This week is being Kevins week. On the one hand, Kevin Parker has released a new album, ‘Deadbeat’, which has received mixed reviews. At JENESAISPOP we loved it, for example, and it was the Record of the Week. However, Pitchfork has suspended it, rating it a paltry 4.8 (the public is in favor and ‘Dracula’ has just sneaked into Spotify’s global top 50).
On the other hand, another Kevin is making his debut. This is Federline, Britney Spears’ ex-husband and father of her two children. Federline has released his memoir, ‘You Thought You Knew’, actually focusing on his marriage to Spears, which lasted from 2004 to 2007. The book is a sales failure. There have been almost no pre-orders and the book has not even made it into the top 500 on Amazon.
Federline is, coincidentally, one of the most famous “deadbeats” in popular culture: in the collective imagination, his only great achievement would have been marrying Britney Spears and living on child support, which they say has already run out, since his children, Sean Preston and Jayden James, are now of age. Perhaps that is why he has decided to publish his book.
In ‘You Thought You Knew’, Federline exposes a series of miseries about Britney Spears that are extremely uncomfortable to read. In particular, it reveals Spears’ alleged abuse of her children, among other incidents that call into serious doubt her abilities as a mother. Federline assures that his intention in telling his story is to help Spears, calls into question the #FreeBritney movement, insists that “time is running out” and, alarmingly, warns that if no one intervenes, an imminent tragedy could occur. Spears has responded by accusing Federline of “gaslighting” and “telling lies on the way to the bank.”
Although I do not pretend to know in detail the personal lives of Britney Spears and Kevin Federline, it escapes me how the launch of a book that rescues disturbing and humiliating episodes from twenty years ago can help Spears. The failure of ‘You Thought You Knew’ reveals that the public remains on Spears’ side despite the publication of this information, because awareness of mental health is greater than in 2007. Media such as The Independent or The Cut have battered the book.
It’s been a tough week for the Kevins, although with nuances. ‘Deadbeat’ is receiving negative reviews, it seems especially from Anglo-Saxon media (Stereogum and Anthony Fantano did not like it either), although others are very positive and the public is clearly receiving the album with open arms, as demonstrated by its commercial success. In the case of ‘You Thought You Knew’ the maxim is, rather: ‘The Less I Know, the Better’.
