Britney Spears - Blackout

2 good songs (Piece of Me, Heaven on Earth), the other songs are mainly random electroclashfuturistictimbalandorgwenstefanistyle tracks. But where's Britney on the record?

Why does everyone else like Piece of Me? Jesus, that's no good. Heaven on Earth and Break The Ice are both better.

And Christ, HoE is asking for a remix.

"Gimme More" is still the best track. Good choice for 1st single. Shame about the VMAs fuck-up.

Agree on the "Heaven on Earth" love, even if the intro calls up "Hung Up" too explicitly.

"Hung Up"'s intro calls up "What You Waiting For?" a bit too explicitly.

xpost More like a very obvious Moroder reference.

First listen today, and I'm thinking "Toy Soldier" would be an awesome single.

heaven on earth was made by Freescha!

Why is everyone all over "Piece of Me"? It's terrible. sounds like a bad Fergie track.

The rest of it is pretty good though.

http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/1632/moqschq3.gif

no... i'm still not understanding that gif

anyway i like this now

it is fun

Radar is my new favourite. It's very tin pan alley you might notice maybe

It's been a long time since I knew an album before the singles were released. Since the last Britney one really. It will be weird to hear these on the radio.

heaven on earth was made by Freescha!

yeah this shocked me too

i love that gif, whatever it means

pop album of the year, fwiw

I'm starting to think it is my album of the year. And I've enjoyed a lot of albums this year.

I believe the gif is showing how a producer/engineer would cut-and-paste different bars from 4 different takes of a vocal (presumably Britney's) to cherry-pick the best possible performance of each line.

boring.gif

zing.gif

Not really a criticism in the case of this particular album then.

By the way I love the poptimist piece on this. It kind of brings together all the things people have been trying to say about this album. It is very articulate.

I let my girlfriend dissuade me from buying this album at the record store yesterday. :(

Maybe I will go back. It was used for $9.99.

it dropped out of the top 20 in its 3rd week, should be all over the cutout bins now or soon.

It is very much worth it. You will thank yourself. And so will your girlfriend.

save your money for the Kylie record.

thnx al! i see now that it says take 1/ take 2 and so on.

pop album of the year, fwiw

oh shut up

name a better one, fucko

yeah, like, that was mean.

I believe the gif is showing how a producer/engineer would cut-and-paste different bars from 4 different takes of a vocal (presumably Britney's) to cherry-pick the best possible performance of each line.

otm but it's a weird criticism - I don't know many indie bands who don't comp vocals all the time, and I don't know any who flat-out refuse to do so

"pop album of the year" is a hella annoying kind of statement to make

so no

yeah whatever. 'album of the year' thing is kind of bullshit for me in honesty but i've been throwing it out more than usual because this year i've found myself liking at least two thirds of a lot of albums (at least twice as many as last year) and Blackout is one of them for defying odds/expectations and being a well conceived, well executed return. may seem like empty plaudits but i think this is a great marriage of anorak-appeasing sonic ideas - Danja's work, obviously derivative as it may be, just sounds fresher and fuller than anything Timbaland has done in the last 3 years - and the usual important pop artist elements that i'm not as interested in personally i.e. i couldn't care less about much of what she's talking about and as per i don't look to Britney for stunning vocals or to actually relate duh. its just trashy sexy fun and i like the sound of it.

MAYBE I TRY THIS COCAINE SOME TIME

Nothing as good as Say it Right, but yes. Freakshow, Radar, Piece of Me, Gimme More, Heaven and Break the Ice are all as classic as you can get.

it is weirdly tricky to precisely nail the right median at play in enjoying this album - too much of either robodiva anonymizing or deadening biographical literalism and it all falls apart. (nor is it a case of switching either side on or off whenever you please, whatever context yr listening it to in.) ewing's piece is really great (as ever!) but i feel he, and the million other people who've said similar, betrays that balance with his disdain for the corny melo neptunes closer.

Can you rephrase that. I want to understand but don't.

incidentally that is also pretty much the reason i lash out at "pop album of the year" (and i am alright about other genre album of years) cos the pop bomb is somehow nearly always dropped by those with a shonky krazy noize production bias that does pop a disservice imo. it is just too slippery a term i'm ever comfy with using really.

heh saying that, britters probably really is the pop album of the year either way so w/ever!

