While doing my homework for an article I’m writing about the changes in Britney’s singing technique down the years, I quickly realised that I couldn't rely on my memory - I would have to go back and revisit her early albums, and her ballads in particular, because it's in ballads that she has space to show her technique. And going back to those songs is something I usually try to avoid. Shocking, yes? But, to be honest, listening to Britney’s early music makes me tearful.
Then, in the middle of doing this, I happened to catch a TV documentary called “Queens of Heartache”, which described the tormented lives of a number of great female stars - Judy Garland, Billie Holiday, Edith Piaf, Maria Callas, Janis Joplin... all of them destroyed by men, by drink, by drugs or whatever. All of them died prematurely. And it started me to wondering if Britney was somewhere on this same sad trajectory.
It’s not so very long since fans and media commentators alike were saying that they woke up each morning wondering if Britney was still alive. I think a lot of us had that horrible feeling of impending doom that we also had in the weeks before Princess Diana died. We knew it was going to happen. The sense that everything was spiralling out of control was almost tangible. Almost miraculously, Britney survived. But ever since, there has been that aura around her of fragility, uncertainty, infinite vulnerability. As fans we watch her every move closely and anxiously, hoping for signs of strength and independence of action, while fearing that she’s only being kept going by artificial means. I guess the recent fan neurosis over her dancing is a sign of worrying, fretting, loving and caring too much, and letting it all out in anger and frustration.
Princess Diana’s tragedy was not just a personal one. It was an iconic death - a classic grim reality check on a classic fairy tale. The wave of national mourning was not just for Diana but for the death of a dream. It was a universal tragedy that poured blackness, bleakness, despair and pessimism into millions of hearts. Britney’s early career as a star was a classic fairy tale too - the American Dream, some say. And it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that some of the blackness has already arrived.
So is this why I suffer such sadness when I listen to Britney’s early ballads? Is it because I know what happened next? The break-up with Justin Timberlake that she seems never to have gotten over? Her failed marriages to Jason Alexander and Kevin Federline? The desperately damaging custody battle that she lost? The destruction of her good name and reputation? Accusations of substance abuse? Unspecified mental illnesses? A permanent conservatorship?
Obviously, it’s hard to listen to her early music without being affected by the knowledge that all of this was just around the corner. Is it the sound of optimism about to be crushed? The snuffing out of this young girl’s happiness could not have been more starkly dramatized than by the fact that magazines with covers showing Britney’s smiling face and headlines about her marriage plans with Justin T. were still on the stands for weeks after the break-up had been announced.
But there’s more to it than that. Maybe it’s because the repertoire chosen for her was so different in her earlier years, but her voice back then, as it plays in my head, is haunting, poignant, touching, affecting. And, unlike her present-day musical persona of empowered sexual predator, her early ballads told a tale of the endless search for a boy to love and to love her that seems much closer to her real life.
Such songs portray her emotional vulnerability so perfectly because there is no irony, no knowing sonic winks to the audience, and certainly not the sense you find in most professional singers of running through a bunch of lyrics like they’re a shopping list. Britney’s voice back then sounded almost unbearably young, inexperienced, naive and innocent. At times it was as if, through her music, she was living the childhood she’d never had. It sounded totally heartfelt and genuine.
She had plenty of technique (which I will talk about in another article) but it was unobtrusive and steered away from the habits and mannerisms that place a barrier between singer and listener. With many singers, you admire and you’re impressed, and you may be spellbound by their power, confidence and technical excellence. Britney was the exact opposite. Above all, you felt close to her, intimate with her. You identified with her troubles and her heartaches. You could not observe with detachment. She sounded as if she was confiding in YOU, as if YOU were her BFF.
No wonder so many of her audience began to feel such emotional attachment to her, an attachment that mystifies non-fans but for fans is something that never goes away. A few years ago, it wasn’t uncommon for fans to say that, if Britney died, they would kill themselves too. I remember sitting in my car, praying for her, praying that she’d be OK and that things would go well for her. Those old songs take me back to that place. It was still happening as late as the “In The Zone” album. The innocence hadn't died. That was before the true horror began. I was listening to “Don’t Hang Up” (for goodness sake!) but when Britney whispered “Do you feel it too?” I broke down in tears.
Friday, April 29, 2011
Friday, April 15, 2011
Britney's Dancing Crisis - A Way Forward
I still can't get over this damn furore about Britney’s dancing and everything that people are reading into it. I just want to say this: isn't it a little bit crazy to theorize that she’s running some kind of outlandishly extended protest against the Conservatorship? If everything is being done under protest, against her will... if she’s fighting the Conservators and really wants to quit showbiz, why wouldn’t she simply blurt out the horrible truth to interviewers, stick a middle finger up to the Conservators, sabotage her career, and get the whole thing over with? Or she could easily tell the paparazzi "I'm a prisoner! Get me out of here!"
However, for the sake of argument, let us accept that Britney’s dancing on the “Circus” tour and in recent videos and promo has indeed been sluggish compared to the good old days. PB and I have both pointed out that even in slow motion, Britney dances more than most artists, but the comeback to that is obviously “We’d accept it as just about OK if she was singing live at the same time - but she isn’t.”
In this article I want to suggest that it may be easier to solve Britney’s alleged performance problems in both the dancing AND singing departments than a lot of people think! We’ll come to that in a little while. But first, let’s make sure we’ve taken a look at every aspect of the alleged problems. It seems to me that there are some that haven’t received much attention.
The first thing to which I’d like to direct your attention is Britney’s comment that nowadays she's thinking of the bigger picture in planning her shows, rather than worrying about “Is this hard enough?” Unsurprisingly, the cynics were climbing all over this in seconds, shouting “Excuses! Excuses! More excuses!!!” But let’s calm ourselves down for a few seconds and take a closer look.
A UK-based neutral music website recently described the “Circus” show as “frantic”. This was a comment on the non-stop nature of the show, not on Britney’s role in it. I’ve been asking around, and everyone seems to agree that the show was endless action, apart from a few minutes when Britney sang “Everytime”. This is the bigger picture. You could, perhaps, compare it to one of Kylie Minogue’s shows, where extravagant sets and ambitious choreography whirl impressively around the totally non-dancing star.
But this approach is unusual. Most shows contain a number of “resting” sequences, whether obvious or well-concealed. For example, Pink’s energetic show that I saw a couple of years ago had a lengthy acoustic segment where she sat and sang with her backing singers. Shakira’s show allowed her to spend time in front of each section of the audience and also included slow, balletic and “writhing” dance moves.
Rihanna, Pink, Shakira and just about everybody else that I’ve seen live in concert has spent much of the show “strutting and posing”, as dancers put it. Each one of them made sure they had a really long catwalk so there was endless scope to do it. Shakira and Rihanna did a lot of the booty-shaking that made Beyonce famous, but so do the girls on TV sex-chat shows such as “Babestation”, and they don’t call it dancing.
