Timbaland made a comment about Britney Spears that has some serious historical weight (Picture: Jerritt Clark/WireImage)
Timbaland has made a flimsy apology after he said his mate Justin Timberlake should have ‘muzzled’ Britney Spears after her explosive memoir release – but here is why this comment is so historically loaded, and vile.
Historically – well, in the Medieval era – muzzles were used to torture unruly women, who were forced to wear what was called a Scold’s Bridle – an iron device that prevented them from talking.
In modern times, we don’t do that. Thank god. But it’s still a term that’s all too familiar, and is often used to describe men silencing women – especially, as we found in the 2017 #MeToo campaign, in the entertainment industry. Unfortunately, the music industry specifically is yet to have its reckoning.
But just because it’s not physical, that doesn’t mean muzzling is any less torturous today than it was in the Dark Ages for women.
‘She’s going crazy, right?’ 51-year-old Timbaland said recently to laughs from the Kennedy Center audience, talking about Britney. ‘I wanted to call and say, ‘JT, you gotta put a muzzle on that girl”.’
This came after the Toxic hitmaker, 41, released her memoir A Woman In Me, in which she opened up for the first time in 20 years about her high-profile relationship with the Cry Me A River hitmaker back in the early 2000s.
In it, the US popstar claimed Justin broke up with her in a two-word text, cheated on her with multiple women, and pressured her into getting an abortion when she became pregnant with his child.
He said his mate Justin Timberlake should have ‘muzzled’ Britney Spears (Picture: Prince Williams/WireImage)
Reflecting on Justin’s release of Cry Me A River, Britney wrote how she was seen as a ‘harlot who’d broken the heart of America’s golden boy’ and demonised forever more.
In reality, she claimed: ‘I was comatose in Louisiana, and he was happily running around Hollywood.’
Naturally, then, fans were appalled at Timbaland’s comment – especially given Britney was effectively muzzled, controlled, and her freedom completely taken away during her 13-year-long conservatorship, which came to an end in 2021.
‘After being held down on a gurney, I knew they could restrain my body any time they wanted to. They could’ve tried to kill me, I thought. I started to wonder if they did want to kill me,’ Britney wrote of the conservatorship, overseen by her father.
Britney opened up about her high-profile with Justin Timberlake after 20 years of silence (Picture: Araldo Di Crollalanza/REX/Shutterstock)
While many male rockers have gambled their money away and taken drugs, and suffered mental health issues, Britney noted no one took their freedom away.
In that point, Britney encapsulated the historical gravitas behind Timbaland’s abhorrent comment – which unfortunately highlighted to us all how attitudes since the noughties have not changed as much as we perhaps thought, or hoped.
Britney is right. The world of rockstars is indeed littered with accusations – with many stars still heralded as legends, without a mark on their names, while the stories of women wronged by them have fizzled away into the ether, with seemingly no one being held accountable.
‘These [rock stars] have exceptional privilege and are used to getting what they want – when they want,’ said former Runways bass guitarist Jackie Fuchs to The New York Post, who claimed in the 2021 Sky documentary, Look Away, she was raped by her now dead manager, Kim Fowley, aged 16.
Meanwhile, Steven Tyler’s ex-lover Julia Holcomb was just 16 years old when she met the Aerosmith frontman, then 27 – and he made her his ward, getting her mother to sign over custody so he could cross state lines with her freely. Sound familiar…?
Julia Holcomb – who was 16 when they met – is suing Steven Tyler for sexual assault of a minor (Picture: Mark Sullivan/Contour by Getty Images)
Holcomb said she fell pregnant and Tyler pressured her into an abortion before sending her home.
The documentary title is a moniker of Iggy Pop’s track, Look Away, which is seemingly dedicated to LA’s most famous 1970s ‘baby groupie’ Sable Starr.
After having moved cities to be with New York Dolls member Johnny Thunders aged 16, Starr later reflected their relationship ‘destroyed’ her.
‘After I was with him, I just wasn’t Sable Starr anymore. He really destroyed the Sable Starr thing. She made me throw away all my diaries and all my phone numbers down the incinerator, and he ripped up my scrapbook,’ she said in Please Kill Me: the Uncensored Oral History of Punk.
‘There are so many stories,’ said director of the documentary, Sophie Cunningham, in an interview with Sky News. ‘So many I was just not able to tell, and that’s because of money and power – success and celebrity goes a hell of a long way to keeping people quiet.’
