15 November 2003
‘Me Against The Music’ was Madonna’s first Irish number one in 14 years, since ‘Like A Prayer’ in 1989. (Yes, that means Madonna had no Irish number one singles in the ’90s.) In the grand scheme of things this doesn’t mean much by itself; she had four UK number ones in that time, including 1990’s magnificent ‘Vogue’ and 1997’s alright ‘Frozen’. Still, it hints at 2003’s new normal: she’s essentially second fiddle here to one of her usurpers as pop’s reigning superstar. This had been a calamitous year for the Madonna brand. Her latest records and movies had been derided wholesale, and not unfairly either. Her previous single, ‘Hollywood’, hadn’t even charted in the US top 100. It looked like Madonna was losing her touch. You get the sense she needed this to be a hit.
‘Me Against The Music’ was also Britney Spears’ first Irish number one in almost four years. Again, it’s not as if she’d gone away or been hitless all this time: ‘Oops!… I Did It Again’ had been a UK number one in 2000. However, Britney’s superstardom now relied less on the pop charts and more on the tabloid Internet. The pertinent pop-cultural context for this Britney-Madonna collab wasn’t their recent chart placings but their recent on-stage kiss at the 2003 MTV VMAs in August. Okay, I doubt Britney Inc. and Madonna Inc. joined forces here purely to monetise that moment, but it was a neat high-profile back-story for a chart-bound single.
Anyway, and for all that, ‘Me Against The Music’ has little of interest. It sounds of its time: those quick-strummed acoustic chords were a familiar touch of early-’00s Total Request Live US R&B-pop. Britney’s part doesn’t give her a lot to do vocally other than fry, plus lean in to the rhythm. There’s not much of a chorus hook. Madonna’s big entrance line—“Hey Britney!”—is a bit cringy and needy: she’d have been above all that in 1989 and even in 1999. I suppose we can be thankful she hadn’t been reduced to “Hey Westlife!” or the like. Truth be told, that one Madonna line is all I had remembered of this track, and a re-listen doesn’t reveal other takeaways. In the battle of ‘Me Against The Music’ neither side covers itself in glory.
