Britney Spears. Femme Fatale. After listening to Ms. Spears’ seventh studio album, the world can rejoice that she’s back better than ever. Musically. Not visually. The disc is jammed packed with heavy feel good sounds merged with European dance vibes against light industrial and cheeky sonic sounding elements. I feel that Britney has a more eclectic mainstream dance sound comparing to Gaga where it’s more limited, but more classic sounding. With Britney it works for the moment, but not timelessly. Vocally, Britney also explored a wide range of variety like always. She has flirty moments. Bitchy moments. Seductive moments. However, her voice was heavily computerized and a ballad would have shown her ability.
The first song on the disc is the addictive Ke$ha penned Till The World Ends. I was reluctant to it at first, but have been listening to it like crack right now. It has this rejoice dance apocalyptic sound to it, which the video also portrayed. Both the video and song was down right a Britney classic. It played with what the world loves her for. It doesn’t sound or looked desperate of her trying to be unique. Britney is iconic because of this. Yes, her dancing in the video is still disappointing, but she shows hope. Britney’s management was also clever in releasing an official remix version featuring Ke$ha and the fucking fierce Nicki Minaj (Britney's Summer Tour special guest), which I must that it was a bold move and new marketing strategy to get the song even higher on the charts since it’s predicted to crack the Top 5 on Billboard Hot 100 for the first week of May. Still, the original is my choice.
Another standout track is the infectiously bitch-cute How I Roll. It’s actually my favorite from the album and it's somehow strange because I'm not a huge fan of album filler tracks and usually gravitate towards the singles because they catchy, but somehow this song worked its magic on me. Bloodshy and Avant produced it (Toxic and Piece of Me) and they created this soft electronic Robyn-esque meets diet Hip-Hop beat with Britney sounding really flirtatious even though she sings one line “You can be my thug tonight” when it sounds like “You can be my fuck tonight”. Sexual innuendos lyrics again from Brit-Brit. Clever!
Bloodyshy and Avant also produced another amazing tune titled Trip To Your Heart. Britney goes really romantic here while the beat is really European house ambient electronic influenced. What she is able to capture here is a down-to-earth persona which is infectious and proves why she’s one of the most genuine singers. And don’t be fucking lame by using her crazy-antic past as excuses. She’s gone through a lot and this song gives fans like me tears.
Criminal is also a song where Britney prevails musically. Here she’s channeling her Nelly Furtado and her approach of going completely Top 40 without sounding like Britney. Don’t be confused. It’s just not a "Britney can only do this record", but rather a song anyone could do and get a hit with it. It’s an amazing song. Mid-tempo jams with a simple percussion bombastic beat are what top the chart these days and this song is one of them. Please release this Britney!
I was also excited to hear Will.i.am production of Big Fat Bass, which was so-so. It had this good BEP club feel to it, but it wasn’t too electronic for what Will.i.am has being doing for his group which is a positive direction because this song gelled with this album's vibe well. It was a Britney song made for Britney and not a Will.i.am song sang by Britney. However, it was very frustrating at times to continuously hear the same melody played over and over again since It’s the longest song in the album with 4:45 minutes. Recycling melodies isn’t going to change the world climate.
However, sadly, with tears, Drop Dead (Beautiful) is a stupid lame-ass song. It destroyed the disk cohesiveness for greatness. Firstly, to feature this unknown artist Sabi who isn’t special in anyway was fucking annoying and the beat was this amateur urban beat sound that I wanted to vomit. It’s call ear vomit. Ear vomit is when you want to ASAP take out your earplugs or change the song instantly before you have to enter music ICU. Britney or whoever really missed the mark here because all of her deluxe album version songs were a million times better than this song.
Overall, this album highlighted Britney’s iconography and why she’s pushing the boundaries with pop music. Executive producers Dr.Luke and Max Martin showed great chemistry with Britney in making the CD cohesive in most part, but that each song has it’s own identity. Plus, it was nice to see Britney in a positive state-of-mind throughout the disk and that she wanted to give the world a feel-good vibe with this disc. This is stepping to right direction for Britney. But a bit of more promotion for the album would generate the Britney-level sales (it’s gone platinum already, but Britney is triple platinum level) and please please please please just fucking dance. Do you want me to capitalize it to show the importance? DANCE. Do you need the extra exclamation mark? DANCE! Underline it? DANCE! You are known as a dancer and right now the world knows you as a lip-singer and I’m sure you’re not happy with that. Here is my evidence and please not be bias if you're a Britney fan and make excuses after excuses for her.
Don’t give me death threats Britney fans. Just speaking the truth. Ok, I’ll stop now before this post will get more sour.
No comments:
Post a Comment