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Britney Spears: "Toxic"

Britney Spears's "Toxic" counts as the gold standard among "ambivalence" pop songs; I think that a great deal of the Taylor Swift catalogue ("I Knew You Were Trouble," "Treacherous," "I Almost Do," "Wildest Dreams," "Blank Space," "22," "Don't Blame Me," "Gorgeous") is simply an effort to re-write "Toxic."


In Spears's ur-text, a young woman is drawn to a ne'er-do-well, though she can recognize her own insanity:

With the taste of your lips, I'm on a ride.
You're toxic; I'm slipping under...
With a taste of a poison paradise--
I'm addicted to you.
Don't you know that you're toxic?

Sex appeal as a drug. We see this, also, in Swift's "Clean," "Cruel Summer." 

I'm not sure that Broadway needed to give us an extremely literal reading of Spears's lyrics--but if it provides Jennifer Simard with an opportunity to be ridiculous, then I will watch:


Let's now allow Simard to appear in everything, everywhere, all the time.

P.S. I'm away this week, on a beach in NJ. I'm not sure if I'll write; I seem to be erratic when in Belmar. The End? For one week?
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