Typical pop stage shows usually do include proper, choreographed dance sequences, but they are only SECTIONS of the show. They only crop up as special highlights and are separated from the live singing parts of the show. The problem comes when a show is totally choreographed - even if the actual choreography is simple, there’s still an awful lot for one central person to remember. Don't forget, he or she has to maintain 100% concentration throughout, and - as well as remembering dance moves - always has to be in exactly the right position in relation to stage layout and furniture, props, and other dancers.
I get the impression that a lot of fans think that (a) doing a choreographed show is easy, and (b) it mostly consists of dancing. Wrong!!!! I bet a lot of them would have watched Brian Friedman’s work on the last series of “The X Factor” and thought to themslves “Where was the choreography he talked about??!!” Yet it took days for the contestants to learn and rehearse a couple of simple sequences of movements that, in many cases, didn’t look like dancing at all. But that was the most they could manage while singing live.
Back in the dear dead days of ITZ, one well-known Britney site posted the full written-down choreography for one song, “Toxic”. It ran to the length of about 5 pages of A4 paper. Imagine trying to remember two hours of minutely detailed choreography. And reflect on this - even Britney’s much-derided X Factor appearance was fully choreographed, down to every arm movement and turn of the head. That was probably 5 pages of instructions too.
Britney is facing the consequence of trying to satisfy the fans’ apparent hunger for all-action shows and dance videos. The whiners and whingers seem to have forgotten that most of Britney’s best videos have been STORY videos like Toxic, Everytime and Womanizer and that’s what they should be crying out for. They also seem to have forgotten that Britney’s early shows weren’t entirely made up of non-stop hard-dancing choreographed action. Go back and take another look if you don’t believe me!
I’m conscious of voices offstage muttering “Excuses!” once more, so to keep them happy I’ll pick a fault with Britney. For WHATEVER reason, and I refuse to speculate, I think she finds it almost impossible to concentrate on more than one thing at a time, and indeed, often finds it hard enough even to concentrate on one thing. So, the more elaborately her shows and videos are choreographed, the more her brain will be fully occupied in trying to remember what the hell she’s supposed to do next. Hence the over-cautious look to her dancing. Hence too her not being able to sing live because she can’t concentrate on remembering pages of choreography and pages of song words at the same time.
There’s another problem with choreography, and that problem is INSURANCE. As a star, you have to have it. The dangers involved in uninsured losses can run into tens of millions of dollars, and are too great. But choreography has the effect of pre-designating risk, and trying to obtain insurance is an attempt at mitigating it. Proposing two hours of fast and furious choreography is on a par with making a statement of a pre-existing medical condition: it becomes a prisoner of insurance. And, to make matters worse, Britney HAS a pre-existing medical condition that has already been the subject of a disputed insurance claim in 2004.
If you don’t recall the incident, Britney’s insurers refused to pay out following her knee injury on the set of the video for “Outrageous”. They argued that she had had knee problems since the “Sometimes” video, and pointed out that she had already had a knee problem that caused the cancellation of some shows earlier in the Onyx Hotel tour. It was, her insurers argued, therefore a pre-existing medical condition and not covered by accident insurance. Britney’s lawyers argued that doctors had given her the all-clear after the Onyx Tour injury.
However, an accidental injury that could not be readily foreseen, obtained in the course of spontaneous, normal, typical human movement, would normally be covered. If a singer on a stage was to bob and jig and run around informally, move to the music as and when circumstances allow or dictate, improvise and freestyle it a little... that would be normal, typical human movement for someone who was generally fit and healthy.
So this is my suggestion: If Britney were to give up the 100% choreographed “spectacular” shows - or do like Kylie and let the dancers do that stuff and stay out of it herself - wouldn’t her natural athleticism and rhythm take over? I think she could freestyle, improvise and move informally with the rhythm, and the result would be natural Britney dance - more convincing, carefree and enthusiastic than anything she currently seems to be able to do when all the dancing is choreographed. We know she can dance well in practise and in the dance studio. We also know that in her early shows and tours, the whole thing wasn’t choreographed and she had freedom to improvise.
And could it be that, freed from the burden of trying to remember something like 100 pages of detailed choreography and stage instructions, Britney could manage to remember some song words and sing live too? I have no doubts at all about her actual ability to SING, and we’ve been told that she recorded a recent hit in 15 minutes, so.... I, for one, think she could do it. And wouldn't this be a way forward that would please most of her fans?
However, for the sake of argument, let us accept that Britney’s dancing on the “Circus” tour and in recent videos and promo has indeed been sluggish compared to the good old days. PB and I have both pointed out that even in slow motion, Britney dances more than most artists, but the comeback to that is obviously “We’d accept it as just about OK if she was singing live at the same time - but she isn’t.”
In this article I want to suggest that it may be easier to solve Britney’s alleged performance problems in both the dancing AND singing departments than a lot of people think! We’ll come to that in a little while. But first, let’s make sure we’ve taken a look at every aspect of the alleged problems. It seems to me that there are some that haven’t received much attention.
The first thing to which I’d like to direct your attention is Britney’s comment that nowadays she's thinking of the bigger picture in planning her shows, rather than worrying about “Is this hard enough?” Unsurprisingly, the cynics were climbing all over this in seconds, shouting “Excuses! Excuses! More excuses!!!” But let’s calm ourselves down for a few seconds and take a closer look.
A UK-based neutral music website recently described the “Circus” show as “frantic”. This was a comment on the non-stop nature of the show, not on Britney’s role in it. I’ve been asking around, and everyone seems to agree that the show was endless action, apart from a few minutes when Britney sang “Everytime”. This is the bigger picture. You could, perhaps, compare it to one of Kylie Minogue’s shows, where extravagant sets and ambitious choreography whirl impressively around the totally non-dancing star.
But this approach is unusual. Most shows contain a number of “resting” sequences, whether obvious or well-concealed. For example, Pink’s energetic show that I saw a couple of years ago had a lengthy acoustic segment where she sat and sang with her backing singers. Shakira’s show allowed her to spend time in front of each section of the audience and also included slow, balletic and “writhing” dance moves.
Rihanna, Pink, Shakira and just about everybody else that I’ve seen live in concert has spent much of the show “strutting and posing”, as dancers put it. Each one of them made sure they had a really long catwalk so there was endless scope to do it. Shakira and Rihanna did a lot of the booty-shaking that made Beyonce famous, but so do the girls on TV sex-chat shows such as “Babestation”, and they don’t call it dancing.
Typical pop stage shows usually do include proper, choreographed dance sequences, but they are only SECTIONS of the show. They only crop up as special highlights and are separated from the live singing parts of the show. The problem comes when a show is totally choreographed - even if the actual choreography is simple, there’s still an awful lot for one central person to remember. Don't forget, he or she has to maintain 100% concentration throughout, and - as well as remembering dance moves - always has to be in exactly the right position in relation to stage layout and furniture, props, and other dancers.
I get the impression that a lot of fans think that (a) doing a choreographed show is easy, and (b) it mostly consists of dancing. Wrong!!!! I bet a lot of them would have watched Brian Friedman’s work on the last series of “The X Factor” and thought to themslves “Where was the choreography he talked about??!!” Yet it took days for the contestants to learn and rehearse a couple of simple sequences of movements that, in many cases, didn’t look like dancing at all. But that was the most they could manage while singing live.