‘Queen of the groupies’ Sable Starr – who met Johnny Thunders aged 16 – said her relationship with him ‘destroyed’ her (Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
The filmmaker went on to describe how stories set out in the documentary were only the tip of the iceberg, and many other allegations by women could not be included relating to ‘lots and lots of [stars] who are very, very popular’.
To add insult to injury, The Who’s frontman Roger Daltry said in 2018 that sexual harassment isn’t a problem in the music industry.
‘Why would any rock star need to push themselves on women?’ he asked the Daily Mail’s Event magazine when asked about sexual predators in the music industry.
‘Usually it’s the other way around. I’d like to have £1 for every woman that screws my ass. Mick Jagger would be a billionaire out of it.’
Rockstar ‘legends’ aside, in 2017 the BBC reported that sexual abuse and harassment is ‘endemic’ in the music industry, which is littered with ‘dangerous men’ abusing their power.
On November 11, Chris Brown will be releasing his eleventh studio album, 11:11, which will include a guest appearance from Justin Bieber.
Over a decade ago, when he was dating Rihanna, it was revealed the Call Me Everyday Singer, 34, assaulted the Umbrella singer and left her ‘spitting blood’ in 2009.
He pleaded guilty to felony assault and admitted to beating Rihanna before she appeared on stage at the Grammys.
Brown was sentenced to community service and mandatory anger management classes, as well as probation and a restraining order against Rihanna.
Chris Brown admitted to beating up ex-girlfriend Rihanna, and is still releasing albums (Picture: Christopher Polk/Getty Images for NARAS)
Brown was also accused of raping a woman in a hotel room in Paris in 2019. The singer denied the allegation and filed a defamation complaint against the accuser, and no charges were filed.
Today? With 20 Grammy nominations to his name, having won best album for F.A.M.E in 2012, Brown is thriving – and the music industry continues to support him, with the violence-prone star even inking a fresh deal with RCA in 2019.
But Brown is not alone.
Republic Records former president Charlie Walk was accused of sexual misconduct by six women in 2018 – and he still works in the industry as co-founder and CEO of Aspen Artists, having denied the allegations.
Russell Simmons, co-founder of recording company Def Jam, was accused of rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment by more than a dozen women – and relocated Bali, Indonesia. In other words, he denied the accusations and walked free.
R. Kelly is serving 20 years in prison after weeks of testimony for child sex crimes, but prior to this he’d lived his life uninterrupted by justice for decades, having previously paid his goddaughter into silence.
In 2018 Lily Allen alleged in her book, My Thoughts Exactly, that an unnamed music executive sexually assaulted her.
The Not Fair hitmaker previously told Stylist that she was unable to ‘talk too much [about it] for legal reasons’.
Lily Allen alleged that an unnamed music executive sexually assaulted her (Picture: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)
Lady Gaga will not name her alleged producer rapist – who subsequently got her pregnant aged 19 when she was trying to break into the industry – because she does not want to face him.
But who can blame her? The ramifications for women who use their voice in the music industry are huge.
Singer, actress and playwright Sandra Booker outlined that happened to her when she accused a fellow musician of sexually assaulting her.
‘I became the villain instead of the victim. I have been ostracized by contemporaries, colleagues and even friends… It has made my life unbearable and no one should live like that,’ Booker said.
Jeff Anderson, the lawyer representing women suing Steven Tyler and Marilyn Manson for sexual assault of a minor – which they both denied – told the room at the same press conference how the music industry’s widespread abuse and protection is on the same scale as that of the Catholic Church (for decades he was the lawyer filing suits against the Roman Catholic Church over the sexual abuse of children).
Speaker Alexa Nikolas added at the pre-Grammy event: ‘Predators will come and go, but as long as institutions like the music industry enable and participate in the abuse and silencing towards survivors, then it won’t matter if ‘one bad apple,’ as they love to say, gets let go.’
Clearly, silence is an eerie sound in the music industry – and the use of muzzles still widespread.
But while muzzles were used in the Medieval times to silence gossiping women, this isn’t gossip: this is lives that are being ruined time and time again by men, and an industry that entraps them into silence.
When Britney spoke out after 20 years of silence, just look at what happened at the Kennedy Center. Timbaland treated her truth as flippant gossip, and by jokingin that moment that ‘JT’ should shut her up, muzzled her once more.
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Silence in the music industry is an eerie thing.
