Time for a new musical direction? Debate!

Now that we have some months of hindsight with which to evaluate the potentialities and limitations of the "Femme Fatale" era, is it time to start planning now for a radical reinvention?

Recently I was talking to someone who knows and thinks a lot about Britney, but pretends not to. And we were asking ourselves how she could step up a gear or two and become, if you will, a “better” Britney than the one we know and love. We agreed that, while her core fanbase adores her, she doesn’t get a lot of respect from anyone else. The general public has been fed so many lurid stories by the media that they just can’t take her seriously.

Yet she can sing, wonderfully. She’s a genuine music fan, with a range of tastes that shows not only breadth but also depth. She has excellent musical instincts and highly perceptive musical sensibilities. She can interpret a song like nobody else in pop music today. An artist like this should be able to produce music that’s both profound and endlessly rewarding. We have glimpsed the artist she could be, with “I Run Away”, “State of Grace”, “Let go”, “Unusual You” and other wonders.

Tonight I was entranced by Rumer performing some of those beautiful, thoughtful, melodic songs from her album “Seasons of my soul”, and the thought running through my mind was that Britney could add so much of her musical personality to material like this and raise it to a level that we haven’t experienced since people like Karen Carpenter and Dusty Springfield were around.

Yes, “Femme Fatale” is a great, fun album of dance music, but it’s hardly deep. She sells the songs with her usual highly professional skill, but somehow you may feel, as I do, that they don’t leave her much room for maneuvre. Dr Luke’s formulas put her in a musical straitjacket. She’s too constrained by the genre to be able to express herself. Is this good enough for an artist who’s been at the top of her profession for 12 years and is now almost 30?

Even if it’s only for one experimental album, I think she needs to move into different territory, where she can grow as an artist, and spread her musical wings. I’m not suggesting that she should do it to gain respect from critics and the non-stanning public, though that would be nice. I want her to do it for herself, so she can feel what it’s like to drive an album with her own soul rather than be driven by some slick, self-serving producers.

So here’s the debate: would you like her to do this, or to stay as she is now? If you do want her to develop as an artist, but in a different way, how should she progress? What kinds of music should she be thinking of next time? What producer or producers should she work with? The friend I was talking to about this rejected the ritual calls for William Orbit and suggested Nellee Hooper instead. Would that work for Britney?

Over to you!