Back in the dear dead days of ITZ, one well-known Britney site posted the full written-down choreography for one song, “Toxic”. It ran to the length of about 5 pages of A4 paper. Imagine trying to remember two hours of minutely detailed choreography. And reflect on this - even Britney’s much-derided X Factor appearance was fully choreographed, down to every arm movement and turn of the head. That was probably 5 pages of instructions too.
Britney is facing the consequence of trying to satisfy the fans’ apparent hunger for all-action shows and dance videos. The whiners and whingers seem to have forgotten that most of Britney’s best videos have been STORY videos like Toxic, Everytime and Womanizer and that’s what they should be crying out for. They also seem to have forgotten that Britney’s early shows weren’t entirely made up of non-stop hard-dancing choreographed action. Go back and take another look if you don’t believe me!
I’m conscious of voices offstage muttering “Excuses!” once more, so to keep them happy I’ll pick a fault with Britney. For WHATEVER reason, and I refuse to speculate, I think she finds it almost impossible to concentrate on more than one thing at a time, and indeed, often finds it hard enough even to concentrate on one thing. So, the more elaborately her shows and videos are choreographed, the more her brain will be fully occupied in trying to remember what the hell she’s supposed to do next. Hence the over-cautious look to her dancing. Hence too her not being able to sing live because she can’t concentrate on remembering pages of choreography and pages of song words at the same time.
There’s another problem with choreography, and that problem is INSURANCE. As a star, you have to have it. The dangers involved in uninsured losses can run into tens of millions of dollars, and are too great. But choreography has the effect of pre-designating risk, and trying to obtain insurance is an attempt at mitigating it. Proposing two hours of fast and furious choreography is on a par with making a statement of a pre-existing medical condition: it becomes a prisoner of insurance. And, to make matters worse, Britney HAS a pre-existing medical condition that has already been the subject of a disputed insurance claim in 2004.
If you don’t recall the incident, Britney’s insurers refused to pay out following her knee injury on the set of the video for “Outrageous”. They argued that she had had knee problems since the “Sometimes” video, and pointed out that she had already had a knee problem that caused the cancellation of some shows earlier in the Onyx Hotel tour. It was, her insurers argued, therefore a pre-existing medical condition and not covered by accident insurance. Britney’s lawyers argued that doctors had given her the all-clear after the Onyx Tour injury.
However, an accidental injury that could not be readily foreseen, obtained in the course of spontaneous, normal, typical human movement, would normally be covered. If a singer on a stage was to bob and jig and run around informally, move to the music as and when circumstances allow or dictate, improvise and freestyle it a little... that would be normal, typical human movement for someone who was generally fit and healthy.
So this is my suggestion: If Britney were to give up the 100% choreographed “spectacular” shows - or do like Kylie and let the dancers do that stuff and stay out of it herself - wouldn’t her natural athleticism and rhythm take over? I think she could freestyle, improvise and move informally with the rhythm, and the result would be natural Britney dance - more convincing, carefree and enthusiastic than anything she currently seems to be able to do when all the dancing is choreographed. We know she can dance well in practise and in the dance studio. We also know that in her early shows and tours, the whole thing wasn’t choreographed and she had freedom to improvise.
And could it be that, freed from the burden of trying to remember something like 100 pages of detailed choreography and stage instructions, Britney could manage to remember some song words and sing live too? I have no doubts at all about her actual ability to SING, and we’ve been told that she recorded a recent hit in 15 minutes, so.... I, for one, think she could do it. And wouldn't this be a way forward that would please most of her fans?
Friday, April 8, 2011
So HAS Britney Spears left the room? Um........ no!
I was reading a long, LONG article about Britney on a girl-on-girl site called Autostraddle yesterday. First of all, I was surprised that that my sisters should
care - or pretend to care - about Britney at all. I’ve never clocked her as any kind of lesbian icon. Normally we cleave unto more powerful celebrity proxies, like inadequate little boys get themselves a big, angry-looking dog. Second of all, I was disappointed that, for people who should have a subtle understanding of girls, their Brit-analysis was so shallow.
“Despite her canned affirmations, void of any emotion, to questions about whether she still wants to be a pop artist, there’s an overt vapidity behind her eyes and in her speech that, a few years ago, came off as a lack of intelligence, but perhaps it’s more indicative of a lack of interest in this path that was chosen for her at such a young age.
Yeah, we could blame Britney’s disinterest on drugs or nerves or stupidity or just being spoiled, that’d be easy — or you could be ableists and blame her psychiatric meds (I promise, it’s totally possible to take Seroquel AND dance). But that’s not what’s going on here.
Britney Spears is over it.”
The article reads like a manifesto for the "Free Britney" movement. It rants on and on about Big Bad Jamie (a man, after all - horrors!) and the insidious, ruthless money-grab that is, in the writer’s opinion, the true nature of the Conservatorship. However, there is little fact and a LOT of speculation and assumption. Such as that Britney is "over it". It doesn't seem to matter how emphatically Britney talks about her music, or how positively producer after producer talks about the experience of working with her. Some people either can't take it in, or choose to ignore it when they write articles like this.
People who write about Britney's desire to leave showbusiness can end up looking foolish. For example, I was probably the first person to write an article (almost 7 years ago!- it was called "Britney Spears has left the room") claiming that she was fed up of being Britney Spears, wanted to retire and become a full-time mom and housewife etc. etc. Check it out!
“An eerie atmosphere has descended upon the career of Mrs Britney Federline. There's a strange sense that it's balancing on a knife edge right now.
Over the last few months, Britney the woman has been slowly but steadily detaching and distancing herself from Britney Spears, the crazy, outrageous, much-maligned, over-protected pop princess. She has grown tired of being controlled by an army of money-grubbing managers and of being carried along on an overwhelming but remorseless and suffocating tide of success.
In 2003 she decided to take a break from the business, saying she was sick of herself. But she soon recovered, and within days was in the studio making her fourth album. Now, as the end of 2004 approaches, the sickness has become terminal.
The signs have been there for a while now, but we didn't want to read them. When she briefed David LaChappelle about what she wanted for the "Everytime" video, there was one thing she made totally clear to him - she wanted to die in the video. And in the treatment which finally met with her approval, she was reborn, but her life-force was channelled into a new-born baby.
The reason she was not present at the Teen Choice Awards, or the VMAs, or the WMAs, and why she will not be present at any other awards shows or indeed any other media showcase events for the foreseeable future is that she is determined to escape from the past.
The public may buy My Prerogative and her Greatest Hits album, or they may not. She doesn't care. She has no intention of promoting them in any way. "Britney Spears", pop and celeb phenomenon, is dying and she has placed a "Do Not Resuscitate" notice on her bed.
She spent most of 2003 trashing her image as a squeaky clean, morally upright, loveable innocent . By the time the Onyx Hotel tour was cancelled following her serious knee injury in June 2004, it was as if she felt she hadn't gone far enough. Now her beauty, glamour and showbiz gloss had to be trashed as well.
