#FreeBritney

The line that floored me in the New York Times doc FRAMING BRITNEY SPEARS, which everybody who works anywhere near pop music or celebrity media should watch, belongs to filmmaker MICHAEL MOORE, who's seen in a short clip from 2008, caught in the middle of some host-to-host banter between CNN's LARRY KING and ANDERSON COOPER. Cooper has just mentioned "the sad story of Britney Spears." Moore, looking a little sad himself, cuts in: "It would be less sad if we just left her alone. I mean, why don't we just leave her alone and let her just go on with her life?" It's a devastating accusation, delivered with quiet resignation, and because of that it's unclear if either King or Cooper understand it's targeted directly at them. It's targeted at a lot of people, actually; they're just the two who happen to be within Moore's line of sight at that moment. Why *can't* we let pop stars, especially young female pop stars, get on with their lives? Why can't we stop judging what they wear, what they say, what they want, who they spend their time with, how they spend that time, and pretty much everything else? Why can't we hear them? Why were we so awful to Britney Spears?

"Framing Britney Spears," directed and produced by SAMANTHA STARK, doesn't tell us anything we don't already know about its subject. Rather, over the course of 75 minutes, it repeats everything we already know back to us in a new context, one that re-centers Spears as a smart, strong, talented, focused young woman who the world refused to accept as any of those things. Because, as JIVE RECORDS marketing executive KIM KAIMAN tells Stark, "It's so easy, it's so much fun, to take a celebrity who's a young, beautiful, talented girl and rip her to shreds." (Et tu, JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE?) Not to compare Spears to MICHAEL JACKSON, whose talent and story were different, but I was reminded of the film THIS IS IT, released shortly after Jackson's death, which made clear, among other things, how completely in control Jackson was of every aspect of his art. In 2009, that registered as a surprise, at least in some ways. It's amazing how the things you thought you knew about Britney Spears seem different when you understand her as an ambitious artist who was in control of her own career, at least for as long as the rest of us allowed her to be.

One of the themes of the conversation around the documentary is that what happened to her couldn't happen today, in the #MeToo era, in a time when we discuss mental health relatively openly, in a space where, because of social media and other changes, the paparazzi have lost much of their power, in a world where grassroots movements like #FREEBRITNEY can have a big impact. But I'm not sure that's entirely true. I'm not sure we're any more enlightened in how we do—or don't—talk about young women's sexuality, or how we understand their agency, and I'm not sure we've learned to stop judging. And considering the number of SOUNDCLOUD and K-pop and hip-hop stars, both men and women, who we've literally lost in recent years, I'm not entirely convinced we've made the pop music space all that much more welcoming for them. But I hope we're trying. And I hope we can finally hear Spears, who in a rare interview about the controversial conservatorship that the film is largely about, tells MTV: "When I tell them the way I feel, it's like they hear me but they really not listening. They're hearing what they want to hear. They're not really listening to what I'm telling them... I'm sad."

The legal battle over her conservatorship continues in a Los Angeles courtroom on Thursday.

The Grammys of Cinema

No music documentaries made the 15-title shortlist from which this year's OSCAR nominations for Best Documentary Feature will be drawn. Among the music films passed over, none of which were considered serious contenders, were ALISON ELLWOOD's THE GO-GO'S and SPIKE JONZE's BEASTIE BOYS STORY... Songs by JANELLE MONÁE, MARY J. BLIGE, H.E.R. and CELESTE are among those shortlisted for Best Original Song, while TRENT REZNOR and ATTICUS ROSS have two films, MANK and SOUL, on the Best Original Score list. Only one woman—LOLITA RITMANIS, who scored the Latvian film BLIZZARD OF SOULS—made the final 15 in that category. In 87 years of film-composing Oscars, only seven women have ever been nominated.

Plus Also Too

Does the Beverly Hills Police Department have ASCAP and BMI licenses? Should it? I assume no streaming site or copyright owner would intentionally let the Beverly Hills cops get away with what this Vice News story says it's trying to get away with, but I'm less sure about what might happen unintentionally. But I wonder how the long arm of the law would fare against the long arms of the performance rights organizations.... Is mastering a myth?... Guitars, Copyrights, Etc., Etc.... Props to any obsessed fan who has the time to thoughtfully critique the entire recorded output of any given artist. We've added deep dives on FRANZ SCHUBERT's oeuvre of 672 songs, which writer JEFFREY ARLO BROWN says he knocked off in 40 to 50 hours, and the EAGLES' slightly less intimidating catalog of 84, to MusicSET "Everything They Ever Did, Ranked."

Rest in Peace

Rock producer ELLIOT MAZER, whose storied collection of credits includes NEIL YOUNG's HARVEST and its diametrically opposite followup, TIME FADES AWAY... SERVANDO CANO RODRIGUEZ, who founded the Mexican label, management and publishing conglomerate SERCA)... Guitarist and accordionist FLORY JAGODA, who specialized in traditional Sephardic and Ladino music... ED PEARL, who owned both incarnations of the LA club the ASH GROVE.