Popular Music Response

In the essay regarding Britney Spears and her rise to fame and descent into constant scandal , the author argues that the currency of her popularity today is built not upon celebrity apotheosis , but media schadenfreude . Simply put , Britney Spears has permitted her personal struggles and well publicized mistakes to overshadow her past successes in using the media to further her career

The author observes that while Spears may not possess the prolific talents or technical craftsmanship of past pop icons , she is no less an icon and superstar within the pop music

zeitgeist , and has subsequently set the mold for immediate superstars to follow , such as Christina Aguilera , Mandy Moore and Jessica Simpson . The author draws a strong and direct comparison between Spears and Elvis Presley , the rockabilly singer who burst onto the pop music scene in the early 50s . Towards the end of the 70s , Presley became equally (in )famous to Americans for personal health problems spawned by poor diet and substance abuse as he was for his music and film career . The author strongly implies that the trajectory of Spears career directly parallels that of Presley : riding on the wave of massive success as a very American symbol of success and the all too common descent into personal drama

However , what is to be gleaned from this is not a cautionary tale of professional success and personal misfortune , for those are the clichys that E ! True Hollywood Story specials are made of . Rather , the foundation of the author...