“Circus” doesn’t seem to be many people’s favorite Britney album. I think it’s cruelly underrated and contains a lot of top quality material that was at the very cutting edge of pop in 2008 and still sounds fresh today. And it features several tracks that make me proud to be a fan. These include “Mannequin”, “Mmm Papi” and “Unusual You”. “Unusual You” is the Britney song I’m asked to write about more than any other. I’ve been told by some fans that when they play it to non-fans, they’re often deeply impressed, and amazed when they hear who the artist is.
“Unusual You” was written by Bloodshy and Avant and Kasia Livinstone, produced by Bloodshy and Avant, and mixed by Anders Hvenare. It features real instruments as well as the usual programmed sounds: keyboards, bass and guitar by Bloodshy and Avant, and additional guitar by Henrick Jonback. Kasia Livingstone provides “background vocals”.
“Unusual You” has the ingredients of a classic pop song. Its lyrical concept is unique, yet is very simply and unforgettably expressed. People sometimes complain that Britney’s lyrics are shallow or nonsensical, but in this case they definitely aren’t. And the song has a lovely, beautifully constructed melody in which every phrase follows naturally and logically from the one before. It’s a song you could be singing along to before your first hearing has even ended.
There has been a fair amount of rather futile debate around the forums on the question of whether or not “Unusual You” is a ballad. If we go by Dictionary.com’s initial definition “any light, simple song, especially one of sentimental or romantic character, having two or more stanzas sung to the same melody”, then it is. The origins of the word “ballad” are connected with dancing, so it appears that ballads don’t have to be as slow as some people imagine.
Since the words are important to this song, I’ll quote them here, using a composite of the best renderings I can find on the web. If you can improve on them with an authoritative correction, please let me know:
(Verse 1 Part 1)
Nothing about you is typical
Nothing about you is predictable
You got me all twisted and confused
It’s so new.
Up till now I thought I knew love,
Nothing to lose, and it’s damaged ‘cause
Patterns will fall, as quick as I do,
But now...
(Verse 1 Part 2)
Bridges are burning, baby I’m learning
A new way of thinking now,
Love I can see, nothing will be just like it was,
Is that because...
(Chorus)
Baby, you’re so unusual,
Didn’t anyone tell you, you’re s’pposed to
Break my heart, I expect you to,
So why haven’t you?
Maybe you’re not even human ’cause
Only an angel could be so unusual,
Sweet surprise I could get used to,
Unusual You
(Verse 2 Part 1)
There’s so many things, when I was someone else,
Boxer in the ring, tryin’ to defend myself
And the private eyes see what’s goin’ on
That’s long gone
When I’m with you, I can just be myself
You’re always where you said you will be
Shocking cause I never knew love like this
Could exist.
(Verse 2 Part 2)
Tables are turnin’, my heart is soarin’
You’ll never let me down,
Answer the call, here after all,
Never met anyone
Like you.
(Chorus)
(Bridge)
I can’t believe that I almost didn’t try
When you called my name,
Now everything has changed.
(Final Chorus)
As can be seen from the above, the architecture of the song is both regular and straightforward. The words are bittersweet and ironic - a woman who is all too used to being treated with casual negligence, indifference and thoughtlessness is genuinely amazed to find someone who doesn’t behave that way. “Didn’t anyone tell you you’re supposed to break my heart? I expect you to, so why haven’t you?” It’s a “sweet surprise I could get used to”.
Yet the song doesn’t sound particularly optimistic. It’s as if Britney knows in her heart that the eventual heartbreak is inevitable, even if delayed for a while, and that her sweet surprise is a delusion. And come on, ladies - who calls their lover “unusual” and means it as a compliment?
The minor key sets a downbeat mood, and a strangely forlorn, empty atmosphere pervades certain phrases. Britney’s delivery, often conveying a strange and indefinable sadness and yearning, is a perfect vehicle for “Sehnsucht”, the intangible and unnameable existential longing for a someone, a something, another place, another time.... for most people, the magnetic pull of unspoken truths and unfathomable heartache that always lies beyond the grasp of language and of rational analysis. I know the concept of “Sehnsucht” may be difficult to grasp, so I promise to write a full article about it very soon.
Whether emerging from the mood of the song, or consciously intended to play a part in creating that mood, there are several musical sighs and grimaces, expressed in a variety of ways, where what should be joyous sounds depressive:
“it’s so new” (0:21)
“but now” (0:36)
the little downturned guitar note at 1:07 and 2:40
“hah ah ah ah, hah ah ah ah” (two alternating from each side)
“that’s long gone” (1:53)
The signature phrase “unusual you” doesn’t come off as celebratory, but reflective and rather sad. On “Boxer in the ring, tryin’ to defend myself...” - her voice catches on “tryin’”. And listen to “Now everything has changed” (3:23) - it’s not happy or cheerful, nor soft and loving, but harsh and metallic, like the announcement of a tragedy now, or in the making.
As is often the case with Bloodshy and Avant, most of the interest is in the innovative nature of the song, rather than in the production or mixing, which are unobtrusive and simple.
Imagining your head as a stereo soundstage and using headphones, you can hear that the majority of the vocal work comes from Britney herself. It’s not entirely clear if the high voice she harmonises with is hers, but the “hah ah ah ah” phrases definitely sound like Kasia Livingston. Britney’s lead vocal is at center most of the time, sometimes double-tracked or in harmony (also at center) and sometimes backed up by a double-tracked stereo pair divided in a narrow “V” between left and right channels. In the chorus, the “V” becomes wider. Kasia’s “hah ah ah ah” is placed at the extremes of left and right. It’s all very restrained, and doesn’t distract attention from the song.
The instrumental tracks are also pretty basic. The song begins with a fuzzy guitar at left and right, and a solo bass guitar figure. The fuzzy guitar continues throughout the song at various volumes and degrees of prominence. The rhythm tracks join in at 0:23 and are there till closing moments. They don’t amount to much more than regulation synth-drum thumping and three or four bass notes that are neither very deep nor very noticeable, especially during the verses. Synth-piano joins in for all the “hah ah ah ah” sections, the chorus is embellished by random synth notes, strums and bumps, and there are some synth strings during the bridge. “Now everything has changed” is followed by an amusingly Abba-esque keyboard riff.
“Unusual You” is a track that leaves a powerful first impression, and then implants itself in your brain, where this strange song, inhabited and infused by Britney’s subtle and sensitive vocal, nags away endlessly, with all its ambivalences, conflictions, wistfulness and dreamy yearnings.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Monday, July 18, 2011
"Blackout was a dead end!" Debate!
Everybody's talking all this stuff about me
Why don't they just let me live?
I don't need permission, make my own decisions
That's my prerogative!
It was late 2004 and Britney Spears was entering the rebellious phase of her career. Back then she wasn’t the puppet people thought she was, and she decided to take control. She married Kevin Federline and sacked most of the other people in her life, including cool-headed manager Larry Rudolph. And she released “My Prerogative” as her mission statement. It was the first step on a musical path that led to the release of her celebrated album “Blackout”.
This was her “protest” era, when her music often hit out at the media, with their malign interpretations of harmless events in her life, and extreme reactions to her decisions. The UK tabloids - led by the now defunct News Of The World - had been going to town on her since 2002, and from 2004 the US media joined in as well. The fast-rising celeb-bashing photo agencies were making more money out of her than she was making herself.
After 3 years of this treatment, Britney launched “Blackout”. On her only outing as Executive Producer, she carefully and deliberately excised all softness from the album. Beautiful leaked tracks such as fan favorites “Sugarfall”, “State of Grace” and “Let Go” remain unreleased. Some people like to be skeptical about the extent of Britney’s involvement with the planning of the album, but Jive’s then A&R chief Teresa LaBarbera Whites confirmed that she was very much involved, and discussed it on the phone with her several times a day.
