Britney's Ode to the Paparazzi

Britney Spears turns the tables on the press and paparazzi in a new music video.

ByABC News
December 13, 2007, 11:29 AM

Dec. 14, 2007 — -- Britney Spears: Not that innocent and not that sensible. A temptress and train wreck. A pop tart and problem parent and paparazzi goddess. Like it or not, this has been the fall of Britney Spears. These days, who doesn't want a piece of her?

Even in a fall that featured new releases from some of the biggest and most revered names in music and in a week that offered the much-awaited reunion of Led Zeppelin, Spears has consistently dominated the media landscape, if not the CD sales charts.

Other pop stars write their own songs, or have better singing voices. Doesn't matter. Spears has consistently turned out some of the most irresistible singles of her era, from her first teen efforts to her most recent one, "Gimme More."

Above all, in an endlessly atomized pop culture universe, the 26-year-old singer with her two children, her contentious divorce from Kevin Federline, her trip to rehab, her adventures behind the wheel and her taste in clothes and out of them is one of the few personalities whose outsized life still commands everyone's attention, and opinion.

Get a first look at Britney Spears' new music video, "Piece of Me," tonight on "20/20" at 10 ET

YouTube offers countless clips dedicated to all things Britney, from the now-famous "Leave Britney Alone" plea to ESPN football announcer Mike Patrick wondering during coverage of a college football game, "What is Britney doing with her life?"

Why do we care so much? Because what Elvis Presley did for early rock 'n' roll, Spears has done for new-school, video-driven Web sites: provided an endless series of "hits" that has made possible the success of a whole new medium.

Sites like TMZ.com, PerezHilton.com, and x17online, and many more, have seen Spears' doings turbocharge their traffic.

And like a greatest-hits CD, everyone has his or her favorite Britney-in-public video moment: shaving the hair off her head getting out of a car with Paris Hilton but without undergarments running over a paparazzo's foot dancing in a leopard-print bikini running into the ocean without a bathing suit appearing to leave her two kids in the car with her court-ordered parenting coach as she entered a store to shop for chandeliers or this week, appearing to take a lighter from a store and forgetting to pay.