"I'm a Slave 4 U," we hardly knew ye.

Oh, Britney. Everything was going so well for you -- hair was all grown back, you were wearing a bra again, you'd lost some weight, you actually managed to go an entire holiday season without anyone making a tearful phone call to DFACS or getting put on an indefinite 5150 hold . . . and then you had to go and release this stupid thing:

. . . what will [radio stations] do with a new single from a major artist that doesn't actually contain a four-letter word, but rather spells it out in a not-so-subtle way? That dilemma is beginning to dawn on top-40 radio programmers across the country as the third single from Britney Spears' latest album, "If U Seek Amy" starts to make its way to the airwaves. . . .

Like several programmers we talked to, Patti Marshall, program director at Cincinnati's Q102, said she had not yet been told that "Amy" was the next single from Circus...Asked if she would play "Amy" if it came to her as a single, Marshall said likely wouldn't. She likened its chorus (which she has not heard) to "a little boy in sixth grade doing arm farts."

The first thing I thought of after reading this story was that old joke: What's the mating call of the sorority girl? "I am sooo drunk!" What's the mating call of the ugly sorority girl? "I said, I am sooooo drunk!" Just as there's a certain type of girl who feels the need to wear a Bedazzled "Hottie" T-shirt to the mall -- uggos -- there's a certain type of pop starlet who feels the need to release a song called "If U Seek Amy": a played-out has-been who ranks just below Lindsay Lohan and just above LaToya Jackson on the average 17-year-old's list of famous people he wants to do. I mean, I'm about the most tasteless person I know -- by way of example, I bristled at the above radio programmer's insinuation that arm farts weren't funny -- and even I don't think "If U Seek Amy" is clever. (Also, I've slept with Amy, and trust me, she's an absolute corpse in the sack.)

Time for Britney to hang up the mic, buy a matronly but tasteful pants suit, and get a syndicated daytime talk show before someone releases an "answer song" titled "Dee, I See Kay," as in "No, not even with Kevin Federline's."