So Britney wanted this album to express toughness and control. It would be wrong to characterize it as all about anger and rebellion, but tracks like “Piece of Me”, “Freakshow”, “Toy Soldier”, “Gimme More” and “Why Should I Be Sad” do skew it somewhat in that direction, and there is an overall attitude that shows in her vocal style. It’s a “love it or loathe it” album. The New Musical Express loathed it but The Times loved it and placed it in the top 5 of their “Hundred Best Pop Albums of the Noughties”.
Now here’s the thing. Dr Luke commented that Britney is her own genre, but is “Blackout” her genre? Sure, it’s a great album, but the fanbase seems to be cooling on the question of Britney’s media fixation. One humorist satirised the tracklisting of her albums as:
Song about the media
Song about sex
Song about the media
Song about sex
Song about the media....
...and so on. I noticed too that in our recent PoorBritney.com debate, people were saying that we’d had enough of the media-bashing.
That debate asked if it was time for Britney to find a new musical direction. And this is the problem. “Blackout” was all very well and good, but it didn’t lead anywhere. Since then it feels like she’s treading water. The next album, “Circus” was a candy store full of goodies but had no particular direction or character. “Femme Fatale” is more cohesive but that’s down to Dr Luke’s control-freakery rather than any new visions or increased involvement on Britney’s part.
After “Blackout”, we were hoping for more musical revelations, more intensity, more complexity. We were hoping that the bar for the ultimate quality in pop would be raised even higher by Britney. But it’s like “Blackout” wasn’t so much a summit of achievement as a musical dead end. She can’t go forward from it, she can only go backwards. DISCUSS!
Why don't they just let me live?
I don't need permission, make my own decisions
That's my prerogative!
It was late 2004 and Britney Spears was entering the rebellious phase of her career. Back then she wasn’t the puppet people thought she was, and she decided to take control. She married Kevin Federline and sacked most of the other people in her life, including cool-headed manager Larry Rudolph. And she released “My Prerogative” as her mission statement. It was the first step on a musical path that led to the release of her celebrated album “Blackout”.
This was her “protest” era, when her music often hit out at the media, with their malign interpretations of harmless events in her life, and extreme reactions to her decisions. The UK tabloids - led by the now defunct News Of The World - had been going to town on her since 2002, and from 2004 the US media joined in as well. The fast-rising celeb-bashing photo agencies were making more money out of her than she was making herself.
After 3 years of this treatment, Britney launched “Blackout”. On her only outing as Executive Producer, she carefully and deliberately excised all softness from the album. Beautiful leaked tracks such as fan favorites “Sugarfall”, “State of Grace” and “Let Go” remain unreleased. Some people like to be skeptical about the extent of Britney’s involvement with the planning of the album, but Jive’s then A&R chief Teresa LaBarbera Whites confirmed that she was very much involved, and discussed it on the phone with her several times a day.
So Britney wanted this album to express toughness and control. It would be wrong to characterize it as all about anger and rebellion, but tracks like “Piece of Me”, “Freakshow”, “Toy Soldier”, “Gimme More” and “Why Should I Be Sad” do skew it somewhat in that direction, and there is an overall attitude that shows in her vocal style. It’s a “love it or loathe it” album. The New Musical Express loathed it but The Times loved it and placed it in the top 5 of their “Hundred Best Pop Albums of the Noughties”.
Now here’s the thing. Dr Luke commented that Britney is her own genre, but is “Blackout” her genre? Sure, it’s a great album, but the fanbase seems to be cooling on the question of Britney’s media fixation. One humorist satirised the tracklisting of her albums as:
Song about the media
Song about sex
Song about the media
Song about sex
Song about the media....
...and so on. I noticed too that in our recent PoorBritney.com debate, people were saying that we’d had enough of the media-bashing.
That debate asked if it was time for Britney to find a new musical direction. And this is the problem. “Blackout” was all very well and good, but it didn’t lead anywhere. Since then it feels like she’s treading water. The next album, “Circus” was a candy store full of goodies but had no particular direction or character. “Femme Fatale” is more cohesive but that’s down to Dr Luke’s control-freakery rather than any new visions or increased involvement on Britney’s part.
After “Blackout”, we were hoping for more musical revelations, more intensity, more complexity. We were hoping that the bar for the ultimate quality in pop would be raised even higher by Britney. But it’s like “Blackout” wasn’t so much a summit of achievement as a musical dead end. She can’t go forward from it, she can only go backwards. DISCUSS!
Monday, July 11, 2011
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!
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!
Friday, July 8, 2011
Rejoice! News Of The World is closing down!
Everyone in the UK (and their dogs) knows about this amazing news already, but for the benefit of Britney fans in other territories, I felt an overwhelming need to make an announcement.
No publication has worked harder to drag Britney Spears’ name through the mud than the UK’s leading Sunday tabloid “The News Of The World”. Well, the great news for Britney and her fans, and for countless other celebs around the world, is that the News Of The World is closing down! The final issue is today, Sunday 10th July, 2011!
The reasons believed to be behind the shut-down are: the growing avalanche of revelations about the tabloid’s illegal activity in allegedly authorising a private detective to hack into the voicemail on the phones of celebs, royalty, dead soldier’s families, terrorist victims, and even murdered schoolgirls, and in paying the Metropolitan Police for information. Chief Executive of parent company News International, Rebekah Brooks, has hinted to the NOTW staff who are about to lose their jobs that the inevitability of the closure will be obvious to them all in a few months’ time.
Some may think that these methods of obtaining information, and the use of entrapment by "fake sheiks" and other underhanded devices, may at least suggest an interest in getting to the truth. But media commentators have pointed out that what it really shows is an interest in lazy journalism and a disinclination to get out of the office, do the legwork and talk to some real people who might actually KNOW the truth about something. A quick look at a small sample of their Britney-related stories paints you a picture of vivid imaginations, wild speculation and simple disregard for their victims:
Britney Spears has flipped her lid in rehab, trying to hang herself with a bedsheet!
Britney Spears and Paris Hilton's lesbian fling?
Britney Spears has been working with an adoption agency and is planning on adopting 6 year old Chinese twins ...
Britney Spears Claims to be the Anti-Christ
Britney and Kevin: A Renewed Spark?
Paris Hilton loves the fact that Britney gets turned on by going commando
Britney Spears Islam Conversion For Adnan Ghalib Wedding
Britney has a master plan to get her kids back: Fake her own death.
If we were to go back over the last 10 years, we would find hundreds of dubious stories just like these.
I guess the demise of the paper known to many as “The News of the Screws” will come as a loss and a disappointment to some fans though. Amazingly, there are those who still see her time with Sam Lutfi as a kind of golden age, when there were Britney alarms and excursions, shocks and horrors to talk about every day. The “Free Britney from the Conservators” campaign yearns for those great times to return. But for those who say they don’t know Britney personally and ask why they should care about her - the so-called fans who describe themselves as “consumers” - the sad news is that it’s going to be a lot harder to “consume” Britney without the help of the News Of The World.
But here's the thing. Although the 200 staff are already suing for wrongful dismissal, there's little chance that they will really lose their jobs. News International has obviously decided that they can't just reopen the NOTW with a new name in a month or two, when the storm has blown over. As a legal entity, it has to be quarantined from the rest of the News International organisation. However, it's already rumored that News International won't simply roll over and hand the market to their rivals. An entirely new Sunday tabloid is guaranteed to be on its way. And you can guess who its staff will mostly be composed of, give or take a rotten apple or two!
No publication has worked harder to drag Britney Spears’ name through the mud than the UK’s leading Sunday tabloid “The News Of The World”. Well, the great news for Britney and her fans, and for countless other celebs around the world, is that the News Of The World is closing down! The final issue is today, Sunday 10th July, 2011!
