While the entertainment hype of autumn and early winter is usually reserved for movies laden with Oscar buzz, this year has seen multiple “Queens” of pop releasing new studio albums. From Lady Gaga to the up-and-coming Lorde, this season has seen a surge of female pop singers release albums. Some albums are finding chart success, and others are stumbling out as awkward flops. It is the latter category into which Britney Spears falls.
Coming from a woman who has made her career with chart topping hits full of infectious beats, Spears’ eighth studio release, Britney Jean, is an autotuned mess of “personal” ballads and lackluster instrumentations.
While Spears is not known for her spectacular live singing, many of the tracks on Britney Jean sound so overproduced that her voice sounds far from natural. In her opening track “Alien,” a cliche mix insisting Spears is somehow an outsider, she says she “feels like an alien.” While we may not feel her pain, her overly tweaked vocals make her sound extraterrestrial.
“Work Bitch,” while having Spears’ trademark infectious electronic beats, has mind-numbingly simple lyrics. Spears namedrops several luxury car brands, but the message of the song to—you guessed it—“work bitch,” seems lost on listeners.
While the shoddy writing and awkward vocal production mar the album, the out-of-left-field collaborations with T.I. on “Tik Tik Boom” and with her sister Jamie Lynn on the horribly titled “Chillin’ with You” seem to detract further from the album. The songs differ, with “Tik Tik Boom” being a pseudo club jam and “Chillin’ with You” vying to be an electronic ballad of sisterly love, but both songs are far from honest reflections on Spears’ life.
Collaborations with mega producers will.i.am, David Guetta and Diplo should merit some chart success, but, so far, Britney Jean has failed to reach the heights other pop divas have found this year: The album’s lead single hasn’t broken the top ten of the Billboard charts, unlike Katy Perry, Lady Gaga and Lorde.
After five months of production, this album is a sharp decline from Spears’ previous albums and a testament to how, sometimes, you can’t make an album blending Spears’ “down-home” charm and the change in electronic backing music.
Rating: D
