The similarities between the lives of Britney and Elvis, two of the most successful acts in the history of pop music, are striking. Born in Mississippi more than 45 years apart, their lives have followed a similar course, encompassing not only No 1 singles, Grammys, wealth and fame, but substance abuse, divorce and a dubious attraction to Las Vegas. Last week, Spears launched her new album, Blackout, to critical applause, but after a year of increasingly unpredictable behaviour, failed rehab stints, attacks on the paparazzi and an ongoing child custody battle, it remains to be seen whether the Princess of Pop can navigate the immense celebrity - and attendant excesses - that destroyed the King.

Both performers owe much of their ascent to stardom to the marketing of their sexual allure. The Elvis controversy was sparked by a performance on The Milton Berle Show in 1956, during which he performed a cover of Hound Dog, a song which, like Spears' 1998 debut ... Baby, One More Time, carried blatant sexual undertones. But it was the performance as much as the lyrics. With Elvis it was the pelvis, the seductive shake that drove female fans to distraction and saw one of his early TV performances, on the Ed Sullivan Show, censored so that viewers saw only Presley's upper body. Britney, of course, skipped into the public consciousness provocatively clad in school uniform and pigtails. Her currency was raised by the disclosure that for all her saucy cavorting, she was in fact a good little church-going girl and a virgin to boot.

There have been other visual similarities along the way - the hair-cutting for example: Elvis was publicly shorn for his stint in the military; Britney, for less explicable reasons, wielding the clippers herself before the baying paparazzi. They have both, too, demonstrated a love for cat suits and sequins, and last week, as Britney unveiled her newly augmented pout, there was an echo of the King's famous lip-curl.
 

Posted:  20th. November 2007