The reasons believed to be behind the shut-down are: the growing avalanche of revelations about the tabloid’s illegal activity in allegedly authorising a private detective to hack into the voicemail on the phones of celebs, royalty, dead soldier’s families, terrorist victims, and even murdered schoolgirls, and in paying the Metropolitan Police for information. Chief Executive of parent company News International, Rebekah Brooks, has hinted to the NOTW staff who are about to lose their jobs that the inevitability of the closure will be obvious to them all in a few months’ time.
Some may think that these methods of obtaining information, and the use of entrapment by "fake sheiks" and other underhanded devices, may at least suggest an interest in getting to the truth. But media commentators have pointed out that what it really shows is an interest in lazy journalism and a disinclination to get out of the office, do the legwork and talk to some real people who might actually KNOW the truth about something. A quick look at a small sample of their Britney-related stories paints you a picture of vivid imaginations, wild speculation and simple disregard for their victims:
Britney Spears has flipped her lid in rehab, trying to hang herself with a bedsheet!
Britney Spears and Paris Hilton's lesbian fling?
Britney Spears has been working with an adoption agency and is planning on adopting 6 year old Chinese twins ...
Britney Spears Claims to be the Anti-Christ
Britney and Kevin: A Renewed Spark?
Paris Hilton loves the fact that Britney gets turned on by going commando
Britney Spears Islam Conversion For Adnan Ghalib Wedding
Britney has a master plan to get her kids back: Fake her own death.
If we were to go back over the last 10 years, we would find hundreds of dubious stories just like these.
I guess the demise of the paper known to many as “The News of the Screws” will come as a loss and a disappointment to some fans though. Amazingly, there are those who still see her time with Sam Lutfi as a kind of golden age, when there were Britney alarms and excursions, shocks and horrors to talk about every day. The “Free Britney from the Conservators” campaign yearns for those great times to return. But for those who say they don’t know Britney personally and ask why they should care about her - the so-called fans who describe themselves as “consumers” - the sad news is that it’s going to be a lot harder to “consume” Britney without the help of the News Of The World.
But here's the thing. Although the 200 staff are already suing for wrongful dismissal, there's little chance that they will really lose their jobs. News International has obviously decided that they can't just reopen the NOTW with a new name in a month or two, when the storm has blown over. As a legal entity, it has to be quarantined from the rest of the News International organisation. However, it's already rumored that News International won't simply roll over and hand the market to their rivals. An entirely new Sunday tabloid is guaranteed to be on its way. And you can guess who its staff will mostly be composed of, give or take a rotten apple or two!
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Britney on Headphones! Part 3
In this series of articles, I’ve been discussing how listening with good headphones (preferably with a good CD player) enables us to separate Britney’s voice from the surrounding complexities of production and subject it to a less prejudiced yet more detailed scrutiny. With many singers, listening on headphones doesn’t tell you anything you don’t know from listening on speakers or in-ear phones. Why is it important to listen to Britney so carefully? Well, to appreciate her subtle skills. And to become aware of how persistently and how unfairly she has been misrepresented.
We shouldn’t allow ourselves to be brainwashed into the Pop Idol or X Factor mindset of thinking that only loud, declamatory, bombastic belting can be considered a good and credible form of singing. Headphone listening enables you to enjoy what is good about the softer, gentler kinds of singing and appreciate them for what they are instead of lambasting them for what they are not. In this final instalment of the Britney On Headphones series, I will concentrate on the positive rather than defending against the negative.
Our Britney Headphone Tour has arrived at “In The Zone”. By 2003, Britney had been the biggest thing in pop for 5 years and many critics wanted her time to be up. Throughout 2003, hoping for wish fulfilment, they had written article after article predicting the imminent end of her career. They claimed she was too old for her teenybopper clientele now. The teenyboppers had moved on to new teeny idols.
By the time ITZ was launched, these critics had already put themselves in a sneering, dismissive mindset. Pundits were openly discussing how her career in music was over, at the very moment that the album was No.1 in America. As a result, few reviewers took ITZ seriously enough to give it a thorough listen and try to figure out what it was all about, and why. She seemed to have a soft, whispery voice - but what the hell, she was only a teeny-pleaser, and nobody expects them to be talented singers.
What they didn’t seem to grasp was that, while their backs were turned, Britney had transitioned into an adult artist and, rather than try to appeal to a new bunch of 12-year-olds, had brought her existing audience with her. And they were now young adults. A market survey discovered that her typical demographic was 16-26. This is an age range that finds people in the full flowering of their sexual awareness, and Britney expressed her own adulthood by giving them a thoroughly sexual album.
It would be fair to say that most of the songs on ITZ are the sound of sex and seduction in one form or another. When we listen to ITZ we enter a special, precious little world where lives an artist so engrossed in her art that her interpretations differentiate songs OF seduction from songs ABOUT seduction. And she differentiates all of those from songs that are simply about... well.... sex. The voices she chooses are not loud and in-your-face. Superficially it may seem that all of them are similar, but some are firmer, some are dreamier, some are sweeter... Listening on headphones helps you to detect fine distinctions in softness and attack.
And quite apart from analysing her technique, listening to ITZ on headphones is a rewarding experience because Britney Spears does this kind of thing better than anyone in the history of pop. On ITZ there are songs that you really can’t imagine being sung convincingly by anyone else.
Towards the end of the album there are three songs that express a great deal of emotion in an extremely understated way. No shrieking melodrama here. “Everytime” is sung in a very controlled way. Listen to the care with which she sings the ENDS of words like “here” and “clear”. Yet here and there are sad, broken-hearted little sighs. The Scumfrog remix picks up on these and fashions a devastating drama from them.
“The Answer” contains vocals of wonderful tenderness and love. By the way, you can’t give the credit for this to a backing singer because Britney did all the vocals herself. The chorus is as smooth, liquid and soft as you can imagine, and near the end, at 3:05, she begins to sing, simultaneously with the chorus, “Who can hold me.... wipe the tears away... who can give me love....?” and I doubt that any words have ever been sung to a lover more sweetly than here.
And finally, “Don’t Hang Up”. The song is simply about phone sex, but the yearning and empathy she conveys bring some of us to tears. I’ve never seen anyone give her credit for the astonishing way in which she sustains notes invested with all the softness, warmth and sweetness in the world while barely breathing them. (Try it yourself if you think it’s easy. Yet everyone takes it for granted.) And there’s my favorite Britney moment of all time: “Tell me, tell me what you see....feel me, feel me underneath” The hairs on the back of my neck stand up as her words drift out of the headphones like the voice of an angel. Oh.my.God.
Now “Blackout”. This has to be a case of everyone hearing what they expected to hear, which was a basket case, heavily medicated and probably either bald-headed or with a pink wig, being propped up in a studio for as long as it took to get some phrases that could be stitched together into a few vocal fragments. These were then skillfully interwoven with the voices of backing singers to create studio fabrications with a Britney Spears flavor. Nobody seemed to notice that the album was recorded entirely BEFORE her breakdown problems, or that she was Executive Producer!
How carefully were people listening to Britney at that time? Well, one critic wrote about her notorious 2007 VMA performance “the song appeared to consist entirely of the words ‘gimme gimme’” - thus turning the meaning of the song through 180 degrees. It would be fair to say that even a proportion of fans simpy accepted that her singing on “Blackout” was minimal and weak. Yet a listen on headphones shows that this is not so. Not on ANY track.
On “Gimme More” her lead vocal BURSTS forth, full of edge and attitude. There’s nothing whispery about “Piece of Me” and nothing weak about her work on the choruses of “Radar” and “Perfect Lover”. On “Ooh Ooh Baby” her voice fills your ears, and on “Why should I be sad?” you can hear the resilience in her tone.
