silktempest's Full Review: Circus by Britney Spears
After the chaotic Blackout, BRITNEY SPEARS bounced back to charts and MTV alike. Like stock markets after a depression, risen by virtue of inertia and blind faith. Like bankrupt insurance companies, nobody wants them to sink. MTV and fans gave her a vote of confidence. She disagrees. She thinks Blackout was her "serious" comeback record or at least, the first of her own to be taken seriously by pundits and paparazzi in half a decade. That's why she parodies her debut sleeve in this Circus. It's like the second coming of BRITNEY but it doesn't feels like - it feels like a despondent, after-world message of disarray. The record is not grayscale but it feels monotone, devoid of that reckless abandon. It is BRITNEY's uncomfortable comfort zone. As if we never lived before 9-11.
Alienated from the world outside, locked in her wonderwall, BRITNEY replicates Blackout without the thrill of it all, the chaotic mess rumbling through Pro-Tools and larger-than-life vocoders. The revolving door of producers remains because they have become BRITNEY's world. If she cant' figure out what saved her career, the record becomes a monumental obscenity, as its virtues fall outside the skin-deep procedures, outside the picture, outside the sleeve. The sleeve is a parody of her debut's sleeve, the women hidden behind the girl, breeding sons hidden behind studio gloss. An atrocity exhibition?
When she succeeds, that's a matter of nostalgia, be people's nostalgia for the mid-1980s or BRITNEY's own impulse to replicate her mid-1990s run to superstardom. When she doesn't succeeds it is simply a matter of going with the market (e)motions.
Womanizer seems like Sarah Palin doing a strip - it's unbelievable, but it sounds funny. The insistence BRITNEY displays in her grandiloquent, longer-than-life video, ready to evade Abu Ghraib and the collapse of the American economy all at once with a whip in her hand is praiseworthy. But the sonic achievements are modest. The number was designed to ignite the charts but its insistence is worrisome - as if it were a matter of life and death. Pop songs don't get that serious without a social background in which they can resonate. BRITNEY naked, unveiling an undeniable chorus and a purring backing, confident, bad girl marching over martial beats grabbing people by throat and shaking. It is eloquent because it DOESN'T hide the scandals, the vulgarity, N things she did during the last decade. It still blames men for what she does - not just one more time, several, uncountable, as the insisting, massive, pummeling Womanizer choruses displays obsessively. It is also eloquent because it fells like Bush bullying. Flaws included, the only pop blockbuster from this circus. It's a statement on bliss.
After the stock marketing catharsis, welcome to the Circus - the title track! A grandiloquent ride through...BRITNEY's freakshow. There's the trailblazing choruses, the odd beats, the vulgar rhymes and c`mons. Circus sounds like TIMBALAND running out of his fumes. Just a like a circus full of clowns. The regrettable sound effects do not much good to the apathetic proceedings. Put RIHANNA's Disturbia in the washing machine and let it go...IF U COULD DO THAT ALLL WITHOUT LETTING GO OF UR BREATH UR A GREAT KISSER.
Out From Under (?) is a meditative ballad, as if BRITNEY wanted to compete with LEONA LEWIS, DIDO. It feels adequate for the purpose, but she sounds straightjacket. So let me go, asks BRITNEY - let it go, baby, get rid of this posing. The grandiose edifices of faux strings and ruminating pianos are impressive on their own and that's quite bad in a popstar record "consolidating strengths". She sounds like old MARIAH CAREY.
Kill The Lights is a BRITNEY diatribe against the recording (?) industry, paparazzi, competitors, KEVIN FEDERLINE and the sorts. Specially, it is a reiteration of her faith in her sex appeal and marketing potential. IS THAT MONEY IN UR POCKET OR ARE U HAPPY TO SEE ME? It feels like easy come, easy go money BRITNEY. One of the most undistinguished singles of the decade, it has also a horrific rapping in the background, topping the innocuous effects of Pieces of Me. A vulgar display of power...Wishful thinking.
