How D'Ya Like It, How D'Ya Like It? Britney Spears' Blackout
Written: Nov 01 '07 (Updated Dec 27 '07)
Product Rating:
Pros: It's bad... really bad. But, hey, isn't that sorta the point?
Cons: A few defensive moments get in the way of an otherwise defiantly trashy vibe.
The Bottom Line: In which the author would like to use the Bottom Line to hawk his new line of W.W.B.D. jewelry, available at better flea markets and liquor stores.
plorentz's Full Review: Blackout by Britney Spears
By now, everyone who cares and many folks who don't have already heard (and maybe even purchased) Britney's latest single "Gimme More" (which has been freefalling on the pop charts since its iTunes debut a couple weeks ago), but even among the relatively few who actually like the song (count me in), there's no denying that with each new spin, the song only re-evokes images from Britney's horrifying performance of it on the VMAs. And with her child custody battles occupying the more breathless among our cable news anchors, most folks could be forgiven for not even knowing that she's just released her fifth studio album, the either very cheekily or very cluelessly titled Blackout. And so goes Britney Spears' recording career as spectacular public self-destruction. I'm sure Michael Bay could make a pretty cool summer blockbuster out of this.
That Blackout will flop - that is, that it will only sell a few hundred thousand copies before we start to see stacks of it showing up in used CD store two dollar bins - seems a foregone conclusion. That Blackout is a flaming bag of pop-star poop dropped on our collective front porches the night before Halloween has been self-evident to anyone who's given the matter a nanosecond of thought. But, then, I've always been suspicious of that kind of unanimity, especially when such a consensus is reached long before anyone reaching their conclusions has actually had a chance to hear what they're judging for themselves - and even more so when those making the judgments don't even plan to hear what they're judging even when they can. It's too easy to hate Britney right now without hearing what she's got.
There may be no greater loneliness than loving "Gimme More" - the brazen trashiness of its minimal, repetitive chorus; the strident artificiality of the neon synthesizer bleeps and reconstituted urban beats - the song is like a roach, a creature who seems fully aware of, absolutely unashamed of, even aggressively proud of - its own indestructible repulsiveness. On that level, I have to admire it. And perhaps, if Britney had been able to sustain that level of cockroach-ness across the entire record, Blackout might just have been a pop masterpiece. When she's not merely breathing heavy or performing high-school-slumber-party-level approximations of coital pouts and gasps and whines, her vocals throughout the disc all fall somewhere between porn star and C3PO. And while each preceding Britney record could be counted on for at least one really strong ballad (think "Sometimes"... or "Everytime"), Blackout is uniformly uptempo, with an emphasis on club-ready beats and minimal hip-hop-copped bass and synth sounds.
Which can be wonderful: "Break the Ice" and "Heaven on Earth" both boast irresistible (and completely harmless) sing-along melodies; and neither song is more than one Frankie Knuckles remix away from being a dance club staple. Meanwhile, the spare, skipping beats of "Ooh Ooh Baby" are a flagrant plagriarism of Gary Glitter, no stranger to tawdry tabloid scandal himself - coincidence?. Meanwhile, "Freakshow" delivers a merciless titty-twister to anyone who might have been just the tiniest bit scandalized by the decade's rash of celebrity internet sex videos. And a title like "Get Naked (I Got a Plan)" leaves little to the imagination, but the song elaborates further anyway. Subtlety is most assuredly not one of Britney's strengths, but then, subtlety isn't what we buy Britney's records for.
If anything, the major fault of this record is that it's not shameless or insubstantial enough, and like much porn, there's lots of sex on view, but it's generally unsexy. Also, while the lyrics of "Piece of Me" attempt to be a scathing rebuke of the tabloids who, let's face it, have kept Britney at household name status in the four years since she released her last real album (and just ask the Backstreet Boys, who released their own fifth studio album the same day, to far less fanfare, how much all that bad press is worth), it nevertheless feels defensive, weak, pitiful... and entirely ungrateful. She could have just as easily declared rightful ownership of her tabloid image, called the song "Piece of Meat" and sung it as the prostitute she's made out by many to be - as opposed to the somewhat victimized single mother she tries to present - she might have made a stronger (and even more sympathetic) point.
To be true, Blackout is a bad record. A really bad record. But then, it's no worse than a lot of other crap out there that gets far less attention for being crappy. More importantly, it's the first record that seems to reflect precisely and honestly who Britney is and what Britney wants as opposed to the product her handlers wanted to market. Always malleable to a fault (would Britney herself have chosen both "I'm a Slave 4 U" and "I'm Not A Girl, Not Yet a Woman" for the same record?), Blackout is the most uncompromised Britney Britney's been allowed to give us in her whole career. And while no one should ever mistake Britney for her generation's answer to Madonna, she may very well have come up with a 2007 Andrea True Connection: defiantly insubstantial, obligatorily lewd, sexually robotic and virtually unmusical - all that, and occasionally catchy too. Gimme, Gimme More, More, More.
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BECAUSE YOU NEED TO KNOW:
"Blackout" by Britney Spears
Jive Records
Released 10/30/07
Executive Producer: Britney Spears
Producers: Danja, Bloodshy & Avant, Freescha and Kara DioGuardi, "Fredwreck" Farid Nassar
43 min.
SONGS: Gimme More - Piece of Me - Radar - Break the Ice - Heaven on Earth - Get Naked (I Got a Plan) - Freakshow - Toy Soldier - Hot as Ice - Ooh Ooh Baby - Perfect Lover - Why Should I Be Sad?
After an absence of four years since her last studio album, Britney is back with what she does best. Featuring all new music, Blackout finds Britney w...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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