If we decide to be charitable to the lazy, ignorant listeners who sympathised with the NME in its decision to make “Blackout” their Worst Album of the Year (a decision that is looking increasingly perverse and discreditable with the benefit of hindsight) we might say that the album contained so many spectacularly brilliant productions that people were dazzled by the wall of sound and forgot to listen to Britney. Given the spurious “back story” about her mental state during the time of the recording sessions, they then decided that this must have been because she was scarcely present.
When we enter the “Circus” era, the atmosphere is very different, because this was her supposed “comeback” - not from her previous album, which had been released only a year earlier, but from her personal, apparently mental problems that had seen her hospitalized. It was good that the critics were disposed to hear better singing from her this time around, which meant that they at least listened with a vaguely optimistic mindset.
If we listen to “Circus” on good headphones, it feels as if a window opens and we can hear with great clarity. And what we hear is that the character of her singing has undergone a change. Here, the edginess and attitude in her voice that characterized “Blackout” have gone, and she seems more at peace with herself, more relaxed and confident. There is nothing breathy or whispery at all, she sings mostly in her mid-register and her vocal technique seems smooth and effortless. Check out her confident work on “Blur” and “Lace and Leather”.
Even in “Unusual You”, where previously she would have used her high, breathy voice, she’s mid-range and solid. Where she uses falsetto, as in “Out From Under” and “Mannequin” for example, it’s perfectly integrated and the transition is seamless. And it’s interesting to hear the teasing sex-kitten voice, used widely on “Femme Fatale”, get some early exercise in the verses of “If U Seek Amy” and “Mmm Papi” (she never uses it in choruses). “My Baby” is sung extremely sweetly, in a high register, but without a hint of breathiness.
“My Baby”, incidentally, is a track that, heard on good headphones, sounds much more engaging than you would ever have imagined, BECAUSE the qualities you can hear in Britney’s voice make it sound so sincere. On speakers, it tends to sound sugary and twee. Some other tracks that gain stature on headphones are “Shattered Glass” with its odd bass bumps and subsonic rumbling, “Circus” with its crystal-clear vocal production at center and striking double-tracked fill-ins from Britney at left and right, and “Phonography” which comes over as much more subtle and complex. For a real oddity, listen to Britney’s opening lines in “Mannequin”. What do you hear?
And finally (did someone say “Thank God”?!) we get to “Femme Fatale”. What you discover on headphones here is that you don’t feel as “close” to Britney’s vocals. They seem more impersonal. The electronic effects that make the album sound so exciting have the effect of seeming to distance Britney from us and occasionally you may wish you could simply hear HER. On this outing, she’s different again. Not breathy as on ITZ, not attitudinal as on “Blackout” and not smooth and effortless as on “Circus”, this time she sings a little higher and a lot more forcefully, and on headphones you can appreciate how much her vocals dominate every mix - something that isn’t nearly as obvious on speakers.
Things to listen for on your headphones: On “Till The World Ends”, a much more detailed and focused “wall of sound” reveals itself. “Hold It Against Me” is an overwhelming experience, a real aural assault, recorded very loud and with Britney’s insistent vocals coming at you from all directions. On “How I Roll”, at the start of the verse, it sounds like two different takes of Britney’s lead vocal competing with each other. On “Big Fat Bass”, note the very particular qualities of the bass track as each incident arrives (including the famous kick-drum).
“Criminal” is particularly interesting. The mix leaves a very audible gap at the beginning, just to left of center, which is filled at 0:34 by a guitar. And it’s fascinating to analyse exactly how the intensity is built from 2:28 to the end. It’s a lovely mix. On “Up and Down”, at 1:18, listen to the very subtle harmonies from the backing singers. And on “He About To Lose Me”, notice how Britney’s vocals in the chorus start wide and double-tracked but gradually narrow until they’re a solo at center.
And that’s it! We’re done!
We shouldn’t allow ourselves to be brainwashed into the Pop Idol or X Factor mindset of thinking that only loud, declamatory, bombastic belting can be considered a good and credible form of singing. Headphone listening enables you to enjoy what is good about the softer, gentler kinds of singing and appreciate them for what they are instead of lambasting them for what they are not. In this final instalment of the Britney On Headphones series, I will concentrate on the positive rather than defending against the negative.
Our Britney Headphone Tour has arrived at “In The Zone”. By 2003, Britney had been the biggest thing in pop for 5 years and many critics wanted her time to be up. Throughout 2003, hoping for wish fulfilment, they had written article after article predicting the imminent end of her career. They claimed she was too old for her teenybopper clientele now. The teenyboppers had moved on to new teeny idols.
By the time ITZ was launched, these critics had already put themselves in a sneering, dismissive mindset. Pundits were openly discussing how her career in music was over, at the very moment that the album was No.1 in America. As a result, few reviewers took ITZ seriously enough to give it a thorough listen and try to figure out what it was all about, and why. She seemed to have a soft, whispery voice - but what the hell, she was only a teeny-pleaser, and nobody expects them to be talented singers.
What they didn’t seem to grasp was that, while their backs were turned, Britney had transitioned into an adult artist and, rather than try to appeal to a new bunch of 12-year-olds, had brought her existing audience with her. And they were now young adults. A market survey discovered that her typical demographic was 16-26. This is an age range that finds people in the full flowering of their sexual awareness, and Britney expressed her own adulthood by giving them a thoroughly sexual album.
It would be fair to say that most of the songs on ITZ are the sound of sex and seduction in one form or another. When we listen to ITZ we enter a special, precious little world where lives an artist so engrossed in her art that her interpretations differentiate songs OF seduction from songs ABOUT seduction. And she differentiates all of those from songs that are simply about... well.... sex. The voices she chooses are not loud and in-your-face. Superficially it may seem that all of them are similar, but some are firmer, some are dreamier, some are sweeter... Listening on headphones helps you to detect fine distinctions in softness and attack.
And quite apart from analysing her technique, listening to ITZ on headphones is a rewarding experience because Britney Spears does this kind of thing better than anyone in the history of pop. On ITZ there are songs that you really can’t imagine being sung convincingly by anyone else.
Towards the end of the album there are three songs that express a great deal of emotion in an extremely understated way. No shrieking melodrama here. “Everytime” is sung in a very controlled way. Listen to the care with which she sings the ENDS of words like “here” and “clear”. Yet here and there are sad, broken-hearted little sighs. The Scumfrog remix picks up on these and fashions a devastating drama from them.
“The Answer” contains vocals of wonderful tenderness and love. By the way, you can’t give the credit for this to a backing singer because Britney did all the vocals herself. The chorus is as smooth, liquid and soft as you can imagine, and near the end, at 3:05, she begins to sing, simultaneously with the chorus, “Who can hold me.... wipe the tears away... who can give me love....?” and I doubt that any words have ever been sung to a lover more sweetly than here.
And finally, “Don’t Hang Up”. The song is simply about phone sex, but the yearning and empathy she conveys bring some of us to tears. I’ve never seen anyone give her credit for the astonishing way in which she sustains notes invested with all the softness, warmth and sweetness in the world while barely breathing them. (Try it yourself if you think it’s easy. Yet everyone takes it for granted.) And there’s my favorite Britney moment of all time: “Tell me, tell me what you see....feel me, feel me underneath” The hairs on the back of my neck stand up as her words drift out of the headphones like the voice of an angel. Oh.my.God.
Now “Blackout”. This has to be a case of everyone hearing what they expected to hear, which was a basket case, heavily medicated and probably either bald-headed or with a pink wig, being propped up in a studio for as long as it took to get some phrases that could be stitched together into a few vocal fragments. These were then skillfully interwoven with the voices of backing singers to create studio fabrications with a Britney Spears flavor. Nobody seemed to notice that the album was recorded entirely BEFORE her breakdown problems, or that she was Executive Producer!
