Blackout by Britney Spears
Blackout is the fifth studio album by American recording artist Britney Spears, released on October 26, 2007 by Jive Records, four years after her previous studio album In the Zone. Spears started writing songs for the album in November 2003, and began experimenting with a more acoustic sound. Following her marriage with Kevin Federline in 2004 and the birth of her first son the subsequent year, she began recording the album in 2006 with producers J. R. Rotem, Danja and Kara DioGuardi. She gave birth to her second son and filed for divorce in late 2006, after which she continued working with producers such as The Clutch and Bloodshy & Avant. Recording sessions took place at various studios around the country, including at Spears' home in Los Angeles. Some of the producers claimed to be impressed with her work ethic and professionalism, despite all her problems in her personal life. Spears wanted to make a fun, danceable album with uptempo, high-energy music. Blackout is mainly an electropop and dance album, which incorporates elements of several musical genres such as funk, Euro disco and dubstep. The themes of the album range from fame, sex, love and dancing. The cover sleeve and images were shot by Ellen von Unwerth. The centerfold pictures, which feature Spears and a priest in suggestive poses in a confessional, were condemned by the Catholic League. Blackout was to be released on November 13, 2007, but it was moved up to October 30 due to unauthorized leaks. Zomba Label Group sued Perez Hilton for posting at least ten leaks on his gossip blog; the parties reached a settlement in June 2009. Blackout received mostly positive reviews from music critics. Most called it her most progressive and consistent album yet, but others argued that its quality should have been attributed to the producers rather than Spears, and also criticized her vocals for being overly-processed. Blackout was set to debut at the top of the Billboard 200, but debuted at number two due to a last-minute rule change. The album topped the European Top 100 Albums and the Canadian and Irish charts, while peaking inside the top ten in another thirteen countries. By the end of 2008, Blackout had sold 3.1 million copies worldwide. Three singles were released from the album. "Gimme More" reached number three on the Billboard Hot 100 and became a top-five hit in fourteen countries. "Piece of Me" reached the top-ten in twelve countries, including Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom. Unlike her previous albums, Spears did not heavily promote Blackout. Her only performance to promote the album, "Gimme More" at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards, was universally panned by critics. Blackout has appeared on many of the end of the year and decade lists including reader polls by Billboard and Rolling Stone, while The Times named it as the fifth best pop album of the decade. In 2012, the album was added to the library and archives of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
By the time <i>Blackout</i> came out in the autumn of 2007, Britney Spears’ story had been picked nearly clean by media outlets and online tongue-waggers—the paparazzi followed her to take a seemingly infinite number of photographs, which would become fodder for bloggers and pundits, which would cause more demand for photos, the cycle quickly—and endlessly—repeating itself. Spears’ fifth album and first since 2003’s <i>In The Zone</i> leans into the narratives swirling around her both lyrically and musically, with references to “Miss Bad Media Karma” (as she calls herself on the hiccuping “Piece of Me”) accompanied by glitchy electro-pop that feel propulsive even while being draped in a last-call haze. “Gimme More”, with its opening declaration of “It’s Britney, bitch”, sets the tone, its bouncing-ball beat (laid down by Timbaland associate Nate “Danja” Hills) accompanying a Spears vocal performance that straddles the line between playful flirtation and heated come-on. Pop titans Nelly Furtado and Justin Timberlake had delved into clubland’s darker side on their mid-2000s releases, and the meta-narratives surrounding Spears added an edginess to <i>Blackout</i> that its sonics—courtesy of high-end producers such as Danja, “Toxic” architects Bloodshy & Avant, pop-R&B collective The Clutch and futurist duo The Neptunes—bolstered. Spears doesn’t exist at the centre of <i>Blackout</i> as much as she hovers overhead, her pitch-shifted wails and clipped sighs giving a futuristic feel to tracks like the laser-cut “Hot As Ice” and the seductive “Get Naked (I Got a Plan)”; “Heaven On Earth” is the closest thing <i>Blackout</i> has to a love song, its sumptuous synth-pop revelling in “the palest green” of a paramour’s eyes. For the most part, <i>Blackout</i> is focused on the club, a full-album update of Spears’ 2001 Neptunes production “I’m a Slave 4 U” that periodically winks at the chaos surrounding the pop supernova as it dances the night away.