And so she has rarely taken much trouble to evade the increasingly savage attentions of the piranha-shoal of paparazzi who swarm constantly around her, nor has she in any way attempted to counter the constant stream of lies and inventions peddled by the tabloid press. As their bloodlust has reached a frenzy, fuelled by a growing sense that at last, after nearly 6 years of improbable survival, she has been fatally wounded, Britney Spears has simply looked them in the eye and put on another message T-shirt.
And so we come to the recent events in her life. The paparazzi pics of the last few weeks have shown us, not the grumpy, depressed-looking Britney of June and July, but a girl who is rarely seen without a smile on her face. Her interview with Cojo, her first live appearance on TV for a very long time and probably her last, was almost euphoric.
But for her fans, what she said - and what she didn't say - was deeply disturbing. She "had been doing way too much" before. What she valued in Kevin Federline, as much as his love, was the stability and calm he had brought to her life. She said not a word about anything she planned to do in relation to her career - because she has no plans.
"Being a young mom", she said, was her dream. And this is the dream which has now replaced the dream of stardom for this highly motivated, powerfully focussed and deeply determined young lady. Kevin Federline never had a chance. Britney wants a child, and she is going to have one. Her pregnancy will be announced within the next few weeks.
For her wedding, her hairstyle was simple, brunette and very un-showbiz. In an act of pure symbolism, she had stripped away the last vestiges of the glamour and unreality of the blonde bombshell Britney Spears and was ready to start again on a new life. "It feels like a beginning", she said later. "Britney Federline - I like that."
She didn't want her wedding to be a showbiz event. She didn't want it to be glamorous. Indeed, by the time of the after-wedding shindig, she had even removed her make-up. For the paparazzi she knew would be waiting, she wanted to look ordinary.
Since then, she has said that she's becoming a woman and things need to be different. That means more attention to her life, and less to her career. She plans to be a mother in 2005, when she's 23. Everything about her is inward-looking now. It's all about what feels right, and real, and honest for her. The impulsive decision to bring her wedding date forward was just something she wanted to do.
She isn't deliberately or wantonly neglecting her fans. She has simply cleansed herself of all that it means to be a pop star. She isn't intending to make a new CD, or tour, or do any one-off concerts or TV spots. She has fulfilled her contractual obligations to Jive and to Elizabeth Arden. The horizon looks clear. Soon, she believes, the media will lose interest in her, and she can proceed to be a young mom without a care in the world.
Her dreams now are of tucking her baby in at night, of singing sweet lullabies, of pushing her buggy down the main street, of talking to other young moms at the nursery school gates... Britney does not see herself as a typical showbiz mom, hardly ever there. She will work as hard at being a mom as she did at being a star.
Will she ever come back? That's what's on the knife-edge. She was meant to be starting a new movie soon, but, unless contracts have been signed already, that will be put on hold. She will now go straight into her new life as a housewife and expectant mother."
Whaddya think? That was my very first Britney article. And all of that seemed so obvious to me at the time. Dammit, I actually met someone who looked very like Britney in the woods during an LSD-induced trip and came back to report that SHE TOLD ME. Yet here we are in 2011 and she's STILL spending more time in recording studios than almost anybody, still making No.1 albums, still touring... You know what? I think I may have been wrong.
If Britney had really wanted to get the hell out of the game, her alleged post-SP post-partum breakdown period was the greatest opportunity and greatest excuse, yet she laid down the tracks for "Blackout" while pregnant with JJ, and the tracks for "Circus" while apparently so out of it that she couldn't look after herself. Music is a HUGE thing in her life. It's the rock she clings to when she needs to cling on to SOMETHING. It's delusional to claim that she's "over it".
The Autostraddle writer makes me sad. From everything she says, she feels too old and too self-conscious to be a fan now, and is hoping to provoke some messages of sympathy and solidarity from others in the same age group. Maybe that sentiment IS out there. Maybe it IS growing as people get older. I'm 30 and probably not quite as capable of intense devotion as I once was. But Britney is still my celebrity boo. I love her voice and I’m addicted to HER. She’s still the most endlessly loveable and fascinating celebrity out there.
People like GaGa, Rihanna, Katy Perry and Ke$ha are clearly major figures in showbiz, but their narratives are pretty simple. We observe them at work with respect and measure of enjoyment, but we observe them with a cold eye. They perform and it’s OK. We expect it to be, because there isn’t anything else. There isn't the conflict and paradox, the mystery and wondering, the mythical status that comes from having more fiction than fact attached to a name, as it is to Britney's. If I wrote one article about each of them, that would be enough.
care - or pretend to care - about Britney at all. I’ve never clocked her as any kind of lesbian icon. Normally we cleave unto more powerful celebrity proxies, like inadequate little boys get themselves a big, angry-looking dog. Second of all, I was disappointed that, for people who should have a subtle understanding of girls, their Brit-analysis was so shallow.
“Despite her canned affirmations, void of any emotion, to questions about whether she still wants to be a pop artist, there’s an overt vapidity behind her eyes and in her speech that, a few years ago, came off as a lack of intelligence, but perhaps it’s more indicative of a lack of interest in this path that was chosen for her at such a young age.
Yeah, we could blame Britney’s disinterest on drugs or nerves or stupidity or just being spoiled, that’d be easy — or you could be ableists and blame her psychiatric meds (I promise, it’s totally possible to take Seroquel AND dance). But that’s not what’s going on here.
Britney Spears is over it.”
The article reads like a manifesto for the "Free Britney" movement. It rants on and on about Big Bad Jamie (a man, after all - horrors!) and the insidious, ruthless money-grab that is, in the writer’s opinion, the true nature of the Conservatorship. However, there is little fact and a LOT of speculation and assumption. Such as that Britney is "over it". It doesn't seem to matter how emphatically Britney talks about her music, or how positively producer after producer talks about the experience of working with her. Some people either can't take it in, or choose to ignore it when they write articles like this.
People who write about Britney's desire to leave showbusiness can end up looking foolish. For example, I was probably the first person to write an article (almost 7 years ago!- it was called "Britney Spears has left the room") claiming that she was fed up of being Britney Spears, wanted to retire and become a full-time mom and housewife etc. etc. Check it out!
“An eerie atmosphere has descended upon the career of Mrs Britney Federline. There's a strange sense that it's balancing on a knife edge right now.
Over the last few months, Britney the woman has been slowly but steadily detaching and distancing herself from Britney Spears, the crazy, outrageous, much-maligned, over-protected pop princess. She has grown tired of being controlled by an army of money-grubbing managers and of being carried along on an overwhelming but remorseless and suffocating tide of success.
In 2003 she decided to take a break from the business, saying she was sick of herself. But she soon recovered, and within days was in the studio making her fourth album. Now, as the end of 2004 approaches, the sickness has become terminal.
The signs have been there for a while now, but we didn't want to read them. When she briefed David LaChappelle about what she wanted for the "Everytime" video, there was one thing she made totally clear to him - she wanted to die in the video. And in the treatment which finally met with her approval, she was reborn, but her life-force was channelled into a new-born baby.
