Send "Britney Spears " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Sputnikmusic |
 Britney Spears occupies a weird, unique space in the pop spectrum. She’s been compared to past greats like Madonna and Kylie Minogue, but she lacks the latter’s self-aware creativity and mentioning her in the same breath as the former is, frankly, insulting. A common complaint with Spears is that she doesn’t write her own songs, which, the argument goes, somehow equates to a lack of talent, but the same can be said of Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, Frank Sinatra… the list goes on. She isn’t blessed with the preternaturally skilled vocals of a Mariah Carey or a Tina Turner, but her music has never been about her voice so much as her personality. And her personality is just what has carried her this far, when contemporaries like Mandy Moore and Christina Aguilera are becoming Starbucks whores and public laughingstocks, respectively. Spears is the ultimate pop chameleon, transforming from sly school girl with enough sexual innuendo to inspire thousands of illegal fantasies to a robotic dance-floor dominatrix, confident enough to overcome tabloid dramas that have ruined lesser stars. In many ways, Spears needed that separation from her past self to become the four-on-the-floor mistress she is on Femme Fatale. Calling Britney a pop singer is doing the term a disservice; she is much more of a pop bellwether, subject to the whims of the Top 40 crowd and more than happy to adapt to environments that have cruelly undone lesser icons. There’s a reason Aguilera’s last album sold barely north of 110,000 copies and Spears’ single “Hold It Against Me” has the most aggressive beat on mainstream radio today. Spears shows a willingness to reinvent herself that belies her fragile personal life and, most importantly, keeps her on the cutting edge of pop music.Sure, “Hold It Against Me” has the kind of dubstep breakdown that only the most naïve listener would consider representative of the genre, but the fact remains that Spears is the first to introduce such a rapidly rising phenomenon to the mainstream. She’s become a pop juggernaut not by being the most talented, or the most charismatic, or even the one with the best songs, but by simply listening to the people who know the pop pulse best: her stable of producers. Blackout became such a great modern pop album because Spears finally submitted entirely to her songwriting team, choosing to become the entirely sexualized instrument through which their massive hooks would be transmitted to neon dance floors worldwide. And for Spears, that is just what she needs: a Max Martin and a Dr. Luke to write a track like “Till The World Ends,” one that throbs with trance-y synths, a thumping electro beat that is pure sex and a chorus that goes and goes as only the best club hits can do, sensible lyrics be damned. Synths as dirty as the ones on “Trouble For Me” or as unashamedly Eurotrash as “Trip To Your Heart” are just what pop music needs right now, in a year when electronica is becoming bigger than ever and a pop song is not just about the hook but about how much it can make you move....full text |
| Rollingstone |
| Britney Spears is pop music's stealth avant-gardist. For years, critics have dismissed her as a cipher with a wisp of a voice. But from the minute she burst on the scene — heralded by the keyboard power chords of ". . . Baby One More Time" — her music has steered bubblegum into weirder, woollier territory. "Toxic" was a mélange of Bollywood and spy-movie guitar; "Piece of Me" was an essay on 21st-century tabloid infamy crooned over 22nd-century club rhythms. Then there's this year's "Hold It Against Me," which dissolves into a furious dubstep breakdown — easily the most assaultive beat on the Hot 100 right now. Click to listen to Britney Spears' "Hold It Against Me" Femme Fatale may be Britney's best album; certainly it's her strangest. Conceptually it's straightforward: a party record packed with sex and sadness. Max Martin and Dr. Luke, the world's two biggest hitmakers, are responsible for seven of 12 songs: big melodies and bigger Eurodisco thumps. But other producers go nuts, tossing the kitchen sink at Britney. The Bloodshy-helmed "How I Roll" is sputtering, oddly beautiful techno. In "Big Fat Bass," Will.i.am turns Britney into a cyborg obsessed with low-end. ("The bass is getting bigger!" she exults.) On nearly every track, Britney's voice is twisted, shredded, processed, roboticized. Maybe this is because she doesn't have much of a voice; it's certainly because she, more than almost any other pop diva, is simply game. Femme fatale? Not so much. But say this for Britney: She's an adventuress....full text |
| Slantmagazine |
| More than a decade into her career, it's still unclear what Britney Spears brings to the table, and before delving into her latest album, Femme Fatale, it felt necessary to try to understand, once and for all, the pop singer's appeal. Britney seems to conjure the kind of blind allegiance typically reserved for superstars who have seemingly better-earned such fawning fanaticism—either with their unmistakable technical talent or their socio-political import (Mariah and Madonna come to mind, respectively). Comparisons to the latter have always been utterly absurd; Britney has never possessed the creative endowment or self-awareness to deserve that mantle. Her appeal is no doubt generational, at least in part: The early-to-mid aughts produced few strong female pop icons, and Britney served as a kind of placeholder between the Queen of Pop's heyday and the arrival of Lady Gaga. (The only other contender may have been Christina Aguilera, but her career has since been horribly mismanaged.) I wasn't satisfied with that explanation alone, though, so I decided to ask around. The answers swung wildly between "Britney is God"—which, though funny, is also totally arbitrary, general, and delegitimizes all of our gay icons (have we no criteria other than blond hair, big breasts, and a dance beat?)—and ironic fascination with Britney's lack of talent and cognitive faculties, but nothing in between that even remotely resembled at actual attempt to defend her as an artist. I still hadn't found an answer. Many of those Britney fans will no doubt accuse me of admitting to outright bias against her, thereby rendering my opinion of Femme Fatale irrelevant. On the contrary, I've always liked Britney and have enjoyed many of her songs, and even a few of her albums. And in my quest to unearth her inexplicable appeal, I kept coming back to the music, which is all that really matters, right? The thing about Britney's music, though, is that she seems to have very little to do with it, particularly on her last few albums, and this one is no exception. The success of a Britney song rests almost entirely on the quality of other people's songwriting and production, and almost every track on Femme Fatale succeeds or fails on that basis....full text |
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