Although L.A. is its own microcosm of paparazzi constantly trolling for the next humiliating candid photo, the UK (which just looks better without periods between the two letters) is far more notorious for its media’s relentless pursuit of a celebrity subject (just ask Diana—oh wait, you can’t). And one wonders if Britney from 2005 onward was experiencing that level of British indefatigability or if she would have been subject to far worse if she was actually living in Britain at the time. Like Amy Winehouse herself—still the ultimate representation of what it is to be a “UK icon.” Made all the more so because she would never dream of leaving Camden Town for that “Hollywood shit.”
Britney, on the other hand, seemed tailor-made for the entertainment capital in terms of selling the “all-American girl” (and dream) to the rest of the world. But we know now the truth behind that marketing lie was always far more sinister. In the wake of the many revelations that have unfolded since Spears ceased to bother pretending to go along with the charade that “everything’s fine”—a charade she’s felt the pressure to go along with in order to save face throughout what she has called a “demoralizing” (obviously) conservatorship—we can only think of how her fate could have just as easily befallen other “problematic” women of the 00s (including Lindsay Lohan, whose father was approached by Lou Taylor as well). One in particular being Winehouse, whose addictions to drinking and drugging were only slightly worse that Spears’—it just so happened that Winehouse’s entire public persona was based on being a lush, whereas Spears’ was still grounded in some semblance of “America’s sweetheart” gone wrong. Hence Jay-Z remixing “Rehab” to insert his rap, “So I’m addicted/I’m Britney, Whitney and Bobby.”
2007 was each woman’s most tumultuous year for media scrutiny, with the fallout continuing in 2008—arguably both pop stars’ worst year for the consequences of ‘07, seemingly just for living their lives. After all, they were women in their early twenties with success and money at their fingertips, why shouldn’t they be allowed to do as they please? But as the addictions to substances became more intense, it was clear Winehouse and Spears were seeking sanctuary in the things that fellow humans could no longer seem to provide. Spears appeared as desperate for a real connection as Winehouse, thus the former entering the dubious arms of Sam Lutfi as her “manager” and Adnan Ghalib as the latest in her revolving door of suitors. That Ghalib was a paparazzo spoke to just how diminished in capacity Spears had become with her judgment—though that it isn’t to say this diminished capacity warranted her being unwittingly imprisoned by a conservatorship.
Vanessa Grigoriadis’ incredibly misogynistic article from a now immortal 2008 Rolling Stone cover story called “Britney Spears: Inside An American Tragedy” offered that “Britney epitomizes the crucible of fame for the famous: loving it, hating it and never being able to stop it from destroying you.” That, too, could be said of Winehouse, haunted and hounded day and night by photogs encroaching upon her already limited space (L.A. at least, is much more sprawled out for the purposes of paparazzi evasion than London).
Winehouse also had many parallel “head shaving” moments documented by the press, namely the time she got photographed crawling the streets with Blake Fielder-Civil in the dead of night, the two cut up and bruised after going on a heroin jag. This after Winehouse had gotten clean (briefly). “They tried to make me go to rehab/I said no, no, no” was essentially Britney’s ‘07 anthem as well, not understanding why she had to do what anyone else “ordered” her to just for her to have rightful access to her own children. In fact, skipping out on rehab to instead go shave her head at a Tarzana hair salon was exactly what she did that well-documented night (not to mention previous shocking to the masses images of Britney wearing fishnet tights with her white underwear proudly revealing her period blood). Refusing to go to rehab was also another way they were able to take her children away from her and then leverage visitation rights as a means of control and to get her to do what they wanted. In the aforementioned Rolling Stone article, it was noted by an attorney, “You can tell Britney all day that she has to follow court orders to get her kids back, and she will lucidly and rationally listened to want you have to say. But there’s a disconnect and she’ll be right back to asking, ‘Why does this fucking flea need to take my deposition for me to mother my children?’” Winehouse likely would have said something similar if she had made it to the phase of having children with Blake Fielder-Civil.
The catalyst for Spears eventually succumbing to the demand that she endure a stint at Promises? Kevin Federline, who joined forces with Britney’s family members (mainly Lynne) to coerce her. “K-Fed” was Britney’s Blake Fielder-Civil—the ultimate toxic love—except Amy was spared the lifelong burden of sharing any spawn with the man she thought was “everything,” before the drugs wore off. Federline and Fielder-Civil were the “bad boy” types that served as kryptonite to Spears and Winehouse’s daddy issues. And yes, naturally both men had something to gain financially in latching on to these women. Each still naïve in their own way about who they would choose to so willingly trust. Fielder-Civil and Federline were both undeniable opportunists, having a nose for capitalizing on a woman’s vulnerability.
Winehouse, like Spears, was in constant search of a “strong” male figure to swoop in and rescue her, both mentalities stemming from philandering, absentee alcoholic fathers in their youth. Winehouse made this clear from the outset on her snarky first single, “Stronger Than Me,” which berates her “loved one” for not being dominant and assertive enough. Not, in short, “living up to his role.” In this sense, we can see that the great downfall of both women was not only paparazzi harassment, but also in adhering to the antiquated views of their conservative backgrounds, which posited that a woman was meant to be a wife and mother, and to be “taken care of.” That latter part being rather ironic considering Winehouse and Spears became the unsurpassable breadwinners no matter who they ended up with. And we all know a woman who makes a lot of money is a threat unless she can be taken advantage of by a man. In this regard, Spears and Winehouse were the ultimate victims of what can best be described as “love scams.”
