I can't put my feelings regarding the new Britney Spears single, "If You Seek Amy," better than Matthew Richardson did in his review of Spears' latest album, Circus: "If anything exposes the incoherence of this album, it's the embarrassing "If You Seek Amy," which relies entirely on a scandalous verbal gimmick that won't scandalize anyone over the age of eight. Exhibit A: "Love me/ Hate me/ Say what you want about me/ But all of the boys and all of the girls are begging to if you seek Amy." You'd think that seeing that written out on paper would've shamed the songwriters so deeply they'd put out their eyes, but maybe they never wrote it down."

The pretty terrible song just got a video that is exclusively playing at Virgin Mobile and Spears' website, and which seems to confirm, thanks to a newscast at the beginning, that the entire point of the song was to manufacture some convoluted controversy predicated on making parents feel uncomfortable letting their kids listen to her. That fails on a number of levels, principally that no one under 12 or over 18 listens to Britney Spears, so the "F U C K ME" line is actually catering directly to the people who might think it makes them cool or risque to sing the song, and who are at an age where their parents won't really care or pay attention to what their kids are listening to. In about three months they'll realize singing the song makes them seem like tools, and they'll go back to the Jonas Brothers.

A lot of Spears' iconography is tied up in her music videos, since that's where America's moderately creepy obsession with her launched, but this video seems to exist as way to show Spears in various forms of disheveled undress. That used to be enough to make the song a hit, but now that Spears is this generation's Michael Jackson (minus the alleged pedophilia) it seems pretty desperate. 

To watch the video, go here.