The reason she was not present at the Teen Choice Awards, or the VMAs, or the WMAs, and why she will not be present at any other awards shows or indeed any other media showcase events for the foreseeable future is that she is determined to escape from the past.
The public may buy My Prerogative and her Greatest Hits album, or they may not. She doesn't care. She has no intention of promoting them in any way. "Britney Spears", pop and celeb phenomenon, is dying and she has placed a "Do Not Resuscitate" notice on her bed.
She spent most of 2003 trashing her image as a squeaky clean, morally upright, loveable innocent . By the time the Onyx Hotel tour was cancelled following her serious knee injury in June 2004, it was as if she felt she hadn't gone far enough. Now her beauty, glamour and showbiz gloss had to be trashed as well.
And so she has rarely taken much trouble to evade the increasingly savage attentions of the piranha-shoal of paparazzi who swarm constantly around her, nor has she in any way attempted to counter the constant stream of lies and inventions peddled by the tabloid press. As their bloodlust has reached a frenzy, fuelled by a growing sense that at last, after nearly 6 years of improbable survival, she has been fatally wounded, Britney Spears has simply looked them in the eye and put on another message T-shirt.
And so we come to the recent events in her life. The paparazzi pics of the last few weeks have shown us, not the grumpy, depressed-looking Britney of June and July, but a girl who is rarely seen without a smile on her face. Her interview with Cojo, her first live appearance on TV for a very long time and probably her last, was almost euphoric.
But for her fans, what she said - and what she didn't say - was deeply disturbing. She "had been doing way too much" before. What she valued in Kevin Federline, as much as his love, was the stability and calm he had brought to her life. She said not a word about anything she planned to do in relation to her career - because she has no plans.
"Being a young mom", she said, was her dream. And this is the dream which has now replaced the dream of stardom for this highly motivated, powerfully focussed and deeply determined young lady. Kevin Federline never had a chance. Britney wants a child, and she is going to have one. Her pregnancy will be announced within the next few weeks.
For her wedding, her hairstyle was simple, brunette and very un-showbiz. In an act of pure symbolism, she had stripped away the last vestiges of the glamour and unreality of the blonde bombshell Britney Spears and was ready to start again on a new life. "It feels like a beginning", she said later. "Britney Federline - I like that."
She didn't want her wedding to be a showbiz event. She didn't want it to be glamorous. Indeed, by the time of the after-wedding shindig, she had even removed her make-up. For the paparazzi she knew would be waiting, she wanted to look ordinary.
Since then, she has said that she's becoming a woman and things need to be different. That means more attention to her life, and less to her career. She plans to be a mother in 2005, when she's 23. Everything about her is inward-looking now. It's all about what feels right, and real, and honest for her. The impulsive decision to bring her wedding date forward was just something she wanted to do.
She isn't deliberately or wantonly neglecting her fans. She has simply cleansed herself of all that it means to be a pop star. She isn't intending to make a new CD, or tour, or do any one-off concerts or TV spots. She has fulfilled her contractual obligations to Jive and to Elizabeth Arden. The horizon looks clear. Soon, she believes, the media will lose interest in her, and she can proceed to be a young mom without a care in the world.
Her dreams now are of tucking her baby in at night, of singing sweet lullabies, of pushing her buggy down the main street, of talking to other young moms at the nursery school gates... Britney does not see herself as a typical showbiz mom, hardly ever there. She will work as hard at being a mom as she did at being a star.
Will she ever come back? That's what's on the knife-edge. She was meant to be starting a new movie soon, but, unless contracts have been signed already, that will be put on hold. She will now go straight into her new life as a housewife and expectant mother."
Whaddya think? That was my very first Britney article. And all of that seemed so obvious to me at the time. Dammit, I actually met someone who looked very like Britney in the woods during an LSD-induced trip and came back to report that SHE TOLD ME. Yet here we are in 2011 and she's STILL spending more time in recording studios than almost anybody, still making No.1 albums, still touring... You know what? I think I may have been wrong.
If Britney had really wanted to get the hell out of the game, her alleged post-SP post-partum breakdown period was the greatest opportunity and greatest excuse, yet she laid down the tracks for "Blackout" while pregnant with JJ, and the tracks for "Circus" while apparently so out of it that she couldn't look after herself. Music is a HUGE thing in her life. It's the rock she clings to when she needs to cling on to SOMETHING. It's delusional to claim that she's "over it".
The Autostraddle writer makes me sad. From everything she says, she feels too old and too self-conscious to be a fan now, and is hoping to provoke some messages of sympathy and solidarity from others in the same age group. Maybe that sentiment IS out there. Maybe it IS growing as people get older. I'm 30 and probably not quite as capable of intense devotion as I once was. But Britney is still my celebrity boo. I love her voice and I’m addicted to HER. She’s still the most endlessly loveable and fascinating celebrity out there.
People like GaGa, Rihanna, Katy Perry and Ke$ha are clearly major figures in showbiz, but their narratives are pretty simple. We observe them at work with respect and measure of enjoyment, but we observe them with a cold eye. They perform and it’s OK. We expect it to be, because there isn’t anything else. There isn't the conflict and paradox, the mystery and wondering, the mythical status that comes from having more fiction than fact attached to a name, as it is to Britney's. If I wrote one article about each of them, that would be enough.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
The Britneyology "Femme Fatale" Review
My best friend was talking about “Femme Fatale” the other day. “Each song, individually, is FANTASTIC,” she said. “Overall they're all REALLY great. I do have a problem with the album though... it may be a small problem but... " We will return to that “but” later.
One thing is very obvious about Britney Spears’ new album “Femme Fatale” - its creators were obsessed by uniformity. Maybe they took careful note of the praise retrospectively heaped upon “Blackout” for being a genuine “album” rather than a bagful of assorted goodies like “Circus”.
Consistency here is achieved in various ways - one is the simple device of making no room whatsoever for ballads. Every track is for dancing. Another is to have a control freak knob-twiddler doubling as Executive Producer so nothing can interfere with his vision. And a third is to give every track - bar one - the same characteristic SOUND. And this turns out to be surprisingly important.
Where “Circus” employed 8 different mix engineers and “Blackout” employed 4, “Femme Fatale” uses the same one on 15 of the 16 tracks on the deluxe edition. Unsurprisingly, Will.He.Is had to do it his own way, but elsewhere, Romanian-born hit-assister Serban Ghenea reigns supreme. He’s Dr Luke’s regular mixer, but on “Femme Fatale” the tracks by other producers are also mixed by him.
Ghenea comments: "I love to blend the elements of different musical styles that may not normally exist together in order to create a new sound for the artist and make it their own. 'Artist A' shouldn't sound like 'Artist C' just because a producer or mixer has their own signature sound.” In other words, he’s aware of the danger that Britney, Katy and Ke$ha could end up as soundalikes. And, true to his word, blending of styles does take place, and the consistent approach he adopts makes some fairly disparate songs slot together quite seamlessly.
