Comeback queens... Whitney Houston and Britney Spears. Photographs: Getty/Matthew Simmons/Michael Buckner/
I'm afraid I'm not sure what animal this year is to be on the Chinese calendar but, for once, this isn't cultural ignorance on my part. In truth, it is - and I don't mean to offend any Chinese readers out there, merely stating what they themselves surely know to be an inevitable truth - wholly irrelevant because this is the year of Whitney/Britney.
Has ever a year promised so much in terms of fascinating comebacks? And has ever there been a more interesting stand-off between two veritable cultural titans? (And if anyone out there is going: "But surely you forget about that seminal Blur versus Oasis moment blah blah, chin stroke, chin stroke" now is the time to log off from this website. You have clearly signed on by accident thinking this was the online site for Q, aka Zzzzz, magazine.)
Just for starters, here are two ladies who have not shied away from wheeling out their personal pain into their material, and both, without a doubt, have some good pain to work with this time. How this will be translated into song can only be imagined - will Britney sing about the pain of making the world your gynecologist by getting out of a car when you've innocently forgotten your underwear? And what will Whitney find to rhyme with crackpipe? Sack wipe? Hack hype? - but the question is which one will do it more successfully.
The similarities between the two women are multifold. Both have betrayed a partiality for what Americans call with delightful euphemism "partying". Both have finally left the men the entire planet had long willed them to leave and both have a decent chance of resurrecting fanbases which have remained optimistically loyal for several years.
But for every Tony Bennett there is an Emma Bunton. So quite which public relations effort will triumph is an intriguing debate.
In terms of making an effort, it has to be said that Whitney is definitely winning here. On an aesthetic level alone her recent appearance on the red carpet was extraordinary: new weave carefully in place, happy carefree grin, clear skin, eyes that were not entirely blurry. Whether the rumours are true that Arista head honcho Clive Davis gave her a new set of teeth as she had ground hers down to not-very-photogenic nubs I couldn't possibly say. But I will say that those teeth were looking remarkably good for a woman whose bathroom was looking decidedly lacking in dental hygiene paraphernalia in the now infamous National Enquirer photos. Back then the Houston/Brown household apparently favouring broken pipes and crumpled paper wraps over Aquafresh and Listerine.
Moreover, Whitney's travails are classic ballad material, a genre this woman has always worked well: bad husband, drugs, crazy love, drugs, familial disapproval, drugs, loss of life direction and have we mentioned drugs? Britney's, on the other hand, are - shall we say - slightly trickier to translate into universally sympathetic lyrics, let alone pithy rhymes. Being photographed driving with one's baby on one's lap, shacking up with quite possibly the most embarrassing man on the planet, sharing tights with Paris Hilton, et cetera and so forth.
Whitney's talent was always for the here's-my-heart-which-I've-just-ripped-of-my-thumping-chest-and-stuck-on-my-sleeve ballad and the triumphal dancefloor filler number. Both of these genres work marvellously with her autobiographical material and means her album can move on a satisfying narrative arc, starting with the agonised Bobby Brown years and then finishing with the essential I Will Survive type affair.
With the exception of the peerless Everytime (and possibly the gloriously and timelessly titled Email my Heart), Britney has always worked best with the relatively meaningless pop song - a fine genre in itself but not one that lends itself to the type of self-revelation the public prefers, nay, demands.
Yet Britney doesn't look like she gives too much of a fig either way. Whereas Whitney has at least been giving herself a wash and showing a vague awareness that she has to make a bit of an effort at the moment, Britney has been behaving like a deliciously rebellious teenager, showing scant concern for public image and even less for her career. Officials at her record company are said to be concerned about her "drinking", and when an American PR admits to alcohol, as opposed to the usual term "exhaustion", you know you've got some seriously quality behaviour going on.
Rather cleverly, the PRs are insinuating that this is all the fault of Paris Hilton - but as anyone who ever saw the televised reality TV programme of Kevin and Britney's home life knows, Ms Spears knows how to take the cap off a bottle of beer without any guidance from an heiress.
Nonetheless, the photos of her with Paris do provide good fodder for amusement, not least the one of the two of them each wearing one leg of a pair of fishnet tights, Paris with her customary ketamined-out smile and Britney looking - and I'm honestly not suggesting anything libellous here but rather using a term of description - cheekily post-coital. Websites such as thebestweek.tv have for some time been proffering alleged details about the pair's after-club activities, all of which might provide meaty material for scurrilous rumours but are sadly unlikely to get through the filter of a record company president, let alone the censors. Three nil Whitney.
There is, perhaps, an alternative outcome. Just as fellow comebacker Emilio Estevez's film Bobby dates the end of America's moral and political backbone to the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, so one could make a similar argument for the demise of Justin and Britney. Why, just think of all that has happened in the intervening years: war, destruction, K-Fed, and so on and so on. And with a synchronicity that must surely be divine, Justin Timberlake and Cameron Diaz are said to have, at last, broken up, paving a public relations dream path to a reunion between the former Mickey Mouse Club members, hand in hand at HMV album launches. Justin, dig out that phone number again - you hold this year in your hands.
