There are all kinds of ways to tell if your comeback has been successful, but Britney Spears has easily just found the best one.

Britney’s big new comeback single Womanizer has jumped 95 places in the American singles chart to reach number one. And you know what they say – when a song that sounds like Professor Stephen Hawking‘s faulty voicebox being jumpstarted by a big spluttering clown-car engine gets to number one, you’ve probably been accepted by the general population to some extent.

And now that Womanizer‘s number one position is the cherry on Britney Spears’ public rehabilitation cake, it’s time for her to celebrate. How? The same way she always does – by shaving her head, mashing anti-psychotic drugs into her food and trapping her own children in a bathroom until she’s sedated and taken to a mental hospital. Hooray!

Britney Spears should go into politics. Seriously, look at how well she’s galvanised the public with her comeback. It’s been so stage-managed and choreographed that nothing could possibly have upset it. Well, nothing except for Britney Spears’ fragile state of mind, which could still explode messily all over the place and end up with Britney Spears kidnapping a stranger’s child and hiding it in the rafters with her at any moment, but let’s ignore that.

Because Britney Spears’ new single Womanizer has just made it to number one in the American single chart, and it’s broken all kinds records as well. E! Online reports:

The song’s 95-spot jump to No. 1 is the biggest in Billboard history… “Womanizer” also set a record by selling 286,000 digital copies. That not only tops the singer’s 179,000-copy debut for 2007′s “Gimme More,” it’s also the biggest digital debut for any female artist since Nielsen SoundScan started tracking digital sales five years ago. Mariah Carey‘s “Touch My Body” previously held the record.

Other records that Womanizer by Britney Spears has broken include Most Popular Song To Ever Go ‘Womanizer Woma-Womanizer You’re A Womanizer Oh Womanizer Oh You’re A Womanizer Baby’ All The Titting Time, Best Song To Make Suspects To Break Down And Confess Their Secrets Now That Physical Torture Is Frowned Upon and Best Alternative Theme-Tune To Prime Minister’s Question Time.

The success of Womanizer bodes well for Britney Spears’ new album Circus, to be released in December, and by and large it’s all down to the exceedingly professional way that her comeback has been stage-managed. So, disgraced celebrities, if you want to make a successful comeback all you need to do is follow Britney Spears’ simple five-point guide.

1 – Turn up in public wearing nice clothes and make-up that doesn’t look like it was applied by an elderly Parkinson’s sufferer in the middle of a temper tantrum. The fact that you aren’t red-eyed and bald will confound everyone senseless.

2 - Let your mother publish a book that graphically describes what a mental old bastard you are, but only so long as the last line reads something like “But, hey, she’s all better now, so phew.”

3 - Release a single that just involves you saying the same word over and over again while a fire alarm goes off in the background that everybody seems pretty ambivalent about.

4 - Get naked in the video for that song, because only then will people actually pay any attention to it.

5 - Pray to God that your little sister makes you look relatively sane in comparison.

Followed all those steps? Congratulations, you’re a success just like Britney Spears! Now you’re ready to be the subject of so much unwanted media intrusion and responsibility-free power that your mental health is almost certainly going to deteriorate to a worry extent. See you in the mental hospital!

Britney Spears is no stranger to being naked these days – she loves showing her skin so much these days that we even know what her scalp looks like.

But forget all that, because here’s the video for Britney Spears’ new single Womanizer and – guess what – Britney’s naked in it. What? Oh, for God’s sake, can’t you at least pretend to look interested?

Remember when the thought of seeing Britney Spears naked was sort of exciting? It was a long time ago, granted, and now that same thought probably inspires the sort of queasy fear you experience when you know you’re about to be attacked by a mad red-eyed old bald lunatic clutching an umbrella, but it was there once.

Still, the fact alone that Britney Spears dared to go nude for the Womanizer video should give you some inclination about how seriously Britney is taking her comeback. She apparently lost 10lb for the naked videoshoot by going teetotal, and you know someone means business when they do something for a video that they probably should have done about a year ago before their kids got taken away from them, don’t you.

Britney Spears is worse than we thought – far from making a full recovery, she’s actually regressed to the point where she can only robotically babble vowel sounds.

