Is it any coincidence that in the same week that Pope Francis visits Ireland, the Holy Spearit – Britney Spears – comes to our shores as part of her Piece of Me world tour? I think not. As a pop star who has had more career resurrections than the Lord himself, Spears has shakily stood the test of time.
From the second she burst into our lives with Baby One More Time in 1998, she's had worldwide fame – sometimes for the wrong reasons – and now she's back in her prime thanks to her four-year Las Vegas residency with Britney: Piece of Me in Planet Hollywood, the show that gave her the confidence to be a superstar again.
As an evergreen VBF, Spears’s latest tour is gaining a lot of traction online, with lots of in-jokes spreading across her online fanbase. If you are heading to her Dublin show, there’s one thing you need to get on board with and that’s knowing when to scream “Who is it?” Let me explain.
On August 4th this year, 57,000 people made their way to Brighton Pride to see Spears headline the first night of the festival. Performing to her biggest crowd ever, and pulling in record numbers for Pride itself, this was the first time that the 36-year-old played to a UK audience since her 2011 Femme Fatale tour. As the familiar beats of her 2007 single Gimme More roared into action, the crowd screamed "Who is it?" just before she uttered "It's Britney, Bitch!"
A brilliantly gas viral Britney sensation, "Who is it?" began in July at Spears's show in Atlantic city, New Jersey. Zachary Gordon is an uber Spears fan and, knowing her setlist off by heart, when Gimme More began, he didn't miss a beat and howled "Who is it?" Caught on camera, he made Spears laugh – an act worthy of knighthood in the Britney Spears fan community – and in the inexplicable way that things become viral sensations, "Who is it?" simply took off and it has found a place in every single one of Spears's concerts since.
Troubled time
Gimme More is, of course, the song that Spears performed at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards, a performance that many marked as the end of her career. Her troubled personal life saw her being submitted to a psychiatric ward, fighting for custody of her two children and eventually having to sign a conservatorship which meant that her father, Jamie Spears, was her legal guardian.
Gimme More marked a low point in her career and her private life. With such a strong stigma attached to it, Gimme More didn't make the cut for her 2009 Circus tour, even though it was a top 10 hit across the world. Slowly, she worked the song back into her setlist – getting a brief outing in 2011 –and it finally became a mainstay in Las Vegas.
For total disclosure, if it's not completely obvious, I am a huge Britney Spears fan but it's evident from seeing her live so many times, including at Brighton Pride, that her fans are ultimately concerned with Spears's happiness. Her Piece of Me world tour sees her at the best she's been in years and it's been reported that her conservatorship might be coming to an end soon. Onstage, she's smiling, her moves are fluid and she's letting us see her goofy personality again. So when you hear the first few beats of Gimme More on August 20th in Dublin's 3Arena, don't forget to scream "Who is it?" because when she answers that question, she's not just reclaiming a song that marked an all-time low, she's letting us know that this time . . . she's really back.