How carefully were people listening to Britney at that time? Well, one critic wrote about her notorious 2007 VMA performance “the song appeared to consist entirely of the words ‘gimme gimme’” - thus turning the meaning of the song through 180 degrees. It would be fair to say that even a proportion of fans simpy accepted that her singing on “Blackout” was minimal and weak. Yet a listen on headphones shows that this is not so. Not on ANY track.
On “Gimme More” her lead vocal BURSTS forth, full of edge and attitude. There’s nothing whispery about “Piece of Me” and nothing weak about her work on the choruses of “Radar” and “Perfect Lover”. On “Ooh Ooh Baby” her voice fills your ears, and on “Why should I be sad?” you can hear the resilience in her tone.
If we decide to be charitable to the lazy, ignorant listeners who sympathised with the NME in its decision to make “Blackout” their Worst Album of the Year (a decision that is looking increasingly perverse and discreditable with the benefit of hindsight) we might say that the album contained so many spectacularly brilliant productions that people were dazzled by the wall of sound and forgot to listen to Britney. Given the spurious “back story” about her mental state during the time of the recording sessions, they then decided that this must have been because she was scarcely present.
When we enter the “Circus” era, the atmosphere is very different, because this was her supposed “comeback” - not from her previous album, which had been released only a year earlier, but from her personal, apparently mental problems that had seen her hospitalized. It was good that the critics were disposed to hear better singing from her this time around, which meant that they at least listened with a vaguely optimistic mindset.
If we listen to “Circus” on good headphones, it feels as if a window opens and we can hear with great clarity. And what we hear is that the character of her singing has undergone a change. Here, the edginess and attitude in her voice that characterized “Blackout” have gone, and she seems more at peace with herself, more relaxed and confident. There is nothing breathy or whispery at all, she sings mostly in her mid-register and her vocal technique seems smooth and effortless. Check out her confident work on “Blur” and “Lace and Leather”.
Even in “Unusual You”, where previously she would have used her high, breathy voice, she’s mid-range and solid. Where she uses falsetto, as in “Out From Under” and “Mannequin” for example, it’s perfectly integrated and the transition is seamless. And it’s interesting to hear the teasing sex-kitten voice, used widely on “Femme Fatale”, get some early exercise in the verses of “If U Seek Amy” and “Mmm Papi” (she never uses it in choruses). “My Baby” is sung extremely sweetly, in a high register, but without a hint of breathiness.
“My Baby”, incidentally, is a track that, heard on good headphones, sounds much more engaging than you would ever have imagined, BECAUSE the qualities you can hear in Britney’s voice make it sound so sincere. On speakers, it tends to sound sugary and twee. Some other tracks that gain stature on headphones are “Shattered Glass” with its odd bass bumps and subsonic rumbling, “Circus” with its crystal-clear vocal production at center and striking double-tracked fill-ins from Britney at left and right, and “Phonography” which comes over as much more subtle and complex. For a real oddity, listen to Britney’s opening lines in “Mannequin”. What do you hear?
And finally (did someone say “Thank God”?!) we get to “Femme Fatale”. What you discover on headphones here is that you don’t feel as “close” to Britney’s vocals. They seem more impersonal. The electronic effects that make the album sound so exciting have the effect of seeming to distance Britney from us and occasionally you may wish you could simply hear HER. On this outing, she’s different again. Not breathy as on ITZ, not attitudinal as on “Blackout” and not smooth and effortless as on “Circus”, this time she sings a little higher and a lot more forcefully, and on headphones you can appreciate how much her vocals dominate every mix - something that isn’t nearly as obvious on speakers.
Things to listen for on your headphones: On “Till The World Ends”, a much more detailed and focused “wall of sound” reveals itself. “Hold It Against Me” is an overwhelming experience, a real aural assault, recorded very loud and with Britney’s insistent vocals coming at you from all directions. On “How I Roll”, at the start of the verse, it sounds like two different takes of Britney’s lead vocal competing with each other. On “Big Fat Bass”, note the very particular qualities of the bass track as each incident arrives (including the famous kick-drum).
“Criminal” is particularly interesting. The mix leaves a very audible gap at the beginning, just to left of center, which is filled at 0:34 by a guitar. And it’s fascinating to analyse exactly how the intensity is built from 2:28 to the end. It’s a lovely mix. On “Up and Down”, at 1:18, listen to the very subtle harmonies from the backing singers. And on “He About To Lose Me”, notice how Britney’s vocals in the chorus start wide and double-tracked but gradually narrow until they’re a solo at center.
And that’s it! We’re done!
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Britney on Headphones! Part 2
I sometimes think I need to update my database of Britney Spears vocal conspiracy theories like Symantec updates its antivirus protection. Something new arrives every day. The latest was mentioned in the comments on my last article, and was an allegation that Britney doesn’t sing the chorus on “He about to lose me”. All I want to say about that is.... if people listened to music using CDs and good headphones, these theories would never arise, and if they did, nobody would believe in them.
My Sennheiser HD580 headphones and Sony XA20ES audiophile CD player make all the details transparent, and I am happy to confirm that there’s no reason to believe that Britney doesn’t sing the chorus. Throughout most of the song, the chorus is divided into a stereo pair of Britneys as is customary these days, but at the beginning of the final repeats, it shifts to the center “channel” for about 10 seconds, and during that brief period you can hear a deeper voice, also in the center, behind Britney’s. If that’s of any interest to you! The "three dimensional" capabilities of headphones allow the elements of a recording to be isolated and identified much more easily.
When CDs are converted to compressed media such as MP3, much of the detail in the sound is stripped out to save on storage space, but the detail removed can make fine distinctions hard to detect. And once the detail has been removed, the remaining sounds are packed together and large areas of similar sounds are “averaged” to compress and reduce file size even further, resulting in even more sound loss. The biggest loss is in harmonic frequencies, which are essential in giving a sound, such as a human voice, its unique and identifiable character. To listen to this degraded standard of sound on the usual little in-ear phones is to degrade the listening experience even further. As one specialist audio blogger puts it, “most people aren’t enjoying their music at its best, and don’t know what they’re missing out on.”
There are distinctions between backing vocals, background vocals and “additional background vocals”, which are all terms you will find in the credits on Britney’s albums. Once you’re in a position - using your good-quality headphones - to identify the different “threads” in a mix, you will often find that Britney is singing most of her own backing vocals, even when she’s not credited - but it may be difficult in a complex mix to separate them from a multi-tracked lead vocal. The “background” or “additional background” vocals lie even deeper in the layers of what you’re normally hearing. On Britney’s recordings they are often extremely subtle in effect.
In case you may ever think that you’re getting confused and imagining her voice in places where it isn’t actually present, there are some “control” experiments available. On the “Oops I Did It Again” album, there are several tracks (such as “Satisfaction” and “What U See Is What U Get”) where Britney’s voice only appears on the center “channel” and all vocals to right and left of center are clearly not hers. On some tracks there are “fanchoirs” in addition to the backing vocals, and you can easily tell their sound apart from Britney’s. Once your ears become accustomed to the harmonics of different voices, you can always keep track of hers.
Aside from the truth about conspiracy theories, what else do we discover as we roam around Britneyland with our headphones? Something I find fascinating is the different ways her voice has been presented since the beginning of her career. On the “Baby One More Time” album, it seemed like a straightforward feature showcase for a new, young, talented singer. On every track, her voice was planted at center, right in front of the listener, in plenty of space, in a natural acoustic. She sang in a middle register that seemed natural for her. There wasn’t a synthesized or vocoderized “effect” in sight. But you can detect an effort to give her voice an added physical impact in “Deep in my heart” by placing a percussive bass guitar apparently right in front of her, and in “The Beat Goes On” her voice has extra reverb to blend with the initial retro-style context. It’s interesting to hear how, even at that early age, she adapts to different songs. In “E-mail my heart” you can hear a greater warmth, tenderness and smoothness than you ever detect on speakers, and on “I will be there” a much harder edge.