It’s true – Britney Spears’ new single got its official radio debut today, and she basically only does two things in it. First, Britney Spears just goes “Oh oh ooh ooh ah-ah-ah” over and over again like C-3PO getting a stinging nettle handjob, and secondly she says the word ‘womanizer’ 41 times in a row. We’ve forgotten what the song’s called.

So is Womanizer by Britney Spears going to be another hit? It had better be – we’ve always said that what Britney Spears is to be violently thrust into the spotlight a bit more.

We can’t overstate this enough – Britney Spears needs a hit. As things stand, Britney Spears is actually the third most famous member of the Spears family, after noted author Lynne Spears and inadvertent underage topless model Jamie-Lynn Spears.

So Britney Spears needs to do something big to reclaim her title, and not big in the ‘cut all your hair off, pretend you’re the devil and terrify your own children’ sense, either. That’s so Old Britney. And now we’ve got New Britney – a woman who can wear clothes and mumble about God. You know, like a normal person. That big something needs to be more like that, please.

And maybe it’s Womanizer, the new single from Britney Spears’ new album Circus. Just the other day we played you a clip of Womanizer that was played on a radio station unofficially and got a DJ suspended, but now the full glorious version of Womanizer by Britney Spears has been aired in America and, well, it’s sort of OK.

Sort of. Womanizer shows a daring progression in Britney Spears’ sound, and not just because she’s flagrantly pinching from Katy Perry, either. It’s her voice. Apart for the 41 instances where Britney Spears says the word ‘womanizer’ in the manner that an aggressive cyborg would say the word ‘humanoid’ right before it shot you with its eye-lasers, Britney has developed a new voice trick.

Gone is that weird throaty noise that sounded like a kitten overdosing on cough medicine and in is a new noise – one that can only be described as ‘Flipper searching for hidden uranium with a broken Geiger counter’.

It’s hard to describe, so instead have a listen to Womanizer by Britney Spears for yourself.

We’re going out on a limb here, but Womanizer could be Britney Spears’ biggest hit for years. But only so long as she doesn’t screw it all up this time by covering her lovely blonde hair up or making a tacky video about a slutty waitress or anything. E! Online reports:

Earlier this week, the pop princess shot the song’s music video at L.A. hot spot Elevate and in the kitchen of the hip eatery Takami Sushi & Robata. A source tells E! News that she dons a long black wig for the video, adding, “Britney was wearing tight leather pants and a tuxedo top and vest, and she had fake tattoos running up and down her arms.”

Oh.

You may have heard that Britney Spears is back – and for once ‘back’ doesn’t mean ‘back sobbing on a pavement with no knickers on’.

Britney Spears is actually back. Back doing singing and dancing an dancing and stuff. As we recently reported, the new Britney Spears album Circus will be released in December. But it’s going to be preceded by a single called Womanizer, and that single’s been leaked, and we’ve got it here.

So does Womanizer mark Britney Spears’ stunning return to cultural relevancy? It’s actually hard to tell, because the leaked version is 38 seconds long and sounds like it was recorded from a mobile phone onto another mobile phone in a tin bucket full of jelly down a well in space. But we’ll just assume that it doesn’t, anyway. We’re bastards like that.

The most exciting thing about having Britney Spears back isn’t that she gets to wear nice clothes again or that we don’t have to start each story about her with the phrase ‘Troubled pop starlet Britney Spears’, but that we’ll finally get to hear Britney’s take on the year she’s just had.

Britney Spears has always managed to pass comment on her life in song – whether in Lucky, where Britney wryly commented on the pressures of fame; Piece Of Me, where Britney wryly attributed part of her meltdown to the prevalent tabloid celebrity culture of the day; or I’m Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman, where Britney wryly commented on what we assume to be her tattered hymen.

And since the new Britney Spears album is called Circus, we can safely assume that it’ll be a no-holds barred account of the swirling mayhem that’s engulfed her life over the last 12 months. Since that’s included a stay in a mental asylum and losing custody of her own children, we’re bracing ourselves for a gruelling, emotionally stark journey.

