Britney Spears: Classic or Dud?

F.R., your Britney song references are years out of date, please become contemporary. And maybe get an angular haircut.

I'd like her Max Martin era much better if I thought it was "smooth" and "seamless", actually.

Argh surface level reading of ideology in pop songs argh!

deconstruction or post-marxism or hell anything to thread!

"I'd argue that "Everytime" is pretty genre-fucking as well, Tim and I concluded that it was in fact a micro-power-ballad. "

Did we file a report on the matter?

I suspect we did file a report Tim.

However, after she parted with Martin, virtually everything she has done has been the same awful R&B crap that has dominated most of the current hitlists. And she herself never had any talent for anything but dancing and acting anyway. DUD!

I think that's a bit more snotty than necessary, and a rather rank-pulling means of dismissing an argument without actually having to do so.

I freely admitted to being fairly indifferent to Britney, and to having no great depth of knowledge about her oeuvre. I do hope you're not going to pull some rockist crap on me that my opinion is worth less because of it? I didn't mean 'reading ideology off Britney songs' in any particular technical way, just a very general impression of a world view I got from listening to her. And if you can't do the occasional superficial reading of a lyric of a pop song of someone you're not especially interested in, what is the world coming to? Superficiality is one of the things that makes pop music great.

FR, if you're going to be indifferent to Britney in the first place and then spout off cursory analysis of her music that is neither noteworthy nor substantial, well...

The problem with this is that you're trying to use a very serious criteria (let's call it "ideological innovation") in order to make a somewhat profound statement (let's paraphrase it as "the worldview as expressed in Britney's songs is a tired reiteration of America's most unpleasant ideological characteristics) based on an entirely superficial reading of the song, which you justify on the basis that the music shouldn't be taken seriously anyway?

(btw this is me engaging w/ your arguments, not dismissing or disallowing them)

It's sort of damned if you do and damned if you do, though, isn't it? I responded originally because someone upthread commented that the people who didn't like Britney couldn't muster anything more significant reason than they didn't like her voice. But if you don't particularly like someone, you're not going to be hugely acquainted with their output, so you're hardly going to be in a position to give a closely read textural analysis are you? So the next step is to dismiss your views as too cursory.

Tim, you are indeed engaging. Unfortunately I have work to do that can't wait, but thanks for the interesting discussion!

So I take it you've never heard the one with the Ying Yang Twins and the banjos?

-- Daniel_Rf (filosofiaebolacha...), November 18th, 2004.

that IS its own genre:

According to pitchfork, "wtf" is a genre now.

Not exactly. I was pointing out possibilities for why Alex and Tim weren't taken with your posts. I personally don't feel the need to engage with them, partly for the reasons above and things like this:

And if you can't do the occasional superficial reading of a lyric of a pop song of someone you're not especially interested in, what is the world coming to? Superficiality is one of the things that makes pop music great.

If you're going to do such a thing, it lends itself to nothing positive because it's ultimately a way of furthering disinterest. And it renders the entire exercise even more pointless.

But if you don't particularly like someone, you're not going to be hugely acquainted with their output, so you're hardly going to be in a position to give a closely read textural analysis are you?

No one's actually damning you for this though. In fact, this would be the point where someone asks you to reconsider by recommending songs or simply stating "fair enough".

I think something interesting might come out of the potential dialogue between yourself and Tim.

Further, electronic guitar tuners aren't constantly looking for deviations in pitch and correcting them on the fly while somebody is playing.

and also actually, autotune is commonly used to correct wayward instrumental playing in studios. maybe not as common as it's used to correct wayward pitch. but i can assure you it IS used for that.

I do know that everything I've heard of Britney's stuff smacks of Autotuner on the vocals, and yes, I can hear the effect. I've even used it on my own vocal tracks on occasion and I actually do own the software. (It's a legitimate registered copy even...)

Autotune is commonly used to correct the playing of bass, particularly fretless bass (where it much more possible to be slightly off even if your instrument is completely intonated and in tune). I've also been present at a recording session where it was used on a theramin... another instrument difficult to control with perfect pitch.

