This is your official Britney news on your official Britney station. Problem is of course that it is quite plain that Brit does not love rock’n’roll – not in the dirty, grubby sense that Joan Jett’s original manages to express. The scene in Crossroads in which Britney does a karaoke version of I Love Rock’n’Roll probably took about a second to write – a karaoke scene is a perfect way to naturally shoe-horn songs into a film after all. Nevertheless what this scene fails to understand about karaoke is that it is only entertaining when it is either
a) stupendously good (step forward The Gossip and Mr Dan Perry)
b) stupendously bad (um – me and Starry’s interpretation of Paranoid Android).
Competency at karaoke is what has led us up the Pop Idol garden path – people who sing okay and that is all they do. Where is the sense of performance, where is the connection with the lyrics. Because there might be irony in I Love Rock’n’Roll by Britney – but I’m not sure if she realises it.