How Guru Randhawa’s ‘Fine Shyt’ Imitates Britney Spears’ Iconic Classic ‘Womanizer’

The streets are still debating if there’s anything remotely fine about “Fine Shyt.” Guru Randhawa’s latest song is fielding more ridicule than replays. The song’s lyrics are cringe and trying too hard, and the music video has nothing to offer except the usual fixtures of a man doing manly things while women dance around him, this time in an office setting. And it is this workplace setting that evokes another iconic music video, “Womanizer” by Britney Spears, which suddenly puts things into greater perspective and makes “Fine Shyt” look, if possible, even worse.

“Fine Shyt” would not have instantly brought up memories of Britney’s “Womanizer” if it weren’t for the fact that another one of Randhawa’s recent songs, “AZUL,” features schoolgirls, just like Britney Spears’ “Baby One More Time.” Are we sensing a pattern here? And yet, at the same time, it feels almost blasphemous to compare the two songs because “Fine Shyt” is nowhere close to the standards of “Womanizer,” both in lyrical relevance and sex appeal.

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The year was 2008 when Britney Spears decided to drop her sixth studio album, “Circus,” with a single titled “Womanizer” that broke records. The music video has Britney going all femme fatale on her womanizing boyfriend, putting on three disguises and watching him hit on each one of them until she finally reveals to him that she was all three women. The video was interspersed with shots of a naked Spears in a sauna, a ploy by director Joseph Khan to kill two birds with one stone. It upped the steamy appeal and addressed gossip around the popstar’s weight that was doing the rounds at the time.

The workplace fantasy setting isn’t unique. There have been similar songs, such as the Rakhi Sawant-starrer “Pardesiya” remix, which featured a female employee being in love with her boss and fantasizing about him, and vice versa, while the other staff enjoyed the lovers’ dilemma. But what sets “Fine Shyt” apart from “Pardesiya” and “Womanizer” is how these videos wove in an actual story and portrayed their women as having emotional and sexual agency over simply being background dancers in a man’s fantasy.

What’s more, the dance moves have nothing to say or add to whatever is happening in the video, which is happening inside an office until it suddenly cuts to a different setting. The women are now in sportswear, and the relentless dancing begins again. In “Womanizer,” Britney’s moves had an edge, an oomph. She disguised herself as a driver with a spiked stiletto heel on her cheating boyfriend’s chest, and it served sensuousness and controversy in one go.

“Fine Shyt” is allergic to serving anything at all. The women dance in aggressive bursts of energy as if their bodies were overtaken by the host of an alien entity having a seizure. Meanwhile, the man, and for that matter, the entire music video, gives nothing at all. Is he admiring his female co-workers? Is he fetishizing them? Are they attracted to this? We know poop from his actions. 

“Fine Shyt” is further proof of how much we’re straying away from the ancient texts that proclaimed music videos as sacred rituals for popstar success. Songs like these feel like hollow imitations and echoes of a time when music videos were truly great pieces of filmmaking and storytelling and would propel an artist to commercial and cultural heights. They could have a visualization that catered to pop culture trends, or, as Britney Spears did and Taylor Swift often does, have song lyrics call out personal demons.

But all “Fine Shyt” does is prove that capitalizing on the cringepop trend can only be a gimmick that takes you so far. You can turn a Gen Z phrase into a catchy hook, but ultimately it will only be remembered as an earworm.