Album Review: Britney Spears- Britney Jean
There was a time I was
one of a kind…
Whether it’s intentional or not, the opening line to Britney
Spears’s seventh album, the aptly titled, Britney
Jean, is more than a little self-aware. There was, in fact, a time when she
was one of a kind—from the moment the “Baby One More Time” video hit MTV,
through a good chunk of 1999—until all of the other young female pop singers
started showing up (Christina Aguilera, Mandy Moore, Jessica Simpson.)
It’s somewhat odd to think of Britney Spears, a woman in her
early 30s, as an “elder stateswoman” of popular music—but based on her age when
her debut album was released, and given her career over the last decade and a
half, that’s the role she has slowly eased into.
It hasn’t been an easy road for her—there was the “dark”
period where she cut loose, married a back-up dancer/rapper, and spit out two
kids. There was the stint in rehab where she shaved her head and attacked a
photographer with an umbrella.
Somehow, she’s managed to bounce back from all of this, and
still have a career that people take seriously.
You better work,
bitch…
Not really helping her in the “elder stateswoman” department
is the first single from Britney Jean—“Work
Bitch,” where she takes a bit of a, “when I was your age,” attitude towards some
unnamed, faceless up and comers, lecturing them on how if they want the finer
things in life that they, well, need to get to work. Bitch.
It’s on “Work Bitch” that Spears uses her skills learned at
the Madonna School of Vaguely Foreign and/or British Accents—putting
implacable, ridiculous sounding diction and pronunciation on her words, while
dated sounding “big beat” techno synthesizers and bass drums sound off behind
her.
Britney, where are you from? I just love your worldly
sounding accent. Oh, you’re from Louisiana. Well, I would have never guessed…
Britney Jean’s
finest moment arrives early on in the form of “Perfume,” a mid-tempo ballad
about a love triangle. “I hope she smells
my perfume,” Spears coos on the track, leading me to wonder which of Britney’s
own fragrances she is referring to. It’s by no means one of the “best” pop
songs of the year—far from it. To my knowledge, Spears has a good voice, but
she allows herself to be weighed down by production effects. On “Perfume,” they
are scaled back quite a bit, but there is still something…less human…in her
delivery. It feels a little restrained, like this song could have been
exponentially more believable had she just went for it, but it, along with the
rest of the album, feels incredibly rushed and possibly phoned in.
Clocking in at a generous 35 minutes, the “Standard Edition”
of Britney Jean contains a sparse ten
songs, only a few of which clear the four-minute mark—not to say that these
songs need to be ANY longer than that. Oh my, no. Good heavens. Three minutes
is more than enough.
I don’t claim to be an expert at popular music, nor do I
claim to be some kind of scholar at the canon of Britney Spears, but the stale,
boring, and forgettable songs on Britney
Jean will have you longing for the halcyon days of “T.R.L,”—and listening
to this album made me realize that we
should all just admit that Spears’s early run of singles were all pretty
incredible from a well-written pop song stand point.
While “Work Bitch” serves as kind of a “Hey, I’m still here
take me seriously please,” to listeners, a bulk of the other nine songs she’s
brought with her are pretty forced in their over zealous attempts to sound
“modern.” Also, when one of your guest spots is from will.i.am of the Black
Eyed Peas, it’s REALLY hard to take you seriously.
The album’s lowest and most saccharine moment arrives
towards the end, with the tepid slow jam duet featuring Britney’s sister and
former teenage mother Jamie Lynn. “Chillin’ With You” juxtaposes strummy
acoustic guitars against the big beat, frenetic drums, along with some weird
wooshing noises for good measure. The biggest winces come back to back—the
insipid refrain of “When I’m wi’choo, I’m
chillin,’ I’m chillin,’” followed
by Jamie Lynn’s verse—her mousey voice overshadowed by that of big
sister—begins with “I sang so loud that I
smiled.”
I’m sorry, but what the fuck does that
mean?
Both Spears women are “assisted” by the use of Auto-Tune on
their vocals, which is still commonplace in contemporary popular music, even if
the artist in question doesn’t need it. Britney seems to be slightly better, at
least, of working with it, and is attempting at times to roll her voice so that
it makes that warble sound everyone wants to hear. Jamie Lynn does not,
however, know what to do, and therefore her voice comes off as meeker than it
probably is, being flattened out by a special effect.
The final track, “Don’t Cry,” may be an attempt to console
the listener—“Don’t cry, the album is almost over!” It’s yet another half-assed
mid-tempo ballad, built around a whistle that pops up here and there, along
with those big sounding drum beats and big, buzzy sounding synthesizers, while
Spears says goodbye to some unnamed fellow.
While Spears may be telling the younger generation of pop stars
that they need to get to work to earn their place, Britney Jean is proof that as an “elder stateswoman,” the said
younger stars are just doing laps around her. There is little to no emotional
in any of these songs—the entire album feels distant, like a contractual
obligation that Spears had no interest in filling. And in the final
unenthusiastic moments of the record, I realized that while an artist like
Miley Cyrus is incredibly polarizing and “controversial,” on the ballad-y
tracks on Bangerz, she at least puts
forth real emotion, making the listener feel something.
The only something I felt by the time Britney Jean finished up was relief that it was over, and that I could
delete the files from my computer.
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