We saw BRITNEY breaking the ice now it's time for...Shattered Glass. The unusual sound clips (for BRITNEY) are quickly wiped out and replaced by slicky sanitized Pop-Disco, halfway between Ooops...and Give Me More. The ludicrous slowing down effects are deep down low in the realm of trivial. Take a dull walking on this thin glass...The choruses feel tired and the beats fade into oblivion.
The referential bandwagon goes on with If You Seek Amy. The WINEHOUSE reference is strangely the motto for a KATY PERRY parody. Parody? It is way batter than I Kissed A Girl (even because BRITNEY was versed in those vulgar clichés a decade before PERRY). Love me hate me say what you want about me but all of the boys and all of the girls are begging to f*ck me. The pumping parade goes astray. BRITNEY can't say those things explicitly like PERRY and she is not as subtle as WINEHOUSE, she can't tease. In between there's an accommodated popstar.
Even a retro name, Unusual You, is conjured to convey the mid-1980s atmosphere for this BRITNEY Circus. A recycled riff from the last B-52s album ignites the lukewarm Synthpop ballad (?) showing that BRITNEY is a haphazard puppet in the hands of unscrupulous eclectic producers. Then a BOLSHOI piano (!) out of a sudden provides the coda for the underdeveloped chorus. A detached, vocoded BRITNEY toying around electronic glockenspiels is a bizarre image - at least after FEDERLINE. This kind of bricolage, this market melting pot, mirrors the aesthetic disarray and the accommodated attitude of our Detroit giants. If asked to record a Polka number, BRITNEY would never say no.
Blur is not a Damon Albarn homage. Do you wish it were? It is an ethereal ballad, from a mature woman, what is perfectly expectable. Posing like a stupid girl wouldn't make much sense. But that doesn't detract from the fact that BRITNEY's "subtleness" is intact. As ever, she floats on the surface of an amorphous arrangement of beats and faux strings, intended for maximum impact but lacking coherence. Everything stills a blur, BRITNEY summarizes consciously and hauntingly. Her sense of purpose surpasses any expectations of a throughout mature BRITNEY - in the fake endlessness of a digital Lolita.
Mmm Papi is her mid-1980s Synthpop-Hip-Hop "crossover" number. Crossing over to what purposes? BRITNEY sounds funny trying to rap or posing as Electro CINDY LAUPER. That's the core of Circus - a funny record, BRITNEY getting things out of people's complacency. It's absurd, it's even grotesque but it delivers something. Take it by the absolutely retro keyboards, vintage 1984. The idiotic factor skyrockets and listeners rejoice.
KATY PERRY's has just released her own Mannequin - indeed, the most interesting thing about that singer. If BRITNEY really wants to top kissing girls and dating gays, she will need more than genetic Electro. Success, excess. Even the rhymes are generic. What saves the results from utter generality are the MADONNA yelling and the mesmerizing production values, as bombastic and lethargic as any would expect from PHARRELL. Give it to him! Forget about BRITNEY and enjoy the ride.
Lace and Leather - that sounds more adequate for SPEARS' post-apocalypse rebuttal. It is an energetic retro track, with Funk basses and moderate vocoding in her thin voice. A mid-pace chorus, as ever. BRITNEY tortures syllabi but this time you can't notice the Pro Tools. If it were 1985, that would be a vintage slice of Pop Disco. In 2008...It becomes some kind of nostalgic monster. It sounds like a lounge Toxic B-Side. My old criteria stands still, though.
More of the same? My Baby is an offshoot of BRITNEY's debut - only 10 years in advance. Sometimes I remember this kind of songs. They were infectious and there was some resonance to it against the backdrop of the post-Grunge inertia. BRITNEY's voice seems taken out of a sudden out of 1999 - which is kind of shocking, after so many sleaze and scandal. A sanitized version of deja-vu. In 2008 this is the change that has come for SPEARS. She sounds like old MARIAH CAREY! I wonder what MICHAEL JACKSON will do to top this impeccable babble next year. See ya!
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