The Essential Britney Spears by Britney Spears
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.
