Exactly six years ago, life was not great for Britney Spears. She had just performed at the MTV Video Music Awards, an event that usually prompted headlines about the cool and now infamous things she'd done, like dance with a snake or kiss Madonna. But this time, her lackluster performance of her first single in several years, "Gimme More," shocked in a different way. The New York Times called it "listless", described her as "wan" and said that the whole thing was a "fiasco", all in one sentence.