I have never seen or heard of Autotune being used on guitar although it's certainly possible. It'd have to be the software version though, as the hardware units simply don't track quickly enough to handle any kind of hammer-on or pull-off technique. Not to mention how badly the hardware box would completely freak out the second a guitarist hits more than one string at the same time.

I have never met a professional guitarist who can't at least tune a guitar to itself. But then, I grew up in Nashville where throwing 10 rocks means you injure 9 session guitarists and one struggle Christian or Country songwriter.

we're pretty good at throwing rocks here in new york city, too, but we're not quite as adept at tuning our guitars.

and, yup, fretless bass is where i've most seen autotune used. my general point, which i think you agree with, is that everyone's getting help from somewhere these days, electronic or otherwise.

Tim, I find your line of thought about doing post-marxist, pomo, etc. readings of Britney troubling, not because I don't think you should do it, but because, again, I think you're trying to justify music's value by how good an object of critical inquiry it makes. I'm not saying that's the only reason you like it, but I don't think it makes a valid point as to why the music is good. An interesting reading could be done of almost any cultural object.

Yes, I agree with you... I was being facetious like I said. But I do think the tuner's not the same as the Autotuner is all. Nit-picky perhaps...

I don't live in Nashville any more, and I did live in NYC for quite some time before I ended up here on the west coast (Seattle). My rock-throwing comment was a joke about Nashville. (You'd be amazed at how many session guys are around, seriously. They are a totally different breed of musician who get paid to play whatever the hell you want and play it well. It's as baffling to me as it is impressive. And no, I'm not one of them. Nor do I think I could be one without an assload more training and practice.)

Autotune, when I notice it, just sounds weird to me -- it flattens the voice.

Well yeah, the problem is that the human voice isn't pitch perfect even when it's singing a single note... You don't notice the slight deviations that give the sound of a voice a distinct character, but you do notice when they are gone, and Autotune can and does get rid of a lot of them.

heck the recording process itself is "help".

Absolutely. And the use of tape instead of digital media does something to the sound at least as significant as Autotune. It's a totally different discussion (and no I'm not an analog snob or anything), but I think the current trends in the recording/mastering process are qualitatively less good than they have been in years past. Not because I think "the 70s sound" is better than "the 90s sound" or whatever, but because overcompression (among other things) has left us with music that actually causes listening fatigue even on equipment designed to minimize this effect. It's not a question of "Oh I think tape sounded better" or "The way they used to record [instrument] before the dawn of [newer technique] sounded much better." It's actually "I can't listen to this for more than an hour without getting a headache even though I actually like the song."

Martin, that last point about listening fatigue is intriguing. I've never heard of that before. Is there anything I can read about this?

It's not a marketing fabrication though... It actually does happen. Find a discussion forum about recording or engineering records and you'll see guys who spend hours recording and mixing bands talk about it and are concerned about it when purchasing monitors or headphones or whatever.

I would spend more time going into the details, but I'm headed out the door to an appointment...

Hurting, correct me if I'm wrong but it was you who brought up the ideology or worldview of Britney's songs as a valid basis upon which to dismiss them. Any ideological reading of a song is treating it as an object of critical enquiry. I brought up post-marxism and deconstruction because these areas of critical thought have greatly undermined the stability of the sort of surface level ideological reading you seemed to be attempting. My point being, if we are going to bring ideology into this, let's do so properly.

I'll state for the records that I don't need to draw on cultural studies in order to love a lot of Britney's music.

And nobody knows what Britney sans Autotune sounds like.

Going by the live SNL 'I'm Not A (Real) Girl, Not Yet An Upgraded Sexbot' of 3 years ago, not too bad.

What might be the broad outlines or the paragraph abstract for a "proper", non-surface ideological reading of Britney's songs?

then they had a segment on black pop beauties (beyonce, ashanti and then i stopped watching to post that britney trivia fact above).

not relevant to current focus of thread i know