After Billboard’s recent list of the best bridges of the twenty-first century (which included a Britney Spears songwriter named Kesha), it bears noting that just because the bridge from one of Britney Spears’ lesser appreciated songs (from the lesser appreciated album, Britney Jean), “Body Ache,” is simply her repeating, “You make my body ache,” does not make the foresight and resonance of the song any less valuable. In fact, it’s important to have this sort of redundant “Jesus Prayer” readily available to chant in order to endure what your body is about to go through–which is to say, the wringer.
Considering Britney already had the vision to know that Mars would be such “a thing” way before Elon and helped put the spotlight on a new condition tailor-made for the DSM called being an exaholic, it’s no wonder her witchy, prophetic ways seemed to predict that yet another common phrase in the cultural lexicon eight years after the release of Britney Jean would be “body ache.” And while she might have been saying it to a guy she was trying to impress on the dance floor (back when dance floors were still graced with Spears’ presence), she was also single-handedly providing the perfect anthem for many going through the manifold side effects of their vaccination—particularly that “doozy” of a second one during which no symptom seems to be spared.
While the effects of the ‘rona vaccine may vary, among the most common are body aches. A phenomenon that puts even the youngest of people (we’re talking as young as Britney was when she first rose to fame with “…Baby One More Time”) in their place in terms of recognizing frailty.
Britney, thus, sings as though from the perspective of the vaccine itself when she taunts, “I know you feel my fire/Draw you into my flame/Tonight we take it higher/What I got ain’t no game/Won’t stop ’til you breathe heavy/There won’t be no turning back/I’m all up on ya, on ya.” That Monsieur Vaccine is, tending to have more adverse side effects on women because that’s just the patriarchal society we live in.
Among the four producers responsible for the très Euro beat of “Body Ache” is David Guetta, who builds up to the musical breakdown in a manner sonically reminiscent of a five-alarm fire kind of urgency, which is precisely what the interior of one’s body feels like after a couple of hours spent with a Miss Rona vaccine inside of them.
Activating the body’s response to the presence of corona in its system, Britney sings the soundtrack to the next twenty-four hours of your life post-vaccine as she narrates, “Turn you on, make you radiate a little bit stronger.” Yes, you’ll be “activated” indeed. And yet, in becoming “stronger” as a means to better tolerate COVID should it ever “organically” make its way into your guts, one has to become weaker first. Let their body ache for reasons that have nothing to do with dancing.
But now that you do have the vaccine’s properties imprinted in your DNA, maybe you really can dance in public to accommodate the original intention of what this prescient song once meant “BV” (before vaccine). Then again, “Body Ache” might still be just too much of a “deep cut” for most DJs. Even the gayest of the gay ones.
