I kind of like this year’s female pop sound, but, for some reason, all the top-selling pop artists this years seem to sound oddly similar. Moreso than usual for such things, which is saying something. I don’t think that normally Britney Spears, Pink, Christina Aguilera, Rhianna, etc. all have nearly identical voices. I think this is one of those occasions where, if I knew more about how the female pop sausage is made, it probably boils down to just a few writing teams and just a couple of producers.

This year, barring visual cues, I can’t tell any of these chicks apart from their singing. The new Britney Spears single “Womanizer” is predictably stylish and expensive-looking. It is in the format of one of those videos where the girl wears a whole passel of different outfits to appeal to a larger variety of demographics. Britney Spears has always been marketed somewhat like this, but this vid kicks it up a notch.

There is even a sequence where Brit is all done up with a reddish pinkish bob for hair and fake tattoo sleeves. Basically, the scenario has her done up as a waitress who would have a lot of “friends” on MySpace. The temporary tattoos are what feel like they put it over the top, although certainly, as the meaning of having ink has changed, tattooed hotties like Masuimi Max and Kellie LaPlegua are getting their ink lasered off. So maybe there is no true permanence in counterculture beyond what is in your heart. The look can always be co-opted, often in ways which are glossier than the original.

They will gobble up fashion as fast as the underground can produce it, although genuinely individual and independent spirit is the part mainstream wants to leave behind. But, like, America’s favorite trainwreck Britney Spears is, like, sorta naked in the “Womanizer” video.

Edit: So apparently, although this video has been uploaded about a billion and a half times to YouTube, it is not embeddable the way most vids from there are. Blue Blood has a policy against linking pirated content, but Antiquiet has the Britney Spears Director’s Cut video and I’m linking that, despite Kevin Skwerl’s FBI arrest and indictment because him once again having special materials means that either (1) it’s all effing astroturf and thus the copyright holders want it approached this way or (2) Kevin Skwerl takes stuff from work.

I love music, or at least I used to, but the music industry sure makes me sick.

(Click image at the end of the article to view video)

Funny or Die is the first site in a network which hopes to leverage the celebrity of people famous in old media into celebrity in new media. Your hosts at Funny or Die are apparently Will Ferrell, Judd Apatow, Adam McKay, and Chris Henchy. I came across the site today because I heard that Paris Hilton had made a campaign ad about John McCain because John McCain had made a campaign ad about her and Barack Obama. Searching on YouTube, I mostly only found about a lot of new pages promising something to do with Paris Hilton and porn. I never searched for Paris Hilton before, so maybe there are a couple hundred new pornographic entries about her on YouTube every day. It wasn’t very helpful anyway, so I went over to Live.com search and found what I was looking for on on the Funny or Die site.

I don’t live in America, so I don’t have an opinion on the upcoming election, but I still think this video is funny. I guess the John McCain campaign made an ad where they said Barack Obama is a celebrity, like Britney Spears or Paris Hilton, but does that mean he is ready to lead. Paris Hilton is one of the many heirs to the Hilton hotels fortune and a number of her family members donated to the McCain campaign. So her whole family was angry about her being in the ad and she made a response video for the Funny or Die web site.

The moral of the story is that one should always try to avoid insulting good-looking bitchy club kids with trust funds. The least of them will make it their mission in life to get retribution for imagined slights. For an actual slight, the most successful of them will make a comedy video for a celebrity-driven web site and more than four million people will see their video dis.