Whether Dr Luke was working by instinct or by some grand strategic plan, his vision for Britney seems to have been to configure her as an old-school artist working in a contemporary environment. The outworking of this is an album with all the up-to-date dance credentials and pop electronica in the world, but illuminated by nostalgic Euro-disco sounds and chord sequences, nods and tributes to half-remembered hits from the past, and lots of deja-vu moments. Many listeners may even hear echoes of earlier Britney songs and vocal treatments. And Ghenea holds it all together.
This isn’t a bad direction to take. For one thing, it means that “Femme Fatale” has a familiar, cuddly, embraceable charm that first engages you, then forever welcomes you back like an old and trusted friend. It also means songs with old-style melodic hooks instead of cheap gimmicks. Hooks like these can rescue a situation. For example, when “Seal It With A Kiss” begins, it seems like yawnworthy generic filler until you get to “...and seal it with a kiss, ooo ooo eee ooo!” and suddenly it’s elevated. Nostalgia uberfreaks will be pleased to know that a song called “Sealed With A Kiss” was a hit for Brian Hyland in 1962.
The thing that has annoyed me most about the other reviews I’ve read is that nobody wants to give any credit to Britney herself. It’s almost as if the ghastly realisation that she lip-synchs her live shows has mutated in the minds of some critics into “She can’t sing at all, even in the studio”. And this nonsense has rendered them completely deaf to something that’s really very clear - her vocals on this album are among her best on record, and are perfectly strong and assertive in their own right, as good as those of her peers, with no need for excuses. These aren’t the kinds of song that lend themselves to a Loletta Holloway-style gore-fest, so I don’t know what her critics were expecting.
As ever, Britney uses a different approach to singing each song, and it’s a fascinating study. Purring, snarling, laughing, wheedling, demanding, sometimes vulnerable, sometimes strong... she shows anyone with mature critical faculties that singing isn’t all about hollering out a song at the top of your lungs. Granted, though, there are a couple of occasions on which she resorts - perhaps unnecessarily, given the context - to her robotic voice, and that seems to be the only thing the bashers are able to hear.
The running order of the 12 main tracks is well-chosen to give relief when it’s most required from Ghenea’s rather insistent bass-drum thumping on the many 4-4 stompers, but you wouldn’t want to be without at least some of the bonus tracks. As on “Circus”, they include some egregious, fascinating, standalone delights - yet even the bonus tracks fall within the embrace of the album’s signature sound.
And that brings us back to the “but” that my friend mentioned. Here it comes: “But even though each song is awesome... as a WHOLE, the album feels a bit... hmm... repetitive? Even a little boring, and I never thought I’d say that about Britney”. I can see her point. A few too many songs with monotonous or duotonous beginnings? I wouldn’t go as far as "boring" myself. Most of the tracks are now my little friends, y’see.
What we did agree on was this: “Women of sophisticated aesthetic tastes such as us would always want some light-and-shade, and with Britney you usually get it.” We didn’t get it this time, which is a shame. “Femme Fatale” contains just about as much variety as anyone could imagine, given its self-imposed constraints. I prefer the warmth, friendliness and fun of “Femme Fatale” to the bleakness of “Blackout”. But ballads are the windows into Britney’s soul, and I miss them.
Turning now to the individual tracks:
Till The World Ends
Co-written by Ke$ha, this uplifting, energising 80’s-style Euro-disco anthem has a repetitive verse but a soaring, melodic chorus with a chant that could be a cross between the Crazy Frog and a football chant, and gallops along to a thundering finale. Britney sings like a woman who has just rediscovered an appetite for life: “I can’t take it take it take it take NO MORRRRRE!!!” The production is competent, but somehow lacks impulsion at key moments. So it may be that the song doesn’t quite maximise its potential impact.
Hold It Against Me
This, the dramatically successful lead single from the album, also has a repetitive verse, and again the melodic chorus elevates it to a higher plane. Britney’s voice is somewhat more constricted than on “TTWE” but strong nonetheless, and the track is driven along by a pounding, grinding, heavy bassline. There’s a much-discussed dubstep instrumental break that may not have been 100% authentic but at least introduced dubstep to a wider audience.
Inside Out
One of the outstanding songs on the album, musically and lyrically, and one of closest to being a ballad. My best friend says she’s going to borrow from this text for her next break up! An extremely imaginative bassline dips and soars, wobbles, pulsates and goes almost subsonic. The production has great authority, clarity and space, and Britney’s vocal is distinct, open-throated and assertive: “So come on!!!” I would love for this track to become a single some day.
I Wanna Go
The fourth track sounds a little weak at first, after the brilliance of the third, but this is one of those songs where the hook keeps everything alive: “Shame on me-eee! [whistling]” At “I wanna go all the way” the chorus takes flight and somehow the second rendering of the verse seems more melodic than the first. Britney’s vocal is best-described as “coquettish” and the production amounts to little more than some standard-issue thumping.
How I Roll
An inspired piece of musical lunacy from Bloodshy and his Swedish pals provides a sharp contrast to the pop-rock beats that precede it, and is instantly memorable. The uncredited male duettist on the choruses could be better, especially at ending his words. Britney, her voice gentle and melodic, sings “You can be my thug tonight” and hostile critics accuse her of singing “fuck”. The track is an odd compilation of short segments, and the part that begins “shimmy shimmy” seems to come out of nowhere. But, amazingly, it fits. The instrumental tracks are predominantly piano, bass and percussion, and the production is sparse yet expansive, and very laid-back.
(Drop Dead) Beautiful
A hammer-heavy rhythmic thump-fest with a minimal melody that sneaks up on you with an ectoplasmic lack of substance. Britney, perhaps revealing some difficulty in engaging with such a slight piece of writing, slips into her most robotic mode so that, when Sabi takes her place to rap about vegetables, the substitution goes unnoticed by many critics. Highlights are the peal of girlish laughter and electronic “uh-oh!”
Seal It With A Kiss
The melody-averse verse seems worryingly similar to much that has gone before, perhaps leading to my friend’s allegation of repetitiveness. But then the hook comes along and changes everything, as explained above. The vaguely organ-tinged instrumental break is so minimal as to be surreal, but brings a strange sense of eerie calm to the center of the song. Britney is kittenish, staying just on the right side of robotic.
Big Fat Bass
Another eccentric moment, this time from Will.I.Am. The bass isn’t particularly deep, and it doesn’t seem any bigger when we’re assured that it is, but it’s still pretty big, and bombastic, and domineering. The highly melodic verse section beginning “You see me down on the floor” sounds like something stolen from a 70s hit by Earth Wind and Fire, right down to the harmonies. For some reason, Britney appears at first to be singing “I can be your trouble” but later it’s definitely “treble”. There’s a weird tap-dance while the kick-drum is awaited, then finally the bass does go deep and many elements come together in a rollicking conclusion.
Trouble For Me
Big nostalgia. This track sets off sounding exactly like an out-take from a much, much earlier Age of Britney, perhaps around 1999. Her vocal sound is even more of a throwback. The song itself is great, with a tune that the milkman could be whistling after one hearing, but the production undersells it, feeling uninspired and dragged down further by the brutalist thumping rhythm sound.
