Courtney Love vs. Britney Spears
Battle of the Spotlight-Hogging Pop Hangers-On

I don't pretend to speak for my esteemed Fametracker colleagues, our board of directors, or the thousands of concerned shareholders when I say: I don't mind Courtney Love. I still take that first Hole album for a spin now and again, and if you get me drunk enough, I'll even trot out my ever-controversial "Hole was better than Nirvana" argument.

So it's not without some sadness that I've watched as Courtney Love has (a) deteriorated into a freakish, spotlight-hogging, designer-clothes-shilling, award-show-disrupting annoyance; (b) chiseled away at her previously attractive face in an effort to salve some deep bruise on her soul, or score a modeling contract with Versace, or both; and (c) stop making records altogether.

Yes, yes, I know that Hole put out another, not entirely terrible record a few years back. And Love apparently has a new solo effort forthcoming. But once she ditched the baby-doll dresses and the fucked-up makeup and the Yoko Ono-for-the-'90s-but-talented persona, she kind of lost my attention, or at least my affection.

I also know that, at first glance, Courtney Love and Britney Spears couldn't seem less alike. Love rose from a working-class past to become grunge's crown princess (with a detour to stripping), thus earning the right to stomp around with naughty words written on her limbs. Spears's past, on the other hand, is squeaky clean -- literally squeaky, in fact, given her one-time preteen servitude to Mickey Mouse. Love was Miss World, while Spears was a Mouseketeer. Moreover, Love was a mess on two legs, messed-up, bitchy, and damn proud of it, while Spears was like Alfred E. Neuman's coquettish younger sister, batting her lashes at any available camera and purring, "What, me slutty?"

So it seems unlikely that these two pop femmes would come to wrestle over the same pop niche -- especially given how ignoble this particular niche is.

But both Spears and Love have become performers without an art form -- or, rather, their art form is now publicity. Does anyone remember the last time Love came out with a song you cared about? Or the last time Spears came out with a song, period? Instead, Love kept her name in the papers largely through sporadic acting roles, embarrassing award-show antics, and unlikely liaisons with hunky foreigners (Russell Crowe). Now, young Ms. Spears is following the same blueprint: the bad acting, the award-show hijinx, and even the gossip-fueling flings with brooding imports (Colin Farrell).

You see, Spears may not be making any actual music anymore (yes, she too has a forthcoming album, titled something something something, and no doubt currently being brewed up by clones in some top-secret Norwegian lab), but she hasn't exactly been sitting on her hands. Why, just a few weeks ago she appeared on the cover of the New York Times Style Magazine, as part of a "Guilty Pleasures" issue. Inside, she was all dolled up and hosed down with a kind of Weimar-era, overly mascara-ed patina of sleaze. Wait a second! Overly mascara-ed patina of sleaze!? Where have we seen that before?!

Is it so hard now to envision the day when Spears will show up in the tabloids for having cussed out the cabin crew of a transatlantic flight? Truth is, both Love and Spears are spiraling toward the same fate: irrelevant as musicians, and only slightly diverting as perpetual human sideshows. They're like a couple of random aliens in the background of the cantina scene in Star Wars -- necessary, yes, to fill out the larger picture, but not that interesting on their own.

We don't imagine that Love would ever tongue-kiss Madonna on TV (the medical insurance for Madonna alone would make such a stunt prohibitive), but the whole episode had a whiff of Love-ian desperation. Except, at least when Courtney showed up to all those award shows in her shredded dresses and reconfigured face, she had an honest and well-earned aura of rock-star fuck-upedness. Britney, on the other hand, is like a little girl playing dress-up, tottering about in too-big shoes, her face messed up with Mommy's makeup. To paraphrase Ms. Spears herself, she's no longer a pop star, but not even close to a rock star.

Advantage: Love, life's sweetest reward.