And that much is clear on the first single from Circus, entitled Womanizer. Thanks to a DJ in Nashville who played 40 seconds of the song while it was still officially embargoed and got suspended for it, leaked snatches of Britney Spears’ Womanizer are all over the internet, allowing us all to hear Britney’s eloquent description of her own harrowing personal nadir ahead of its release. It’s a bruising listen, so be warned…

You can really hear Britney’s anguish in every single one of her tinny, barely audible “ooh ooh ooh ah-ah-ah”s, can’t you? It’s tragic, really. The personal turmoil really shines through in the way she seems to have just ripped off that Katy Perry song. We’re in bits. Honestly we are.

But still, on a brighter note the artwork for Womanizer by Britney Spears has got a snake in it. Hopefully that means that every single from Circus will reflect each of Britney’s most memorable MTV VMA appearances. First Womanizer has a snake in it, then the second single will feature Britney Spears getting off with an old lady. And the third one will have a dumpy homeless man in a wig and a bikini stumbling around like he doesn’t know what’s going on. Ace.

As evidenced by her nanosecond appearance at the MTV VMAs recently, Britney Spears is back to her best, and that can only mean one thing.

Yes, that’s right – Britney Spears has got a new album coming out soon. According to a just-released missive from her record label, Britney Spears’ new album is to be called Circus and will be released on December 2, with a new single entitled Womanizer coming out next week.

It’s exciting stuff, but why has Britney Spears chosen to call her new album Circus? Well it’s easy – Britney Spears wanted to name her album after the best description for the inside of her own head. Other contenders for the album title were Swirling Kaleidoscope Of Terrifying Cackles, The Theme-Tune To Taxi On An Unrelenting Loop and Barely-Pulsating Gloop.

Britney Spears is now in something of a privileged position when it comes to releasing albums. When her last album Blackout was released, Britney Spears basically promoted it by smearing dog poo on a dress and mumbling three words to Ryan Seacrest and nothing else.

What that means is that however Britney Spears chooses to promote her new album Circus, it’s going to be seen as a dazzling comeback on the scale of her triumphant MTV VMAs appearance last week where Britney Spears looked terrified and vague and wasn’t allowed to speak for more than half a second at a time in case she went berserk but at least did it wearing quite a nice dress.

Oh, yeah. Circus. Did we mention that Britney Spears has got a new album coming out called Circus? And it’s being released in December? And a new single is exactly one week away? We did? Well here’s the information we’ve just been emailed by Britney’s record label Jive:

Britney Spears announces her sixth studio album, Circus, set for release December 2nd. The first single from the album is titled “Womanizer” and was produced by the up-and-coming Atlanta production team The Outsyders. The album release date coincides with Spears’ birthday. Jive Records is preparing her latest album, Circus, a follow-up to her critically well received album, Blackout. For her latest effort, Britney has enlisted a stellar group of established producers/writers that include Dr. Luke (who wrote and produced the album’s title track, “Circus”), Danja, Max Martin, Bloodshy & Avant and Guy Sigsworth (Madonna, Alanis Morissette, Bjork).

That all looks as if it’s in working order. Max Martin‘s back working for Britney Spears again, which is a positive sign. Well, not a positive sign as such, but at least a sign that Britney’s making a return to the kind of infectious pop that was fashionable a decade ago. And, compared to Blackout, where Britney Spears tried to rip-off Justin Timberlake‘s last album and ended up sounding like a horrible mixture between a paper jam and a dial-up modem from 1997, that can only make the fans happy.

But still. Circus. Really, Britney? Circus? Apparently Circus is named after her life since the release of Blackout, but we’d tend to disagree on the basis that no circus we’ve ever been to has ever featured a bald red-eyed woman sitting on a pavement bawling for her life because she’s mentally ill and the authorities have taken her kids away from her. Jugglers, yes, but not that.

If Britney Spears really wanted to name her album after what her life has been like recently, she should have forgotten about Circus and called it Bleak East-European Arthouse Movie About The Unending Futility Of Existence.

Anyway, we’ll just have to wait and see what Circus by Britney Spears is like, but fingers crossed that it’s a return to form. Especially because if it’s a real success Britney will end up releasing a fragrance also called Circus, and we’d quite like it the army of idiots who normally buy Britney Spears fragrances all ended up stinking of monkey shit and gypsies.