Trip To Your Heart
Forget anything you may have heard about certain tracks on “Blackout”, this is a real Giorgio Moroder-inspired disco number, with a beautiful, flowing, old-school melody. It would have been a smash in 1977. The electro-thump is more muted and muffled here, and instead the song is poked and prodded along by stabbing, jagging synth figures to left and right, while Britney’s soft, sweet, tuneful vocal sits serenely in the middle. For me, this is one of the highlights of the album and - unsurprisingly - it’s down to Bloodshy and his chums again.
Gasoline
Another great melody, with intelligent lyrics full of gasoline metaphors like “My heart only runs on Supreme” - I wonder how many young pop kids know what that means! The tune demands a wide vocal range from Britney, and her high register “you’re setting me on fire” is gripping. Her “hey yeah” punctuations are a real deja-vu moment but it’s hard to say exactly where we heard it before.
Criminal
Dare I utter the word “Gaga-esque”? I can imagine her singing it. But what that sounds like in my head is very different with Britney’s voice. She sings it both beautifully and convincingly, with much yearning, vulnerability and anxious emotion. That is her outstanding gift among her peers. “Criminal” is an extremely well-written and structured song; it’s one of the slowest on the album and - not by coincidence where Britney’s involved - one of the best.
Up ‘n’ Down
Back to a bygone age again, this track is built around one of the most familiar and heavily-used chord sequences in all of the history of dance music. And, of course, there’s that nostalgic charm again - but blended with modern programmed studio electronica. The rhythm is springy and subtler than it seems, and highly danceable.
He About To Lose Me
Rodney Jerkins contributes a beautiful song that brings out the best in Britney. She seems, amazingly, to revert to her pre-Jive voice - natural, unaffected, sweet of tone, open-voiced, with lovely vibrato applied to selected lines. Again it’s one of the slower, more thoughtful songs, and one of the most emotional moments on the album. Wonderful!
Selfish
I don’t know how this one sneaked under the wire and got into such high-quality company. Despite its “boom boom baby” hook, it really isn’t much good. It drives along with an athletic muscularity, a heavily percussive kick drum and some nice electric guitar, but that’s all.
Don’t Keep Me Waiting
Rodney Jerkins again, with another one of the album’s great moments - this time, real traditional rock with a backbeat instead of the all-pervasive pogoing rhythm we’ve been cursed with since the Stones released “Satisfaction”. “What the HELL?? I’m standing outside...” Britney gets into the mood, and “hell” sounds such a funny word in her mouth. Towards the end, her “don’t keep me waiting” sounds as if it’s accompanied by a hound-dog barking (OK, I know it isn’t but a girl can dream...)! And the whole thing thunders unstoppably towards the end of the album. A fitting finale, and one that shouldn’t have been relegated to the bonus tracks!
One thing is very obvious about Britney Spears’ new album “Femme Fatale” - its creators were obsessed by uniformity. Maybe they took careful note of the praise retrospectively heaped upon “Blackout” for being a genuine “album” rather than a bagful of assorted goodies like “Circus”.
Consistency here is achieved in various ways - one is the simple device of making no room whatsoever for ballads. Every track is for dancing. Another is to have a control freak knob-twiddler doubling as Executive Producer so nothing can interfere with his vision. And a third is to give every track - bar one - the same characteristic SOUND. And this turns out to be surprisingly important.
Where “Circus” employed 8 different mix engineers and “Blackout” employed 4, “Femme Fatale” uses the same one on 15 of the 16 tracks on the deluxe edition. Unsurprisingly, Will.He.Is had to do it his own way, but elsewhere, Romanian-born hit-assister Serban Ghenea reigns supreme. He’s Dr Luke’s regular mixer, but on “Femme Fatale” the tracks by other producers are also mixed by him.
Ghenea comments: "I love to blend the elements of different musical styles that may not normally exist together in order to create a new sound for the artist and make it their own. 'Artist A' shouldn't sound like 'Artist C' just because a producer or mixer has their own signature sound.” In other words, he’s aware of the danger that Britney, Katy and Ke$ha could end up as soundalikes. And, true to his word, blending of styles does take place, and the consistent approach he adopts makes some fairly disparate songs slot together quite seamlessly.
Whether Dr Luke was working by instinct or by some grand strategic plan, his vision for Britney seems to have been to configure her as an old-school artist working in a contemporary environment. The outworking of this is an album with all the up-to-date dance credentials and pop electronica in the world, but illuminated by nostalgic Euro-disco sounds and chord sequences, nods and tributes to half-remembered hits from the past, and lots of deja-vu moments. Many listeners may even hear echoes of earlier Britney songs and vocal treatments. And Ghenea holds it all together.
This isn’t a bad direction to take. For one thing, it means that “Femme Fatale” has a familiar, cuddly, embraceable charm that first engages you, then forever welcomes you back like an old and trusted friend. It also means songs with old-style melodic hooks instead of cheap gimmicks. Hooks like these can rescue a situation. For example, when “Seal It With A Kiss” begins, it seems like yawnworthy generic filler until you get to “...and seal it with a kiss, ooo ooo eee ooo!” and suddenly it’s elevated. Nostalgia uberfreaks will be pleased to know that a song called “Sealed With A Kiss” was a hit for Brian Hyland in 1962.
The thing that has annoyed me most about the other reviews I’ve read is that nobody wants to give any credit to Britney herself. It’s almost as if the ghastly realisation that she lip-synchs her live shows has mutated in the minds of some critics into “She can’t sing at all, even in the studio”. And this nonsense has rendered them completely deaf to something that’s really very clear - her vocals on this album are among her best on record, and are perfectly strong and assertive in their own right, as good as those of her peers, with no need for excuses. These aren’t the kinds of song that lend themselves to a Loletta Holloway-style gore-fest, so I don’t know what her critics were expecting.
As ever, Britney uses a different approach to singing each song, and it’s a fascinating study. Purring, snarling, laughing, wheedling, demanding, sometimes vulnerable, sometimes strong... she shows anyone with mature critical faculties that singing isn’t all about hollering out a song at the top of your lungs. Granted, though, there are a couple of occasions on which she resorts - perhaps unnecessarily, given the context - to her robotic voice, and that seems to be the only thing the bashers are able to hear.
The running order of the 12 main tracks is well-chosen to give relief when it’s most required from Ghenea’s rather insistent bass-drum thumping on the many 4-4 stompers, but you wouldn’t want to be without at least some of the bonus tracks. As on “Circus”, they include some egregious, fascinating, standalone delights - yet even the bonus tracks fall within the embrace of the album’s signature sound.
And that brings us back to the “but” that my friend mentioned. Here it comes: “But even though each song is awesome... as a WHOLE, the album feels a bit... hmm... repetitive? Even a little boring, and I never thought I’d say that about Britney”. I can see her point. A few too many songs with monotonous or duotonous beginnings? I wouldn’t go as far as "boring" myself. Most of the tracks are now my little friends, y’see.
