We know the pop princess is still busy putting the finishing touches to her album — she tweeted a picture of her and producer will.i.am at the recording studio recently — but it does strike us as strange that a mere month away from the album release, Britney has not done a single promotional interview or live performance.
In the months before releasing her last album, Circus, Brit had appeared at theVMAs and onstage at Madonna's Sticky & Sweet Tour, performed on the British "X Factor" and shows in France and Germany, and aired the revealing documentary "Britney: For the Record" on MTV.
So, why the relative silence this time around? Is Britney being shy, or maintaining an air of mystery until closer to the big reveal of her album?
"The girl's coming back, and her music's doing well," PR expert Howard Bragman told MTV News. "Coming back is a hard thing to do, and when you've been in the spotlight as long as Britney Spears has been, it's hard to maintain that. The fact that she's still relevant musically is quite a feat."
While Lady Gaga has performed on the Grammys and made appearances on "60 Minutes," "The Tonight Show" and "Good Morning America" since releasing "Born This Way," Bragman cautioned against comparing Brit and Gaga.
"Public relations, when done well, is not one size fits all," Bragman explained. "You've got to know who you're working with and what their DNA in the public eye is, and everybody has a different DNA in the public eye."
Perhaps Britney, now into the 13th year of her career, has decided that she doesn't have to go crazy working the promotional circuit, especially since she is a mother of two young boys. Unlike Lady Gaga and other relatively new pop stars like Katy Perry or Ke$ha, Spears has been there, done that and is no longer so hungry for success. She did her time on the nonstop promo circuit back in her ... Baby One More Time and In the Zone days, and maybe she's content to let the music speak for itself now.
Or perhaps the worrying fans have jumped the gun, and her team is about to surprise us all with a slew of appearances and performances. All we know for sure is that, promotion or no promotion, Britney is still very capable of keeping us intrigued.
