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www.britneysays.com | |
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I first met Britney when I was out in California at the Gagosian gallery in LA doing research for an Ed Ruscha book. The last person I expected to see in the gallery was Britney Spears, because, you know, like she says, everyone thinks she's this airhead know-nothing. We were both looking at the same painting kind of intently, (it was the '90% Devil, 10% Angel') so it seemed kind of rude to not speak. I asked her if she liked the piece, and she said she loved it. She said it in that kind of bubbly Pop Star way, so inside of course I laughed at her, and expecting more of a laugh I asked her why she loved it. Well that's when she really stopped me dead: she turned around and said, real earnestly 'well, it's just like the whole world, isn't it? We're all devil and angel at the same time. Sometimes the angels win out, but you know, most of the time it seems to be the devils. And the ratio he's got there really seems to say a lot about NOW.' And she looked at me really closely and added 'or do you think I'm being really depressing?' Of course I thought she was dead right. I think she bought that painting in the end. I think she bought a lot of that show. It was over a year later that Britney got in touch
with me asking if I wanted to collaborate on a piece of Web Art. She said
she had been looking at that Rushca piece again and had been thinking
about how she wanted to let out a bit of the devil side of her
personality. Well, maybe not the devil, she said, but at least the darker,
more thoughtful side. I had to admit I was cringing, waiting for her to
say 'I want to be taken seriously as an artist' but to her credit she
never did. She knows that's not what she's good at. She did say she wanted
to be taken more seriously as a PERSON though, which I think is fair
enough. 'Joe and I video-conferenced one afternoon and
knocked about some ideas. Eventually, this web site is what we came up
with. As for the title, well, we're both big Velvet Underground fans, and
we'd both been listening to a lot of Lou Reed at the time, so it seemed
obvious that the site should be called 'Britney Says'. Wouldn't it just be
SO awesome if Lou wrote a song about me called that? It would probably be
a song full of sarcasm and hate, but that would be better than nothing! Ha
ha!' |
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'I'm getting older, y'know? I don't want to be making records for just teenagers all my life, although of course they've been great to me. How do I progress as an artist? How do I progress as a person? Those are important questions for me. Education has always been important to me… I've always wanted MORE. I think it's an important way to approach life. Like, 'okay, done that, what's NEXT?' If you don't think that way, I mean… what's the point in being bored, after all?' |