Throwback Thursday: Second blog post edition

So Thursday was halfway gone when I realized that I now allegedly have a blog "series" that I have to "maintain" in which I "write" posts dedicated to "music" from days gone by. Initially, I planned to just post Throwback Thursday on Friday, which would have been a total cop-out and an easy way for me to not actually have to write a Friday post. So, I decided to just bite the blog bullet and write two posts in one day.*

In honor of writing a second post in one 24-hour span, I have chosen Britney's Oops!... I Did It Again, the song that officially** holds the title for Best Song Whose Name Contains An Exclamation Point. As I was discussing with a friend very recently (because we often talk about our favorite pop icons from their glory days, you know, from before their I'm-bald-and-bashing-car-windows-with-umbrellas phases), there really is no good reason this song was so popular. The video was the cheesiest thing ever created, not in like a good way, and the song lyrics are quantifiably terrible, and Britney traipses around in a red latex jumpsuit that foreshadows only the worst of Lady Gaga's outfits. And yet, it was a huge hit. Totally mysterious, not unlike most aspects of Britney's impenetrable inner life.

Instead of putting you through the painful rounds of the Titanic references in the official video, I have chosen to post her live performance of the song from the 2000 MTV VMAs. This performance isn't nearly as infamous as her Slave performance from the next year, but I have always secretly liked it more. Here's the video, followed by my favorite parts, broken down by seconds.

:12 Britney starts singing live. If only we had known then how truly lucky we were to witness such a rare event.
:49 Britney grabs the rail violently and drops it.
:54 Some dude in the audience yells either "YEAH BRITNEY!" or "GET IT BRITNEY!" It's hard to tell which one. He's so committed to it. I imagine him being either the horniest straight or the queeniest gay in the audience, and also way ahead of his time.
1:01 Britney's tear-away suit starts to pre-emptively come off her body. Little bastard. I remember people talking about how this ruined the whole performance because it gave away her surprise striptease. I never understood this logic. It never detracted from the performance for me; I mean, you still got to see her rockin' bod, so stop fucking complaining.
1:07 Said rockin' bod makes its first appearance. Thus begins the best decade of pre-adolescent eating disorders ever.
1:27 Britney raises her arms above her head to signal that THIS IS THE BEGINNING OF MY NEW SONG PAY ATTENTION Y'ALL. She is also still singing live at this point. Take note.
1:36 Choreography officially begins. I could try to hide the fact that I learned this entire dance, but I won't.
1:36 This is also the point when her voice-over track starts playing, but you can still hear her singing underneath it. Amazing. Like we wouldn't notice that there are now two Britneys singing instead of one.
1:55 Britney starts writhing in a sea of gay men. This is absolutely a pre-cursor to the Slave video, which would come out the next year.
2:07 The camera zooms in on Britney's hips/ass while she does a shimmy, and somewhere in the universe a star dies from related causes.
2:17 Britney does a serious, hardass Harlem street move and drops her hands to her muthafuckin knees and pops her booty. Another star dies.
2:24 Britney gets inside the space egg and poses with her back arched, while singing, "You see my problem is this..." To which we respond, "What? Your problem is that your body looks too good? Were we supposed to notice you have a hot body? Honestly, it's not that noticeable. Wait... have you gained some weight?"
2:52 Britney does a subtle but effective double-forward hip thrust. Yeah, I noticed and learned this part of the dance too.
3:19 Britney's live mic comes back to the front as she screams "WHOOOO!" to signal that the frenetic dance break is about to begin.
3:31 The music gets more beat-heavy for about two to three seconds, and Britney faces the back and shakes her ass to match. Not sure why, but there is no camera zoom here.
3:47 Close-up on Britney's face, and we really see her straining here. She is singing, y'all. You can't hear it, but goddamnit, girl is singing.
3:52 The best go-from-standing-to-crouching (I think they call this a level change) ever in the history of dance occurs. I did this in my room over and over and over again.
3:52 - end THE BEST 30 SECONDS OF BRITNEY'S LIFE.
4:08 Britney coos, "Oooooh, I did it again," before punching her fist toward the heavens as if to say, "I did it! Again! I made mere mortals scream and cry and question their sexualities! I made legions of women hate their abdominals! I made real singers question their talents! And while I was at it I killed some stars! Oops! I did it again! But the 'oops' part is just for coyness because I totally meant to do it yeeeeehaw!"

With that, I will conclude by sky-punching and saying: Ooooh I did it again. I blogged twice in one day. What about it, bitches?


*This kind of sucks because now I have no fucking clue what to write for tomorrow
**Not officially at all