Another reason to listen on headphones is to pick up some of the subtleties of production, and there are plenty of them here. For example, the blend of elements makes “Baby One More Time” seem pretty funky - almost gritty - on speakers, but on headphones you discover a surprising degree of refinement and a much cleaner mix than you might have suspected. You can also strand out the different layers of sound, and isolate some strange little details, like the panting sound to right of center at the start of Verse 1 that changes to a keyboard chord in Verse 2, or the very deep bass notes at 1:55. Note how Max Martin was doing the same thing with choruses in 1998 as Darkchild was doing in 2010.
“Soda Pop” turns out to be surprisingly interesting, although most people don’t rate it as a song. Britney has three quite separate vocal lines, at left, right and center, and there’s also a voice that chimes in JUST off-center at left and right at 1:45. But, although her voice is present in all directions, she isn’t involved in any of the harmonies. Eric Foster White was the producer, and he uses exactly the same techniques in “I will still love you”.
Moving on to the “Oops I Did It Again” album, you can hear that the overall A&R and production philosophy hasn’t changed much. It’s still a showcase for a featured artist, but this time there is greater disparity in the styles of the productions. Some are more expensive and elaborate, with real string sections featuring on “When your eyes say it”, “Dear Diary”, “Heart” and “Girl in the mirror”. “Don’t go knocking on my door” has an identical acoustic to most of the BOMT album - a much smaller, more intimate setting than Max Martin’s “Oops I Did It Again” (the song) which is sonically fuller, with an over-arching synth and big chords and a more reverberating, less intimate ambiance that also encompasses Britney’s voice.
Max still makes tracks to this formula, but it has never been something he’s stuck with. For example, on “Where are you now” the production is simple, acoustic, with all the necessary stillness and calm, and the elements placed carefully to leave space for a fine vocal performance. This album finds Britney extending the scope of her vocal performance from the straightforward strength and power of “You got it all” and “Girl in the mirror” through to the high, sweet, girlish voice of “Dear Diary” and the soft, breathy, sweet, affectionate treatment of “When your eyes say it”. If Britney had a serious talent deficit, it would have been exposed on “Where are you now?”, but her vocal is simply beautiful - smoother and better integrated than anything on her first album.
Any odd details to be observed in passing on our headphone tour? Once you’ve noticed them on headphones you can often hear them on speakers too. For instance, in “Stronger” did you notice what sounds like a very deep synthesized male voice going “oh-oh-oh” in the first few bars of the verse? It sounds even more like that in the second verse. There’s a lot more reverb than usual around Britney’s voice, and almost subsonic sounds like distant thunder here and there. On “One kiss from you” there’s a strange metallic noise that stands out sharply at left and right during the verse, and an extremely spatially focused bassline. On “When your eyes say it” the string and choral sounds swell impressively across the virtual “soundstage”.
And now, the “Britney” album before our tour takes a break. There’s a long and dishonorable tradition of making disparaging remarks about Britney’s singing, and much of it dates back to this era. The novelty of “Britney Spears the pop phenomenon” was wearing off and the media decided it was time to take her down a peg or two. It was all too easy to take cheap shots based on ignorance and prejudice and it’s sad to reflect on how many people, even within her fanbase, accepted the generic criticisms without question. She sang a couple of songs in an innocent, childlike voice so that meant her voice wasn’t what it had been; was weak, whispery or whatever. No matter that she sang other songs with plenty of power and edge.
It was an unhappy coincidence that this was the era when Britney, with typical modesty about her own status and enthusiasm for the talents of others, began to make the song the star, instead of herself. While just about every other singer was adapting songs to fit the characteristics of their voices, Britney was doing the exact opposite. On “Britney” she delivers her interpretations of the needs of each individual song, using a wider and more diverse range of styles than on any of her other albums. With a good sound source and good headphones you can get involved in her characterizations, enjoy her variety and subtlety, and come to a better understanding of what she’s trying to do.
You hear her conscious use of a higher register and a more urgent timbre to her voice in some of the songs, deploying more enhancements, sounding less warm, comfortable and natural than before, and you may wonder if Britney, or her A&R team, had decided that the time for showcasing her as a new teenage sweetheart, with material to match, was over and it was time to appeal to a maturing fanbase with tougher material and more imaginative mixes. You may observe that, on some tracks, the double-tracked stereo pair to left and right are louder than the center channel, and her voice appears to be more a flavor in the mix than the center of attention. But it’s not like that all over the album, and with headphones you can appreciate those songs where an unobtrusive acoustic is giving her voice its rightful place, and space to shine.
Finally, this album is famous for its “noises offstage”, random sound effects, overlapping lyrics, whispered asides, giggling and laughter, and with good headphones you can hear all of this far more clearly, and in three dimensions. It’s like being transported into the middle of a small group of people listening to music, getting in the groove and having a lot of fun. It’s something I would hate to miss out on!
Next time: ITZ, Blackout, Circus and Femme Fatale.
My Sennheiser HD580 headphones and Sony XA20ES audiophile CD player make all the details transparent, and I am happy to confirm that there’s no reason to believe that Britney doesn’t sing the chorus. Throughout most of the song, the chorus is divided into a stereo pair of Britneys as is customary these days, but at the beginning of the final repeats, it shifts to the center “channel” for about 10 seconds, and during that brief period you can hear a deeper voice, also in the center, behind Britney’s. If that’s of any interest to you! The "three dimensional" capabilities of headphones allow the elements of a recording to be isolated and identified much more easily.
When CDs are converted to compressed media such as MP3, much of the detail in the sound is stripped out to save on storage space, but the detail removed can make fine distinctions hard to detect. And once the detail has been removed, the remaining sounds are packed together and large areas of similar sounds are “averaged” to compress and reduce file size even further, resulting in even more sound loss. The biggest loss is in harmonic frequencies, which are essential in giving a sound, such as a human voice, its unique and identifiable character. To listen to this degraded standard of sound on the usual little in-ear phones is to degrade the listening experience even further. As one specialist audio blogger puts it, “most people aren’t enjoying their music at its best, and don’t know what they’re missing out on.”
There are distinctions between backing vocals, background vocals and “additional background vocals”, which are all terms you will find in the credits on Britney’s albums. Once you’re in a position - using your good-quality headphones - to identify the different “threads” in a mix, you will often find that Britney is singing most of her own backing vocals, even when she’s not credited - but it may be difficult in a complex mix to separate them from a multi-tracked lead vocal. The “background” or “additional background” vocals lie even deeper in the layers of what you’re normally hearing. On Britney’s recordings they are often extremely subtle in effect.
In case you may ever think that you’re getting confused and imagining her voice in places where it isn’t actually present, there are some “control” experiments available. On the “Oops I Did It Again” album, there are several tracks (such as “Satisfaction” and “What U See Is What U Get”) where Britney’s voice only appears on the center “channel” and all vocals to right and left of center are clearly not hers. On some tracks there are “fanchoirs” in addition to the backing vocals, and you can easily tell their sound apart from Britney’s. Once your ears become accustomed to the harmonics of different voices, you can always keep track of hers.
Aside from the truth about conspiracy theories, what else do we discover as we roam around Britneyland with our headphones? Something I find fascinating is the different ways her voice has been presented since the beginning of her career. On the “Baby One More Time” album, it seemed like a straightforward feature showcase for a new, young, talented singer. On every track, her voice was planted at center, right in front of the listener, in plenty of space, in a natural acoustic. She sang in a middle register that seemed natural for her. There wasn’t a synthesized or vocoderized “effect” in sight. But you can detect an effort to give her voice an added physical impact in “Deep in my heart” by placing a percussive bass guitar apparently right in front of her, and in “The Beat Goes On” her voice has extra reverb to blend with the initial retro-style context. It’s interesting to hear how, even at that early age, she adapts to different songs. In “E-mail my heart” you can hear a greater warmth, tenderness and smoothness than you ever detect on speakers, and on “I will be there” a much harder edge.
