness disclaimer: I freakin’ love Britney Spears. She can shave her head, she can date a paparazzo, she can fail miserably on the Billboard charts, she can have baby mama drama. But in my book, she can do no wrong. Britney transcends most any kind of stardom—she’s an enigma of a celebrity if you will. Whether you love her or you hate her, you can’t deny that you are fascinated by her. And for this die-hard Brit-Brit fan, the bottom line is and always will be: I really do love her music. (Don’t judge. Judging isn’t cheeky.)

So let’s start off by acknowledging that the pop princess didn’t sing one note last night at the Allstate Arena. Not one. She may as well just have played her CD that I blast in my car (while I make an ass of myself at stoplights) and sang along to it just as I do. (For the record, I’m tone deaf. I’m not sayin’ but I’m just sayin’.) However, it seemed that no one in her sold out, glammed out, costumed crowd of teeny boppers, scantily dressed twenty-somethings, impeccably dressed pretty males and every one in between seemed to mind the girl lip-synced the whole show. We were all there to see Britney shake her booty on the live stage for the first time in over four years. And shake her booty she did.

Who cares about singing when you’ve got a multimillion dollar production behind you? Set up just like a circus ring in the round, Britney’s show was constructed just like that: a true and genuine Circus. With stilt walkers, midgets, sword throwers and acrobats, sparklers, pyrotechnics and some of the most astounding video production I’ve ever seen, Britney (or rather—the people working for her) didn’t cut one corner. It was truly one heck of a spectacle.

So, Britney. First of all, she looked amazing. She ain’t a skinny 16 year old anymore, y’all. She’s a curvy mother of two and I give her mad credit for flaunting her every inch in barely-there costumes. (She had about ten changes.) Think cone shaped pasties and sequined pantyhose. (Not joking.) She opened with “Circus” and played pretty much every song you’d ever want to hear if you went to a Britney Spears concert. Even though this tour was a follow up to her latest album, Circus, most of her performances came from Blackout, of the “Gimme More” success. She rocked out to “Piece of Me” in a cage, literally almost got naked to “Get Naked”, insinuated some pretty major erotica in “Touch of My Hand” and blew the roof of the place with a new version of “Hit Me Baby One More Time.” (Watch the video.) “Toxic”, “Womanizer”, “If You Seek Amy”, “Boys” and “Do Something” were all performed as well.

So she had the video production, the light show, the freak show and the dance show (major credit needs to be given to her ridiculously hot, talented back-up dancers who almost stole the spotlight). What didn’t Britney have? Perhaps passion. We have already admitted we don’t go to Britney concerts to watch her sing, but we do go to watch her dance. Or rather, watch her dance her ass off. But for the majority of the concert, it seemed her dance moves were reduced down to a mere skipping around the stage and flipping her long blond extensions about. She actually seemed bored at times. I was waiting for Brit to shake it like she did back in the olden days of “I’m a Slave 4 U”, and towards the second half of the show, she almost got there. Some of her dances were extremely hot when she did give it her all, but thank goodness for those back-up dancers. With 100 percent commitment, they shook and gyrated those hard bodies for all of us to see. Maybe they knew (more than Brit did) that we all dropped a couple hundred bucks just to be there.

Yet nothing will ever get in the way of my undying love for Britney Spears. Not lazy dance moves, not bad hair extensions, not K-Fed. And while I do state that she may only be sorta’ back, I hope she never leaves.