That's not what I wanted clarity on. I really do love this album though.

Ha ha RTC your last post is pretty much why I'm gonna campaign to get "Is It You" as high up on the Pfork end of year singles chart as possible.

can you try understanding again. i want to help you but don't.

uhhm i am just saying that there's "woo woo robot pop" and "wah wah hero/sad brit" impulses mingling as you listen to it and that it's hard to get across satisfactorily and bah damn thanks for making me look facile now

no problem : )

i'm just being honest when i say what draws me to this collection of songs first and foremost is the nature of the production and the context it works within.

as far as songcraft goes, i much prefer the Feist album and a number of others, but Blackout is more 'interesting' or exciting than most if not all of those because of this crucial context and mythos surrounding it and the valuation put on that.

I don't think you really get a clear sense of the "sad brit" angle from the music itself, which is probably why nearly everyone who approaches this album from that angle ends up saying "there's not enough Britney in it" even though she's as front-and-centre as she's ever been. It is interesting through that she chose not to do an "Everytime" style track this time around.

Conversely, because she is so front-and-centre if people did run with the whole anonymous robo-diva line it would seem pretty off-the-mark - we know her voice too well for that. At the same time the production is very impressive in some places. Perhaps the closest thing to a successful version of this take is to note that Britney's appeal has always at least partially been a kind of masochistic intermingling of her vocals with monstrously monolithic production - no less true of "Baby One More Time" than "Gimme More" etc. But this works precisely because she is neither robotic nor anonymous.

(I've never really believed in anonymous robo-divas anyway - I'm not sure which singer fits the description. R&B especially practically has a cult of vocal personality going on. Maybe Keri Hilson's backing vocals fit this description?)

Why do you say "masochistic" when describing this intermingling, Tim?

i'm just being honest when i say what draws me to this collection of songs first and foremost is the nature of the production and the context it works within.

i got no problem with this! this, the grubby coin of the poptimist realm! just wish more people set their stall out before drawing for the slogans is all.

This is good. The album is built with fragments. You get a Britney yowl and then her voice is violently displaced, detuned, disfigured. The production is allowed to be brash in a way that few big pop productions are. I want to clarify that what I mean by that is it is brash in how it is allowed to be so reckless with her voice, Danja either has supreme confidence in the particulars of Britney's voice (I never realised quite how familiar the nuances of her phrasing were until hearing this) or else a complete disregard for making an album about/for/with Britney.

Compare it to the DFA demo ("Get it" or whatever). That track is so performative, Tim goldsworthy lets her voice fill the centre of the song and get surrounded by all the various elements, it sounds like the air from her breathing is setting off the cowbells. She is allowed to give a vocal performance in a way she rarely has ("Everytime" and "Breathe on Me" are exceptions)

I can't believe I forgot to list Get Naked above. The creepy voice that introduces it. Also when she sings "whatti gotta do to getchoo to leave the party?" it is quite brilliant for reasons I can't quite figure out.

I don't really know where I'd set my stall first. I am a massive Britney Spears fan though.

I mean, I was probably biased as this was my most anticipated album like ever. Especially since In Da Zone was her best since her debut imho and I loved the singles from her Best Of.

"Why do you say "masochistic" when describing this intermingling, Tim?"

ha ha I guess ever since I read a review of "Baby One More Time" which compared the sharp inhalations and exhalations which make up part of the rhythm to some sort of bondage play, I've always made the link between Britney's harder tunes and rough sex.

Ha ha RTC your last post is pretty much why I'm gonna campaign to get "Is It You" as high up on the Pfork end of year singles chart as possible.

-- Tim F, Monday, 26 November 2007 22:40 (17 minutes ago) Link

YESSSSSSS

(It's number 5 on my Idolator ballot)

"i know right?" does the para on 'piece of me' in ewing's rvw not round out yr dualism a bit?

i like this voice crit stuff! can't say i ever thought about it too much before but it feels like it ought to be weighty. would be nice to think that it wasn't all just symptomatic of the goodgirlgonebad perv angle she's always had though, but i'm not so sure

also as hungry as i am for anything that slightly punctures the baffling puffed-up keri hilson gravy train, i think a robo angle on her is more to do with how little she's done so far in her career; the nature of her outside clutch writer credits suggest it'll be impossible for her to sing her own stuff that way. also in pictures she does seem enticingly diffident!