She made history at the Country Music Awards last week, is the biggest selling female artist in the United States this year, and she comes magically to life in December’s edition of InStyle in the first ever 3D magazine cover.

But how good is teen sensation Taylor Swift at actual singing?

Not so great, if the growing amount of chat on the Web is to be believed. The higher her public profile rises, the louder are the whispers that Swift often sings flat in live performances.

Some country music fans were particularly miffed at Swift’s trophy for female vocalist of the year at the CMA awards in Nashville last week, where the 19-year-old also became the youngest artist ever to win the coveted Entertainer of the Year award.

“Flat, off key, and just really bad! Taylor Swift is no Reba, Martina, or Carrie, these are the real vocalists. TS must have some real geniuses in the studio to fix that crap,” wrote one admitted Rebafan on the Great American Country web site.

And country fans are not alone. Entertainment Weekly’s Ken Tucker wrote in a blog that Swift was a “terrific songwriter” but described her voice as “thin, and sometimes as wobbly as a newborn colt.”

With the American Music Awards coming up this weekend, and Swift’s leading six nominations, all eyes will again be on the young star whose rise to fame has been meteoric over the past two years.

Will the ears of the public also be listening a little bit harder?

Britney Spears? Lip-synching? “Whateverrrr” as the pop princess might put it herself.

Britney has been lip-synching her way through her “comeback” world tour for the past six months, so it’s a bit of a mystery why it’s caused such a fuss in Australia.

As singer John Mayer , who has been in Australia promoting his own album, put it in a wry weekend tweet,  “If you’re shocked that Britney was lip-synching at her concert and want your money back, life may continue to be hard for you.”

Britney’s not the first performer to lip-synch during fast-paced, live song-and-dance performances, and she’s certainly not the last — even classical musicians Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman played to a recording at President Barack Obama’s outdoor inauguration in the bitter January weather.

But the practice seems to be news to some Australian politicians, who are suggesting that tickets should carry a disclaimer about whether parts of concerts are pre-recorded or mimed.

Britney’s fans — in Australia and elsewhere — are coming out in support of their idol, whose slick “Circus” tour went around the United States before going Down Under.

“oh my god Britney i’m so embarrassed by how Australia has treated you since you arrived in our country. You have been nothing but slammed and put down since arriving and it’s pathetic. I’m from Australia and my entire family is beyond inspired by yourself, your music, your life and your morals,” wrote one fan, Katie D, on the official Britney Spears website.

So if most fans seem happy, does it matter anymore whether Britney, or anyone else, lip-synchs at “live” concerts? After all, as Britney sings on the title track of her latest album “I’m runnin’ this like-like-like a circus.”

Or are audiences at pop concerts getting short-changed after sometimes handing over more than $100 for a ticket?

Mommy, what’s a threesome? 

If Britney Spears still has any ‘tween fans left, their parents are about to face yet another uncomfortable question pertaining to the pop idol.

The former Disney Channel starlet has just released a new single, “3,” which may be more appropriate for the Playboy Mansion than the Mouse House.

“Three is a charm, Two is not the same, I don’t see the harm, So are you game?” she playfully asks at one point. You can listen to the song here.

The slick ditty should get the kids out on the dance floors, but there’s even something in there for old folkies, since Spears tosses in a head-scratching reference to “Peter, Paul and Mary.” The song was produced and co-written by Swedish hitmaker Max Martin (”… Baby One More Time”), so it’s possible the 27-year-old singer might consider them three random names.

Equally unwittingly, she now follows in the footsteps of Jane’s Addiction frontman Perry Farrell, whose ménage à trois with his girlfriend and a teenage heiress inspired the alternative rock band’s 1990 song “Three Days.”

“3″ comes from “Britney Spears: The Singles Collection,” which comes out on Nov. 24, almost five years after her last hits package. (She released just two albums in the interim.)

Fresh off her announcement that she would tour Australia for the first time ever, Britney Spears on Wednesday revealed that she will also come back to North America for an extension of her  “The Circus” tour.

Spears will play arenas in 20 cities, starting with an Aug. 20 show in Hamilton, Ontario, and ending on Sept. 27 in Las Vegas. In between, Spears and company will touch down in Atlanta, Chicago, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Miami and Los Angeles, amid other stops.

Before Spears opened her “Circus” tour in March with a show in her native Louisiana, some had questioned whether she was ready for the stress of hitting the road again. The 27-year-old singer is under the conservatorship of her father, Jamie Spears, following a high-profile meltdown in 2007 and early 2008 that included stints in psychiatric care, an ugly divorce, shaving her head and partying without panties.