Another reason to listen on headphones is to pick up some of the subtleties of production, and there are plenty of them here. For example, the blend of elements makes “Baby One More Time” seem pretty funky - almost gritty - on speakers, but on headphones you discover a surprising degree of refinement and a much cleaner mix than you might have suspected. You can also strand out the different layers of sound, and isolate some strange little details, like the panting sound to right of center at the start of Verse 1 that changes to a keyboard chord in Verse 2, or the very deep bass notes at 1:55. Note how Max Martin was doing the same thing with choruses in 1998 as Darkchild was doing in 2010.
“Soda Pop” turns out to be surprisingly interesting, although most people don’t rate it as a song. Britney has three quite separate vocal lines, at left, right and center, and there’s also a voice that chimes in JUST off-center at left and right at 1:45. But, although her voice is present in all directions, she isn’t involved in any of the harmonies. Eric Foster White was the producer, and he uses exactly the same techniques in “I will still love you”.
Moving on to the “Oops I Did It Again” album, you can hear that the overall A&R and production philosophy hasn’t changed much. It’s still a showcase for a featured artist, but this time there is greater disparity in the styles of the productions. Some are more expensive and elaborate, with real string sections featuring on “When your eyes say it”, “Dear Diary”, “Heart” and “Girl in the mirror”. “Don’t go knocking on my door” has an identical acoustic to most of the BOMT album - a much smaller, more intimate setting than Max Martin’s “Oops I Did It Again” (the song) which is sonically fuller, with an over-arching synth and big chords and a more reverberating, less intimate ambiance that also encompasses Britney’s voice.
Max still makes tracks to this formula, but it has never been something he’s stuck with. For example, on “Where are you now” the production is simple, acoustic, with all the necessary stillness and calm, and the elements placed carefully to leave space for a fine vocal performance. This album finds Britney extending the scope of her vocal performance from the straightforward strength and power of “You got it all” and “Girl in the mirror” through to the high, sweet, girlish voice of “Dear Diary” and the soft, breathy, sweet, affectionate treatment of “When your eyes say it”. If Britney had a serious talent deficit, it would have been exposed on “Where are you now?”, but her vocal is simply beautiful - smoother and better integrated than anything on her first album.
Any odd details to be observed in passing on our headphone tour? Once you’ve noticed them on headphones you can often hear them on speakers too. For instance, in “Stronger” did you notice what sounds like a very deep synthesized male voice going “oh-oh-oh” in the first few bars of the verse? It sounds even more like that in the second verse. There’s a lot more reverb than usual around Britney’s voice, and almost subsonic sounds like distant thunder here and there. On “One kiss from you” there’s a strange metallic noise that stands out sharply at left and right during the verse, and an extremely spatially focused bassline. On “When your eyes say it” the string and choral sounds swell impressively across the virtual “soundstage”.
And now, the “Britney” album before our tour takes a break. There’s a long and dishonorable tradition of making disparaging remarks about Britney’s singing, and much of it dates back to this era. The novelty of “Britney Spears the pop phenomenon” was wearing off and the media decided it was time to take her down a peg or two. It was all too easy to take cheap shots based on ignorance and prejudice and it’s sad to reflect on how many people, even within her fanbase, accepted the generic criticisms without question. She sang a couple of songs in an innocent, childlike voice so that meant her voice wasn’t what it had been; was weak, whispery or whatever. No matter that she sang other songs with plenty of power and edge.
It was an unhappy coincidence that this was the era when Britney, with typical modesty about her own status and enthusiasm for the talents of others, began to make the song the star, instead of herself. While just about every other singer was adapting songs to fit the characteristics of their voices, Britney was doing the exact opposite. On “Britney” she delivers her interpretations of the needs of each individual song, using a wider and more diverse range of styles than on any of her other albums. With a good sound source and good headphones you can get involved in her characterizations, enjoy her variety and subtlety, and come to a better understanding of what she’s trying to do.
You hear her conscious use of a higher register and a more urgent timbre to her voice in some of the songs, deploying more enhancements, sounding less warm, comfortable and natural than before, and you may wonder if Britney, or her A&R team, had decided that the time for showcasing her as a new teenage sweetheart, with material to match, was over and it was time to appeal to a maturing fanbase with tougher material and more imaginative mixes. You may observe that, on some tracks, the double-tracked stereo pair to left and right are louder than the center channel, and her voice appears to be more a flavor in the mix than the center of attention. But it’s not like that all over the album, and with headphones you can appreciate those songs where an unobtrusive acoustic is giving her voice its rightful place, and space to shine.
Finally, this album is famous for its “noises offstage”, random sound effects, overlapping lyrics, whispered asides, giggling and laughter, and with good headphones you can hear all of this far more clearly, and in three dimensions. It’s like being transported into the middle of a small group of people listening to music, getting in the groove and having a lot of fun. It’s something I would hate to miss out on!
Next time: ITZ, Blackout, Circus and Femme Fatale.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Listening to Britney on Headphones! Part 1.
Anyone who’s been reading my stuff for the last 7 years will know that I constantly bang on about listening to Britney with good quality headphones. A reference to them is an essential part of every “In-Depth” review at NewBritneyology.com. I know some people think this is hilarious, but I can’t legislate for those who are determined to embrace their own ignorance. My enthusiasm for headphones isn’t some kind of weird, perverted fetish - you really do miss a lot if you never use them.
Obviously I don’t expect people to go rushing around on buses, trains and bicycles with massive “cans” clamped to their heads. Perhaps I should clarify that by “headphones” I mean the things that surround your ears rather than going inside them. For listening on the move, there’s no realistic alternative to those horrible little in-ear things known as earphones. But if you want to pass judgment on Britney’s singing ability (and let’s face it, who doesn’t ?) you should be prepared to take the trouble to be properly informed, and to get some proper headphones for home use.
I’m not saying you should get rid of your speakers. Goodness knows, I’d be the worst hypocrite if I said that - my home set-up involves a 300-watt amplifier and 150-watt subwoofer. A good thing my nearest neigbor lives 150 yards away. But speakers give you a very different listening experience to headphones. Music fills the room and the big fat bass (or maybe the kick drum) makes the windows rattle. But it’s not an analytical approach. It's a wall of sound. I would never write a review of a Britney album based on hearing it on speakers.
But why headphones? Aren’t earphones pretty much the same thing and just as good? The simple answer is - no, they’re not. I’m not going to bore you with a lot of technical stuff, but the way the sound waves communicate with your ears is totally different, and with earphones there are too many factors that compromise what you’re hearing. You may think you’re hearing everything that’s on the record, but you aren’t.
In my Britney reviews I always talk about the virtual “soundstage” inside your head, and where the various components of the track are located. With earphones, you get a more constricted, compressed “soundstage” and it can be difficult to separate the components. As someone recently told me, “With earphones the music plays "inside" your head rather than coming at you from the outside, to left and right.” In my experience earphones also fail to give you any sense of depth to front and back. On headphones, when you listen to “The Answer”, P. Diddy’s words “Talk to me” seem to come from behind your left shoulder. So do Britney’s words “Don’t hang up” in the eponymous song. On earphones, everything is placed in a 45-degree “V” around front-center.
Earphones fail to reveal many subtleties. For example, on “Shadow”, the swirling atmospherics can’t be “placed” at all whereas with good headphones you can detect their circular motion between the center and right “channels”. Headphones also reveal that, during the chorus, the effect has been created of Britney standing front center, with a group of backing singers arranged in a semi-circle behind her. In the last 2 lines of each verse and during the middle-eight, three Britneys sing in harmony, one left, one right, one center. But with earphones, as with speakers, these individual elements simply merge together.
