Britney Spears: do she even have a constituency? As the 31 year old former teen queen heads to Vegas, her recording career is on the wane. This week she sold around 108,000 copies of her “Britney Jean” album. That’s considerably less than her peers, such as Miley Cyrus, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, and Selena Gomez in their debut sales weeks.
Justin Bieber should watch the Britney saga closely. Spears’s stardom came in her late teens and early twenties. Her mental breakdowns and public spectacles didn’t help. But like most invented pop stars, Spears was not designed for a shelf life of more than five years. The fact that she sold even 100,000 copies this week is pretty good. But sales like that won’t sustain her over the next decade.
“Britney Jean” indeed sold fewer copies than the Duck Dynasty family The Robertsons, singing Christmas carols. (I cannot believe anyone in their right mind is buying or even listening to that.)
Britney will be alright. Even though “Britney Jean” is a non starter, the former pop tart will sell tickets in Vegas. And she’s got her Perfume. At least she made the effort. Way down the charts from number 4, around 20, is Lady Gaga’s scuffed and abandoned “ARTPOP.”
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