But the comeback tour seems to be going all right for the pop diva, who is currently performing in Europe. Concert trade publication Pollstar says her elaborate revue is one of the hottest tickets in North America this year with ticket sales of $61 million. The show features 50 dancers, magicians, clowns and acrobats and a production budget of $50 million and it travels in 34 trucks, her Jive Records label said.  

So with the November release of her chart-topping album “Circus” and with her song “Womanizer” scoring the singer her first No. 1 single in almost a decade, Spears seems to have proven that, if nothing else, she can still sell albums and pack music venues.

Does the tour prove that Spears is all the way back? And if you saw one of her shows, what did you think?

Game on. The race to 1 million followers on Twitter has a new player, after singer Britney Spears’ manager made it known she has joined the competition.

For those who have not heard about it, the race started earlier this week when actor Ashton Kutcher challenged cable news channel CNN to a Twitter duel, promising to ring CNN founder Ted Turner’s doorbell if he wins. Not one to shy from attention, CNN broadcaster Larry King put out a video online responding to Kutcher’s challenge. “CNN will bury you,” King vowed, as he also lectured Kutcher that Turner no longer runs CNN.

Then on Wednesday, Spears’ manager posted the following statement on her Twitter page. “Let’s get Brit across the million mark!,” he wrote. It was the equivalent of the United States joining World War I after sitting on the sidelines, because Spears is a Twitter powerhouse with more than 940,000 followers as of Thursday afternoon.

So far, Kutcher’s Twitter page sports more than 966,000 followers while CNN’s breaking news Twitter page has an impressive tally of more than 973,000 followers. 

The race goes on, but it could obscure the fact that even many avid Internet users are hardly fans of Twitter, which allows anyone to update friends and followers on the most minute aspects of their day. But it’s all for a good cause. Kutcher has pledged to donate to the Malaria No More fund if he wins, and CNN has agreed to also donate to the cause if it beats the 31-year-old actor and star of the movie “Dude, Where’s My Car?”

Britney Spears walked off the stage early during her concert in Vancouver on Wednesday, leaving stunned fans to boo and chant for half an hour while her handlers dealt with what they later delicately described as “a ventilation issue.” Translation: some of her crew members were reportedly sickened by the cigarette – or perhaps another sort of – smoke.

According to the Vancouver Sun review, the pop princess sang a few songs after taking to the stage at GM Place a little after 8:17 p.m. local time. But soon the stage mysteriously went dark, inspiring a few outbursts from impatient fans. A voice eventually came over the loudspeaker: “It’s become uncomfortable and unsafe for the performers, including Ms. Spears,” according to the report. “The show will resume as soon as the air around the stage is clear.”

The fans were not impressed, chanting and howling. The mood was “sour,” the Sun report said.

Spears returned to the stage about 9:05 p.m., performing for another hour or so as if nothing had happened. And the crowd’s spirits also appeared to lift, the report said.

Spears’ camp later issued a statement, saying: “We want to apologize to all the fans who attended our Vancouver show tonight for the brief pause in Britney’s set.  Crew members above the stage became ill due to a ventilation issue.”

Blogger Perez Hilton said Spears’ people were concerned that technicians high above the stage could become dizzy from fans’ marijuana, and he said Spears jokingly warned the crowd, “Don’t smoke weed!” as she left the stage at the end of the concert.

A spokesman for Orca Bay Sports and Entertainment, which owns the venue where the show took place told E! Online that early reports about dope smoking were unfounded and that the smoke was believed to be from cigarettes.

But, without being there, one wonders. Pot smoking has been taking place at concerts since the 1960s, and if it is true, one big mystery remains: Do Spears’ young fans roll their own, or get their parents to do it for them?

Lindsay Lohan’s breakup with celebrity DJ Samantha Ronson is good news for Eminem, who eloquently expresses his passion for the actress in his new video. 
    
The reclusive rapper took a swipe at the couple in “We Made You,” which was released on Tuesday, days after the women broke up.
    
In one scene, Eminem is driving a big rig while Lohan and Ronson lookalikes are making out next to him.
    
“He does not mean to lesbian offend, but Lindsay please come back to seeing men,” Eminem intones in his rapid clipped style. “Samantha’s a two, you’re practically a 10. I know you want me, girl. In fact I see you grin.”
    
Declaring that he’s “looking for more women to torture,” Eminem also claims he would be a better lover for actress Portia de Rossi than her wife Ellen DeGeneres. He also fantasizes about Sarah Palin, while a scantily clad lookalike of the former vice-presidential candidate poses seductively on her desk. 
    
Other targets of Eminem’s rapier wit include tabloid starlet Kim Kardashian, and singers Britney Spears, Jessica Simpson and Amy Winehouse.
    