2007 was a tipping point for Britney and Amy’s relationship with the press turning from amicable to hostile. In each case, neither woman could any longer tolerate the obsession the media had with the most innocuous of moments, wanting to sever any “goodwill” perhaps as a means to put the wall up that was now necessary. Once open and accommodating, the press had turned A and B into “Medusas.”
Things worsened substantially for Winehouse after a video dated 1/8/2008—five days after Britney was admitted to the hospital upon being strapped to a gurney—was broadcast on the internet by The Sun. Every celebrity’s favorite British tabloid (just ask Johnny Depp). The video’s contents were of Amy blithely smoking crack, prompting a river of outrage and appallment rather than concern for the singer’s well-being. The exact trajectory that befell Britney as press and the “common man” alike took their personal setbacks as an opportunity for a public stoning.
One that was building to a crescendo for Winehouse the same year Back to Black came out. On a 2006 episode of Never Mind the Buzzcocks, then host Simon Amstell asked, “Can we resuscitate the old Winehouse?” She bit back, “No! She’s dead! Go away, go away!” This is the same thing Britney was announcing by shaving her head. Amstell went on to further demean Winehouse by saying, “This isn’t even a pop quiz show anymore, this is an intervention.” She laughs along with everyone else, hiding any disdain she might feel about that “joke.” One that only compelled her all the more to go off the proverbial rails and play into the image people were already caricaturizing anyway.
Yet all Winehouse wanted in the end was a simple life. “I was put on this Earth to be a wife and a mother,” Amy was purported to say at one point, echoing the sentiment of Britney declaring that she saw music as something she might do “on the side” in the future if she felt obliged to leave her imagined married and maternal bliss that was never allowed to come.
Winehouse was specific and frank in her songs regarding relationships, a theme that Spears has always preferred to be more general about in order to boil it down to the lowest common denominator, as is usually the intent with mainstream pop music. She even threw shade at Justin after “Cry Me A River” by remarking in an MTV interview of her songwriting material, “Some people choose to put on their record stuff that’s very, very personal to them. And I think that’s just making it, um—my personal opinion—just, it’s exposing yourself a little bit too much and I don’t feel comfortable doing that. And, um, so my personal life—I’ve learned my lesson—it’s just to kind of keep it to yourself, you know, because they kind of just, um, I just don’t think it’s cool to do that to other people’s expense. She concludes smilingly, “I don’t think that’s very cool. If you understand what I’m trying to say.”
Winehouse, obviously, was the exact opposite in terms of how she approached songwriting, pouring her heart and guts out onto the page, whereas Britney preferred to do that through her dancing. The lyrics of both women do overlap via one rare exception, with “turns me your slave” in “Moody’s Mood for Love” (a jazz standard) being the closest Winehouse ever got to expressing Britney’s “I’m A Slave 4 U” sentiments, each being slaves to so many things: “the machine,” their father, their toxic relationships, the paparazzi, the commitment to and perfectionism of their work.
Another pair of songs that go together in terms of their parallel to one another is “You Know I’m No Good” and “Piece of Me”—both released as singles in 2007. Their peak year for being tabloid fodder. Of the tabloid scrutiny Amy was getting, author Lucy O’Brien stated, “I think it diminishes her power, I think people are seeing her more as a victim now.” Precisely the light Britney hates being seen in as much as Amy did. O’Brien added, “[Yet] she is someone who’s actually very powerful. She’s got a really powerful talent.” So, too, does Britney—but it seems that will be forever overshadowed by the drama of her personal life.
And, speaking of, while Amy was taking Librium voluntarily, Britney was forced, as we now know, to take lithium. Both drugs are used to treat bipolar disorder (also referred to as manic depression). While Britney’s mental health in that regard might have only “activated” after the traumas of her post-K-Fed divorce, for Amy it was a longstanding condition. And she was also using the Librium to treat her symptoms of alcohol withdrawal. Incidentally, in a cruel poetic blow, her death was caused precisely because she hadn’t knocked back her usual amount of alcohol of late, and so when she had a bingeing episode that late night of July 23rd, 2011, it was too much a shock to her system. Death by the drink. Which everyone had been predicting for years. Britney, too, feared a similar fate, especially after the death of Anna Nicole Smith in early 2007, as mentioned in Grigoriadis’ article. She described, “…[Britney] stayed up for forty-eight hours straight, driving around, sucking down dozens of Red Bulls, afraid that she was being followed by demons, or that a cell phone charger was taping her thoughts, and obsessively listening to the radio for news about Anna Nicole Smith’s death… That was her fate, she declared—she was next.” But no, it would turn out to be Amy.
Robert Elms, a BBC London DJ who, like Lucy O’Brien, was also interviewed for a 2008 special called Girl Done Good, noted of Winehouse, “There’s not a lot of self-pity in her songs, but there’s a lot of self.” Spears, while trying her best to keep it generic (helped by not writing all of her own songs), can be attributed with the same description.
For both women, it was only ever really about honing their talent far more than it was about the fame or the money. Music and performing was an escape from each woman’s often bleak personal lives in the beginning. And if Spears’ greatest wish was for the paparazzi to leave her alone (as clearly expressed in the ’06 interview she had with Matt Lauer), it was Winehouse’s as well.
Where Amy was “rough-hewn” and raw in her performances and photoshoots, Britney was the one who prided herself on pristineness and polish (until she ultimately had to say “fuck it” and do away with that persona). Yet neither route seemed to shield them from the relentless pursuit of the paparazzi, de facto the eviscerating tabloids and gossip websites that still had so much power over perception. Depending on how one sees it, it’s difficult to decide who was slapped with the worst fate in exchange for their fame and worldwide adoration that ultimately turned to infamy and ceaseless scrutiny.
