One Sentence Story

As I rose from the bench to catch the bus, I turned to the man I had just been talking to and gave him a dollar for every year he had been in prison.

Britney Spears, Blackout review

It wasn’t very far in to listening to Blackout that I started to wonder when, exactly, Britney Spears was judged on her musical merit. There is no doubt she has had some chart-topping hits with those “infectious” beats that the public adores (“Toxic,” anyone?), but those hits weren’t so much hers as they were the brainchilds of her various songwriters and producers. She is a pop star, not a musician. Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t the whole basis for her success the fact that she was a virginal 17-year-old who could move her body provocatively?

As we later discovered, she lied about being a virgin. But for the years leading up to her previous release In The Zone, she maintained her status as an unattainable sex object. That’s what Britney Spears is — or at least was. Her unwillingness to discuss her sexuality publicly, but her blatant enthusiasm for flaunting her breasts and (clothed) vagina in photo shoots and album cover sleeves were what the majority of the public was exposed to. Sure, people bought her CDs, but I think this was primarily because they wanted to be part of the spectacle that is Britney Spears.

Four years and only one new album later, she is still as much of a spectacle as ever — just for completely opposite reasons. We all know she went from 'hot chick with a snake draped over her shoulders kissing Madonna' to 'mother of two who is completely oblivious to anything other than Starbucks and the paparazzi.'

While listening to the uncharacteristically self-referential “Piece of me” off her new album, I couldn’t help but think that maybe Britney’s lying to us again. She used her faux virginity to sell albums, so why can’t she use her image as a completely unfit mother and human being to rack up the sales? She knows the attention she’s getting, and is apparently more aware than anyone that any publicity (no matter how many custody battles and vagina portraits are included) is good publicity.

Before anything else, it’s all about Britney. Before the music, before K-Fed, and before even her own children, apparently, it’s all about Britney making some money. She was bread to be a money making machine, and she’s working effectively as ever. She doesn’t need to tour stadiums and arenas and perform for her fans; she performs daily for the paparazzi as she tours all of her local fast food outlets.

This might be a good thing, because after watching her performance at the MTV VMAs, I’m really not all that confident she could dance along to any of the songs on Blackout. Every track on this album is designed for the club; forget any of those bold Britney ballads of yesteryear like “Lucky” or “Sometimes.” It’s probably because “Toxic” was her last hit that every song can in one way or another be traced back to that song in tempo and subject matter. These new songs are about Britney and they are about sex. In this sense, the record sort of has the same kind of one-track-mind that you normally associate with a 14-year-old boy. Which is fitting given Britney’s seeming inability to focus on anything other than drinking and fucking in her personal life.

It’s almost as though Britney sat down with her producers and said “Listen, you know how I’m being portrayed in the media. I look like an incompetent slut. Write songs about that.” Why else would we now get to hear her sing “touch me and I come [sic?] alive” — she’s practically admitting she’s driven by sex.

But the subject matter of the songs is irrelevant. It’s not like we are getting a window into her “tortured” soul and finding out why she is such a terrible mother who cares as little about her career as her children. She’s just singing about what you expect to hear on a pop star’s record; sex, fame, and more sex. The beats are passable, they will get some feet tapping and some booties shaking, but as a whole the album gets a bit boring with the lack of variety in the production. If I went to dance clubs, I’d equate listening to this album with a slow night at the club where you just, like, “vibe” and shit. People do that, right?

Also, she can still sing, so if anyone actually appreciated her for her “talent,” there’s no reason they are going to stop after listening to this album.

Everyone is still fascinated with Britney, and why wouldn’t we be? She’s in the media every day. We are all waiting to hear what she’ll do next. The fact that she’s put out an album and is doing practically no promotion for it is something for us to get excited about. It doesn’t matter what the album actually sounds like unless it sounds like a complete train wreck of a record — which it doesn’t. It is merely one more thing for us to watch Britney create, and then completely ignore.