“You think that’s bad. You should hear the rest of my album. Never has there been such finesse and nostalgia,” he promises in the video.
    
That album, “Relapse,” the follow-up to his 2004 release “Encore” is due in stores on May 19.

The critics largely enjoyed their trip to the circus with Britney Spears, as the 27-year-old troubled pop diva opened her latest Circus tour in New Orleans on Tuesday night to mostly positive reviews.
     
The New Orleans Times-Picayune said Spears, who was performing in her home state of Louisiana, nailed the first stop on her comeback.

“With so much at stake, and so much to prove, on the tour’s first night, she was fully focused on executing the complex concert. And execute she did,” Times-Picayune reviewer Keith Spera reported in a blog.

Los Angeles Times music critic Ann Powers wrote that  despite singing with a backing track, relying on “nothing special” dance moves and looking less strikingly beautiful than when she first gained fame at 17, Spears “nonetheless renewed her claim as one of the world’s most adept manipulators of the public interest.”

But People magazine writer Chuck Arnold was left feeling like the Circus Tour was full of hot air. “Don’t call it a comeback quite yet,” Arnold wrote, adding that Spears appeared nervous and hardly acknowledged or talked to the audience.
    
Arnold also said the show reminded him of Cirque du Soleil. “When she wrapped the concert about 90 minutes after emerging, she seemed more relieved than anything that it was all over,” he wrote.
    
Most agree the Spears show was heavy on spectacle and technically impressive, and almost everyone noted her lip syncing.  Some felt the production overwhelmed the star, while others said Spears looked great but seemed overburdened and distant. The show also was heavy on erotica, even though Spears still attracts many families with children in tow.

Spears will shuttle across the country at a dizzying pace in the coming months. She performs in Atlanta on Thursday, followed by Miami on Saturday and another show in Tampa the next night. Until the tour ends on June 14 in London, Spears will perform on many consecutive nights, as her Circus tour makes stops in Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and other cities.

 Will she be able to keep up with it all, or will the newly resplendent Spears start to get frayed at the edges?  
(Additional reporting by Kathy Finn)

Photo credit: Britney Spears performs for “Good Morning America” December 2008.  Lucas Jackson/Reuters

Pop diva Britney Spears will start her Circus Tour on Tuesday in New Orleans, and in advance of that show her camp released an online video glimpse of how the tour will look.

In many ways, the new Britney looks a lot like the old Britney. Video of rehearsals posted on MySpace show the pop star decked out in skimpy and outlandish costumes, including an imperial jacket with shaggy epaulets, a military jacket festooned with medals and a stripper-like outfit with long boots and a low-cut top. It’s a collection of looks familiar to those who have seen Spears’ past tours.

The  short video also shows the tour’s Circus theme. There are plenty of rings flying around and in one segment a magician in a top hat pulls his cape open, revealing Spears as she crawls out of a box.

Also, a set list for Spears’ tour was released on her Web site. It includes the songs “Piece of Me” and “Baby One More Time” from her previous albums, and the sexually suggestive song ”If You Seek Amy” from her latest album, which has upset parents’ groups.

Spears will be closely scrutinized during her 26-city Circus Tour. Her album “Circus,” released on her 27th birthday in December, topped the pop charts, but after a series of embarrassing incidents in 2007 and early 2008 that included attacking the paparazzi with an umbrella and being hospitalized for a psychiatric evaluation, celebrity watchers will pay close attention to the tour to see how Spears handles the pressure and to determine if her comeback is complete. Her 2007 performance at the MTV Video Music Awards was also billed as a comeback show, but she came off as badly prepared with feeble and confused dance steps, in a show that was roundly panned.

How does the video glimpse of Spears’ tour look? Is she bound to wow audiences with her singing and dancing again, or is there a danger of a repeat performance from her 2007 VMA show?

Curious about what your favorite singer listens to on their iPod?

Here comes a chance not only to find out, but to buy the personal playlist and the autographed iPod of 70 celebrities ranging from Madonna and Beyonce to Carrie Underwood, Britney Spears and fashion designer Marc Jacob.

Philanthropic Web site Tonic.com is auctioning off  between one and five of  the signed iPods every week from now until August and sending all the money directly to benefit Music Rising — an organization that replaces musical instruments that were lost or destroyed by Katrina and other hurricanes in the Gulf Coast region.

First up is Mariah Carey (clearly a big hip-hop fan), Gwen Stefani whose tastes range from Prince to Joni Mitchell, country star Faith Hill (who seems to have a fondness for someone called Tim McGraw?!) and Pete Wentz ( Mamma Mia! and the musical Wicked!??).