Britney Spears: To Some It Was Like Watching The Fat Elvis

…but without the talent. Britney Spears bombed bigtime on MTV.

Click on those links but here’s a full quote from Times Online:

At least she should have plenty of spare time to look after the kids.

Britney Spears’s long-awaited career relaunch at last night’s MTV Video Music Awards produced some excruciating car-crash television when the fallen superstar opened the show with her new single, Gimme More.

The 25-year-old singer dressed up like a stripper in black sequinned bikini and knee-high boots but appeared to forget both the words and the steps during the performance at the Palms casino in Las Vegas.

Spears was out of synch as she lip-synched and at times just stopped singing altogether. Her limbs were leaden and her expression was mostly that of a rabbit caught in the headlights. Her hair, still growing back after her decision to shave her head in a Californian salon in February, was a mess.

Entertainers at all levels actually have a difficult job, whether they’re paid a little or a lot. It’s a profession in which image MATTERS: how you’re dressed, how you physically look, even how you move. Spears has been a public relations disaster recently. So when she steps onto the stage every move of hers is going to be watched. And, yes, her physical appearance will be judged since that’s part of the reason why she was propelled to fame and makes all the big bucks.

On all fronts and by most accounts, she should not have stepped on the stage. It would have been better to call in sick.

The Huffington Post (which has an AP photo of Spears that will never be used as a pinup photo by young males) declares:

Kicking off the show Sunday night with her new single, “Gimme More,” Spears looked bleary and unprepared, much like her recent tabloid exploits on the streets of Los Angeles. She walked through her dance moves with little enthusiasm. She appeared to have forgotten the art of lip-synching. And, perhaps most unforgivable given her once-taut frame, she looked embarrassingly out of shape.

Even the celebrity-studded audience seemed bewildered. 50 Cent looked at Spears with a confused look on his face; Diddy, her new best friend, was expressionless.

Some comeback. Breathlessly hyped by MTV as the evening’s most anticipated performance, it became the most shockingly bad of the night. Jive Records might want to push back that Nov. 13 album release date.

You can watch her performance yourself here.

Can she climb back to her former perch in show biz? He new release will have to be darn good because critics will be sharpening their literary knives to link up criticism of her new CD with a recap of The Performance That Should Have Never Been.

She’ll have to eventually re-invent herself. She’ll become a punchline for comedians for a while. She is, after the MTV show, a star in descent.

It’ll be the combination of a poor performance, poor lip-syncing and second rate physical appearance that will make her so yesterday — particularly in the eyes of young music consumers who can watch and buy the product of other artists who are at the top of their musical and physical games.

As they say, “That’s show biz.”