Britney Spears’ Comeback Performance at the VMAs Was a Flop
You know what they say—if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. And we do have one nice thing to say about Britney Spears‘ comeback performance at the VMAs tonight: She is in incredible shape.
Unfortunately, beyond that, we don’t have a ton of positive things to say about the performance that Kim Kardashian called her “triumphant return to the stage” when she introduced her. “It’s Britney, bitch,” Kardashian said, slinking across the stage in her designer post-baby body.
And it was, indeed, Britney, bitch, but … Britney in a yellow Ice Capades costume. And though she started out strong, her choreography started lagging a bit about halfway through.
The last time Spears performed at the VMAs was in 2007, so all eyes were on her tonight. “We’ve watched her tame a snake and be very untamed with the one and only Madonna,” Kardashian said in her intro. “Tonight we have the pleasure of seeing what she’ll do next.”
She performed her new single, “Make Me,” featuring G-Eazy, from her album that just dropped, Glory. In a halfhearted attempt to be as provocative as, say, that lip-kiss she planted on Madonna back in the day that Kardashian was referencing, she pulled a weird crotch-grab from behind on G-Eazy, but other than that, this was Britney-lite.
In case you’ve never heard of G-Eazy, don’t worry: Neither have we. Apparently he’s “best known” for a collab he did with Bebe Rexha called “Me, Myself & I,” according to Fuse.
Maybe her stiff dance moves were just a side effect of terrible nerves. Spears told “Cubby and Carolina in the Morning” that she wasn’t feeling particularly at ease ahead of her VMAs performance
“I think there’s something in the air with the VMAs. It’s, like, electric. I can’t really explain it,” Spears said on Friday. “Every time I’ve performed there, it’s always been one of those really big, nerve-racking experiences, and the people that come—those celebrities—are just so much fun and different. … I still get very nervous.”
Maybe that was it. Nerves.
Sorry, Brit. There’s always next year. Or 2025, if you want to wait another nine years.
