“Gimme More”: Is It A Flop Or Is It A Smash-In-Waiting?

Adding to Britney Spears’ ever-growing file of press clippings to this week is the reaction to the chart debut of her comeback single “Gimme More”; it entered this week’s Billboard Hot 100 at No. 85, leading many so-called pop-music experts to cackle and say that the song was a flop, that her career was really for sure over this time, etc. But an Entertainment Weekly thinkpiece on Britney’s folly-filled week is actually positing that the song has a shot at being pretty big:

But guess what? The debacle hasn’t deflated her new single’s momentum at all. One label exec calls ”Gimme More” ”a smash” and goes so far as to predict that her album — which is slated to bow opposite stiff competition including Céline Dion — ”will sell very well. I don’t think the performance is going to hurt her or the album.” At press time, ”More” remained one of the most requested songs at New York’s Z100, which premiered the tune on Aug. 30. ”People are still calling in, wanting to comment on the performance,” says program director Sharon Dastur. ”But then they say, ‘When’s the next time you guys are playing the song?”’

So what happened with the chart debut, then? Well, the No. 85 bow was entirely the result of radio airplay; it’s at No. 61 position on Billboard‘s Hot 100 Airplay chart (reg. req.) this week. “Gimme More” isn’t available as a digital single yet, and won’t be available for purchase until Oct. 2; to see how much being for sale on iTunes and other digital-music outlets can affect a single’s fate, check out these two paragraphs from the wrapup of this week’s Hot 100 from Billboard:

Back on the big chart, the appropriately titled “How Far We’ve Come” from matchbox twenty flies up 81 spots, 93-12, after its digital release, becoming the second-biggest jump of 2007 behind the 91-spot leap of Beyonce & Shakira’s “Beautiful Liar.”

Alicia Keys’ “No One” is this week’s Hot Shot Debut at No. 71 but will likely jump significantly next week after its digital release.

Keep in mind, also, that demand for the ringtones of “Gimme More” was so strong that it initially crashed MTV.com’s servers; sure, a large part of that could be chalked up to the novelty of having your phone say “it’s Britney, bitch” when it’s really your mother calling. But that demand indicates to me that it’s still too early for Internet hissers to call this track a complete and utter dud, although Jive should probably the release date of the digital track up a bit just to see if that’ll shut people up faster. It’s not like it’s even a terrible song, dead-eyed VMA performance aside; if the first single was the mewly untitled track that leaked a few weeks ago, this “it’s a flop!” backlash would at least be a little more understandable.

Britney: Down for the Count? [EW] Soulja Boy Remains No. 1 Amid Static Top Four [Billboard] [Photo: AP]