On “Piece of Me”, the majority of people are convinced that Britney’s voice has been electronically altered. Wikipedia, for example, comments “Spears's voice is heavily synthesized”, But this is untrue. With the benefit of good-quality headphones you can distinguish the vocals from the effects and it turns out that a few words, and ONLY a few words, in the song are overlaid with a kind of muted electronic fuzz. It’s like seeing something behind net curtains. But with earphones this effect cannot be isolated from an overall impression of fuzz.
Reviewing “Blackout”, Kelefa Sanneh says “Even when not buried in electronics, her distinctive singing voice sounds unusually vague, and sometimes it’s hard to be sure it’s hers. It isn’t always. On this album, unlike on previous ones, Ms. Spears isn’t credited with doing any of her own backing vocals.” From those remarks it’s clear that Sanneh wasn’t listening with a decent set of headphones, because if you do, you’re never in any doubt that it’s Britney, AND that she’s singing almost all of the vocals herself.
It’s almost universally accepted that Britney hardly sings a natural note on “Femme Fatale”. The mind-numbing cliche is that her voice is “heavily autotuned”. She herself remarked in an interview that she’d decided to use more electronics this time. But with good headphones, what do you actually hear? In fact, her lead vocal is natural on about 90 percent of the album! There are maybe two or three songs where her voice is electronically altered in the verse, here and there a few words are blatantly synthesized for dramatic effect, and one track a synthesizer is mixed in with her vocal on the center channel, but that’s all! I won’t spoil your fun by saying where these things happen - you’ll have to buy some headphones...
But which headphones? They don’t have to be crazily expensive. One of my dad’s friends had Stax electrostatic ‘phones that were too pricey for us, even though we all were mightily impressed by hearing Jimi Hendrix’s “All Along The Watchtower” seemingly circling our heads like an angry hornet. My own headphones are Sennheiser HD580s, which were five-star rated and said to be studio quality in their day but are no longer available. I would recommend that you buy something in the same category. Don’t spend less than about $200. If that seems a lot, consider that custom-fitted in-ear phones can cost over $500!
Finally, I should say that the analytical quality of your ‘phones will be somewhat nullified if the music source is a compressed sound file like an MP3 or an AAC, which will have a high level of distortion, and severely limited frequency and dynamic ranges. It would be best to listen to Britney on CD. Yes, in physical form!! And if you do.... I can guarantee a revelation! It will be like hearing these albums again for the first time, but in high-definition and 3D! You’ll be amazed at how good they are, and probably surprised to find that most of the shade thrown at Britney’s voice is based on misinformation and prejudice.
In Part Two of this article, next week, I’ll take you on a guided headphone tour of Britney’s albums.
Obviously I don’t expect people to go rushing around on buses, trains and bicycles with massive “cans” clamped to their heads. Perhaps I should clarify that by “headphones” I mean the things that surround your ears rather than going inside them. For listening on the move, there’s no realistic alternative to those horrible little in-ear things known as earphones. But if you want to pass judgment on Britney’s singing ability (and let’s face it, who doesn’t ?) you should be prepared to take the trouble to be properly informed, and to get some proper headphones for home use.
I’m not saying you should get rid of your speakers. Goodness knows, I’d be the worst hypocrite if I said that - my home set-up involves a 300-watt amplifier and 150-watt subwoofer. A good thing my nearest neigbor lives 150 yards away. But speakers give you a very different listening experience to headphones. Music fills the room and the big fat bass (or maybe the kick drum) makes the windows rattle. But it’s not an analytical approach. It's a wall of sound. I would never write a review of a Britney album based on hearing it on speakers.
But why headphones? Aren’t earphones pretty much the same thing and just as good? The simple answer is - no, they’re not. I’m not going to bore you with a lot of technical stuff, but the way the sound waves communicate with your ears is totally different, and with earphones there are too many factors that compromise what you’re hearing. You may think you’re hearing everything that’s on the record, but you aren’t.
In my Britney reviews I always talk about the virtual “soundstage” inside your head, and where the various components of the track are located. With earphones, you get a more constricted, compressed “soundstage” and it can be difficult to separate the components. As someone recently told me, “With earphones the music plays "inside" your head rather than coming at you from the outside, to left and right.” In my experience earphones also fail to give you any sense of depth to front and back. On headphones, when you listen to “The Answer”, P. Diddy’s words “Talk to me” seem to come from behind your left shoulder. So do Britney’s words “Don’t hang up” in the eponymous song. On earphones, everything is placed in a 45-degree “V” around front-center.
Earphones fail to reveal many subtleties. For example, on “Shadow”, the swirling atmospherics can’t be “placed” at all whereas with good headphones you can detect their circular motion between the center and right “channels”. Headphones also reveal that, during the chorus, the effect has been created of Britney standing front center, with a group of backing singers arranged in a semi-circle behind her. In the last 2 lines of each verse and during the middle-eight, three Britneys sing in harmony, one left, one right, one center. But with earphones, as with speakers, these individual elements simply merge together.
On “Piece of Me”, the majority of people are convinced that Britney’s voice has been electronically altered. Wikipedia, for example, comments “Spears's voice is heavily synthesized”, But this is untrue. With the benefit of good-quality headphones you can distinguish the vocals from the effects and it turns out that a few words, and ONLY a few words, in the song are overlaid with a kind of muted electronic fuzz. It’s like seeing something behind net curtains. But with earphones this effect cannot be isolated from an overall impression of fuzz.
Reviewing “Blackout”, Kelefa Sanneh says “Even when not buried in electronics, her distinctive singing voice sounds unusually vague, and sometimes it’s hard to be sure it’s hers. It isn’t always. On this album, unlike on previous ones, Ms. Spears isn’t credited with doing any of her own backing vocals.” From those remarks it’s clear that Sanneh wasn’t listening with a decent set of headphones, because if you do, you’re never in any doubt that it’s Britney, AND that she’s singing almost all of the vocals herself.
It’s almost universally accepted that Britney hardly sings a natural note on “Femme Fatale”. The mind-numbing cliche is that her voice is “heavily autotuned”. She herself remarked in an interview that she’d decided to use more electronics this time. But with good headphones, what do you actually hear? In fact, her lead vocal is natural on about 90 percent of the album! There are maybe two or three songs where her voice is electronically altered in the verse, here and there a few words are blatantly synthesized for dramatic effect, and one track a synthesizer is mixed in with her vocal on the center channel, but that’s all! I won’t spoil your fun by saying where these things happen - you’ll have to buy some headphones...
But which headphones? They don’t have to be crazily expensive. One of my dad’s friends had Stax electrostatic ‘phones that were too pricey for us, even though we all were mightily impressed by hearing Jimi Hendrix’s “All Along The Watchtower” seemingly circling our heads like an angry hornet. My own headphones are Sennheiser HD580s, which were five-star rated and said to be studio quality in their day but are no longer available. I would recommend that you buy something in the same category. Don’t spend less than about $200. If that seems a lot, consider that custom-fitted in-ear phones can cost over $500!
Finally, I should say that the analytical quality of your ‘phones will be somewhat nullified if the music source is a compressed sound file like an MP3 or an AAC, which will have a high level of distortion, and severely limited frequency and dynamic ranges. It would be best to listen to Britney on CD. Yes, in physical form!! And if you do.... I can guarantee a revelation! It will be like hearing these albums again for the first time, but in high-definition and 3D! You’ll be amazed at how good they are, and probably surprised to find that most of the shade thrown at Britney’s voice is based on misinformation and prejudice.
In Part Two of this article, next week, I’ll take you on a guided headphone tour of Britney’s albums.
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