It's time for the next installment of our new series Music Video Mondays! While I don't think this will be nearly as popular as the premiere of the segment, an analysis of Rebecca Black's "Friday" (thanks to everyone who pushed it to over 500 page views!), we're gonna appeal to early Aughts' nostalgia with a look at a Britney Spears video most college students should remember fondly.
This is a story about a girl named Lucky.
While there are arguably more 'famous' Britney Spears videos ("Me Against the Music" and "I'm a Slave 4 U" come to mind), and "Lucky" is an ersatz combination of a couple of different Britney songs (you can hear influences of "...Baby One More Time" and "Oops! I Did It Again" throughout), but there's a certain connection that "Lucky" has with the Aughts kids. Not only that, but it's an almost ridiculous video--it involves Britney playing two roles (technically three), multiple wardrobe changes, and a whole lot of glitter. (Take that, Ke$ha.)
Now to introduce our characters. This is Britney, our narrator. Don't confuse her with Lucky.
That's Lucky. She's the one in the fur coat. She's also got bigger hair. Got it? Good.
Britney sings a story about how Lucky is a Hollywood girl whom everyone loves but is actually really sad on the inside. To us, Lucky just looks kinda bored. She might well be upset, but all she's doing is looking off into the distance and walking through her fabulous house. Britney keeps showing up wherever she walks, but Lucky is far too busy looking off into the distance to notice her. Even when she's standing right in front of her. Oh well. She's far too distracted by those lovely (fake) white flowers.
Lucky looks into her favorite mirror while sitting in front of her other favorite mirror and pets her hair. Britney keeps singing how upset Lucky is, but her expression really hasn't changed. Maybe she's trying to change it by staring into her mirrors really hard. Botox is scary, kids. Don't try this at home. Look what happened to Nicole Kidman post-Oscar, pre-Rabbit Hole.
Oh, so that's why she was looking in the mirror! She was getting her hair perfectly to prepare for her angry blond man to ravish her. He's slightly terrifying.
But then: FAKE-OUT! Turns out, Lucky is just an actress! She finishes her scene and complains about how many takes it has required--though if I were her, I'd be happy I had a job. Girlfriend has no expression whatsoever--she spent that entire scene looking bored. Unless she's playing an expressionless deaf mute who wears fabulous fur ensembles, she's just a bad actress.
Lucky's something of a diva, brushing off the people around her to answer her adorable circa-2000 cell phone. Britney looks disappointed in Lucky's diva behavior (she has been singing a whole song about how upset she is to defend her, after all), so she decides to just jack Lucky's favorite mirror.
You don't fuck with Britney.
Here's where things get weird. Britney transforms from simply a narrator/observer into something of a fairy, pouring glitter on the scene. She throws the glitter while sitting on her big shiny star. She might be more of a diva than Lucky.
Lucky somehow wins a Best Actress award, but we're gonna assume that it's a CableACE award or something. The girl has no range of emotion, after all. And it must be a ghetto ceremony...
...because the reporters are using cameras from the 1950s. And yet there's a television reporter standing on the red carpet. We're in a strangely anachronistic setting.
Wait, that's an Oscar she's holding! That bitch won an Oscar! For staring blankly and getting seduced by a scary blond man! She looked like she took a fucking Xanex before going on-set! Someone was robbed!
Despite that travesty of an Oscar win, Britney is supportive, throwing more glitter on Lucky. At this point, she has to be just coated in glitter. The Grand Marshal at San Francisco's gay pride parade probably gets showered with less glitter than Lucky. But it causes Lucky to cry and we finally see those tears that come at night we kept hearing Britney sing about. It's pretty pitiful that the only way this sorry bitch can show any emotion is by having her alter-ego throw glitter in her eyes, though. (Sorry, she won an Oscar. I'm upset.)
Britney finishes telling the story and the last image we see is her silhouette against the billboard depicting Lucky. It says that she's on top of the world, but we're supposed to understand that she's really not, with the pain inside her destroying her happiness.
But let's be real: bitch has an Oscar. She needs to stop whining.
Do you love Britney Spears' "Lucky" video? Why do her tears come at night? Why so much glitter? Take it to the comments!
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