What we did agree on was this: “Women of sophisticated aesthetic tastes such as us would always want some light-and-shade, and with Britney you usually get it.” We didn’t get it this time, which is a shame. “Femme Fatale” contains just about as much variety as anyone could imagine, given its self-imposed constraints. I prefer the warmth, friendliness and fun of “Femme Fatale” to the bleakness of “Blackout”. But ballads are the windows into Britney’s soul, and I miss them.
Turning now to the individual tracks:
Till The World Ends
Co-written by Ke$ha, this uplifting, energising 80’s-style Euro-disco anthem has a repetitive verse but a soaring, melodic chorus with a chant that could be a cross between the Crazy Frog and a football chant, and gallops along to a thundering finale. Britney sings like a woman who has just rediscovered an appetite for life: “I can’t take it take it take it take NO MORRRRRE!!!” The production is competent, but somehow lacks impulsion at key moments. So it may be that the song doesn’t quite maximise its potential impact.
Hold It Against Me
This, the dramatically successful lead single from the album, also has a repetitive verse, and again the melodic chorus elevates it to a higher plane. Britney’s voice is somewhat more constricted than on “TTWE” but strong nonetheless, and the track is driven along by a pounding, grinding, heavy bassline. There’s a much-discussed dubstep instrumental break that may not have been 100% authentic but at least introduced dubstep to a wider audience.
Inside Out
One of the outstanding songs on the album, musically and lyrically, and one of closest to being a ballad. My best friend says she’s going to borrow from this text for her next break up! An extremely imaginative bassline dips and soars, wobbles, pulsates and goes almost subsonic. The production has great authority, clarity and space, and Britney’s vocal is distinct, open-throated and assertive: “So come on!!!” I would love for this track to become a single some day.
I Wanna Go
The fourth track sounds a little weak at first, after the brilliance of the third, but this is one of those songs where the hook keeps everything alive: “Shame on me-eee! [whistling]” At “I wanna go all the way” the chorus takes flight and somehow the second rendering of the verse seems more melodic than the first. Britney’s vocal is best-described as “coquettish” and the production amounts to little more than some standard-issue thumping.
How I Roll
An inspired piece of musical lunacy from Bloodshy and his Swedish pals provides a sharp contrast to the pop-rock beats that precede it, and is instantly memorable. The uncredited male duettist on the choruses could be better, especially at ending his words. Britney, her voice gentle and melodic, sings “You can be my thug tonight” and hostile critics accuse her of singing “fuck”. The track is an odd compilation of short segments, and the part that begins “shimmy shimmy” seems to come out of nowhere. But, amazingly, it fits. The instrumental tracks are predominantly piano, bass and percussion, and the production is sparse yet expansive, and very laid-back.
(Drop Dead) Beautiful
A hammer-heavy rhythmic thump-fest with a minimal melody that sneaks up on you with an ectoplasmic lack of substance. Britney, perhaps revealing some difficulty in engaging with such a slight piece of writing, slips into her most robotic mode so that, when Sabi takes her place to rap about vegetables, the substitution goes unnoticed by many critics. Highlights are the peal of girlish laughter and electronic “uh-oh!”
Seal It With A Kiss
The melody-averse verse seems worryingly similar to much that has gone before, perhaps leading to my friend’s allegation of repetitiveness. But then the hook comes along and changes everything, as explained above. The vaguely organ-tinged instrumental break is so minimal as to be surreal, but brings a strange sense of eerie calm to the center of the song. Britney is kittenish, staying just on the right side of robotic.
Big Fat Bass
Another eccentric moment, this time from Will.I.Am. The bass isn’t particularly deep, and it doesn’t seem any bigger when we’re assured that it is, but it’s still pretty big, and bombastic, and domineering. The highly melodic verse section beginning “You see me down on the floor” sounds like something stolen from a 70s hit by Earth Wind and Fire, right down to the harmonies. For some reason, Britney appears at first to be singing “I can be your trouble” but later it’s definitely “treble”. There’s a weird tap-dance while the kick-drum is awaited, then finally the bass does go deep and many elements come together in a rollicking conclusion.
Trouble For Me
Big nostalgia. This track sets off sounding exactly like an out-take from a much, much earlier Age of Britney, perhaps around 1999. Her vocal sound is even more of a throwback. The song itself is great, with a tune that the milkman could be whistling after one hearing, but the production undersells it, feeling uninspired and dragged down further by the brutalist thumping rhythm sound.
Trip To Your Heart
Forget anything you may have heard about certain tracks on “Blackout”, this is a real Giorgio Moroder-inspired disco number, with a beautiful, flowing, old-school melody. It would have been a smash in 1977. The electro-thump is more muted and muffled here, and instead the song is poked and prodded along by stabbing, jagging synth figures to left and right, while Britney’s soft, sweet, tuneful vocal sits serenely in the middle. For me, this is one of the highlights of the album and - unsurprisingly - it’s down to Bloodshy and his chums again.
Gasoline
Another great melody, with intelligent lyrics full of gasoline metaphors like “My heart only runs on Supreme” - I wonder how many young pop kids know what that means! The tune demands a wide vocal range from Britney, and her high register “you’re setting me on fire” is gripping. Her “hey yeah” punctuations are a real deja-vu moment but it’s hard to say exactly where we heard it before.
Criminal
Dare I utter the word “Gaga-esque”? I can imagine her singing it. But what that sounds like in my head is very different with Britney’s voice. She sings it both beautifully and convincingly, with much yearning, vulnerability and anxious emotion. That is her outstanding gift among her peers. “Criminal” is an extremely well-written and structured song; it’s one of the slowest on the album and - not by coincidence where Britney’s involved - one of the best.
Up ‘n’ Down
Back to a bygone age again, this track is built around one of the most familiar and heavily-used chord sequences in all of the history of dance music. And, of course, there’s that nostalgic charm again - but blended with modern programmed studio electronica. The rhythm is springy and subtler than it seems, and highly danceable.
He About To Lose Me
Rodney Jerkins contributes a beautiful song that brings out the best in Britney. She seems, amazingly, to revert to her pre-Jive voice - natural, unaffected, sweet of tone, open-voiced, with lovely vibrato applied to selected lines. Again it’s one of the slower, more thoughtful songs, and one of the most emotional moments on the album. Wonderful!
Selfish
I don’t know how this one sneaked under the wire and got into such high-quality company. Despite its “boom boom baby” hook, it really isn’t much good. It drives along with an athletic muscularity, a heavily percussive kick drum and some nice electric guitar, but that’s all.
Don’t Keep Me Waiting
Rodney Jerkins again, with another one of the album’s great moments - this time, real traditional rock with a backbeat instead of the all-pervasive pogoing rhythm we’ve been cursed with since the Stones released “Satisfaction”. “What the HELL?? I’m standing outside...” Britney gets into the mood, and “hell” sounds such a funny word in her mouth. Towards the end, her “don’t keep me waiting” sounds as if it’s accompanied by a hound-dog barking (OK, I know it isn’t but a girl can dream...)! And the whole thing thunders unstoppably towards the end of the album. A fitting finale, and one that shouldn’t have been relegated to the bonus tracks!
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