Britney Spears - Blackout (Britney Spears in general)

Member Name: Lichfield1979

Product:	Britney Spears in general
Date:	11/08/08 (197 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The music

Disadvantages: The mental breakdown

In 2007 Jive Records released "Blackout", the fifth studio album from Britney Spears and her first original material for nearly four years.

To just listen to the record it would be easy to declare it a return to form. Vocally, what some take as over-serious, others see as self-deprecating, and although the voice is thin it sounds assured, and contrasts the bold escapist electro-bounce of the bass, which dances throughout. Maybe the melodies can't match the textures and the beats but the lyrics work on the level of garish urban-sleaze and the whole effect is brash and futuristic and at times almost avant-garde, all intoxicated by the oxygen of shameless hot and sexy publicity. The singles "Gimme More" and "Piece of Me" are two of her best and skewer the insanity of being famous with a knowing and filthy glee.

But alas, things are rarely that simple. Anybody who was paying the scantest attention to the tabloid press last year - perhaps anywhere in the western hemisphere and lots of places beyond - and I don't say that lightly - will be aware that a rather different story was unfolding in all too public a fashion.

Although Spears had certainly started her career with a more wholesome reputation than she has today - which her handlers had told fans belied the contradiction of the coquettish ingénue she had supposedly only played in her debut video - rumours of reckless behaviour and scandal were by now nothing new. In 2004 Spears had briefly been married to a childhood friend for all of two days before having the ceremony annulled.

The most alarming signal that something was dramatically wrong came in February 2007, when Spears was filmed shaving her head totally bald, the day after reportedly checking herself out of a drug treatment program, having stayed there for less than twenty-four hours. She was soon in and out of clinics and courts and there were repeated reports of traffic accidents and custody disputes. Her behaviour was volatile. Rolling Stone has since reported that she flipped out in front of fans in a shopping mall and screamed obscenities at them when they requested pictures to be taken, and this after throwing a tantrum at shop assistants.

What could have been a triumphant comeback was fast undertaking the trajectory of a tragedy. The world was regaled with pictures and words from beyond the brink of breakdown - a bristling commentary of noise illuminated by flash photography - and was told it could not take its eyes away. Although the darkest outcome thankfully never came to pass, it was not for want of cultish devotion from the strange cadre of paparazzi who document her every move for the mainstream media and internet gossip sites alike. Reporting on the life of Britney Spears had become big business. Entertainment media outlets began to admit they had dedicated divisions whose primary responsibility was to generate stories on her because they sold so well. News outlets that arguably should have known better were picking up a lot of these stories and giving them considerable coverage.

Nobody was precisely sure of the credentials - or even the identity - of this parade of grubby men - with ostentatious clothes and trendy haircuts that never quite fit them - and yet there they were at every opportunity, chronicling the daily activities of their quarry like courtiers, or courtesans; and when these modern day packs of hunter-gatherers armed with lenses weren't stalking in convoys down the freeway, they populated the gossip rags; the nightly cable-news talk-shows; the blogosphere. One of them was even rumoured to be dating Britney, whilst fighting a battle of wills against her new "manager", against whom her parents had supposedly taken out a restraining order. All of which turned out to be true.

The manner in which she courted the press had elements of an elaborate game and she seemed to revel in the freedom to make her own choices and fashion her own persona - even if it was all being done in front of the cameras - because after years of being stage managed she had finally broken free from caring about following the rules of what was expected from her, by her managers, by her family, by the media, by her fans, by the public, by society itself. Whilst undoubtedly there did appear to be the signs of serious mental illness, perhaps there was also a sense of release - of the start of a necessary healing process that could one day lead to a post-celebrity enlightenment in which the pressures of fame no-longer mattered.

Whereas other socially ambitious stars fawn for the producers of "reality" television, Spears had some how transformed a whole section of the mainstream entertainment media into her own personal entourage, who followed her night and day, participating in her very own reality, not on television, but in their own lives. Reclaiming her individual private life - even in the face of insurmountable public intrusion - was nothing less than an act of transubstantiation, an epochal redefinition of the social contract that we've all written with twentieth century technology without consent. Her meltdown was in many ways the death of celebrity itself. The terms "star" and "media" no longer held any meaning. All there was is real life. And it had always been thus. But everybody had forgotten. Before Britney.

None of which is to make light of her very serious problems, which have nothing to do with her career or her fame. A judge has stated that she was a "habitual, frequent and continuous" drug user. She lost custody of her two children for a time. Helicopters photographed her being wheeled from her house into an ambulance on a gurney, in the accompaniment of police officers. She has strained relationships with family and friends and former acquaintances. But the symbolism of her behaviour in the context of how we think we know her is important.

For a long time it was popular to contrast Britney's fortunes with those of Christina Aguilera. This PR script always owed more to similarities in the manner of dress the two women affected in their music videos - or perhaps their shared history as teenage co-stars on the Mickey Mouse Club alongside Justin Timberlake - than it did to their music. But few now remember that the infamous torch passing kiss at the 2003 MTV Awards actually included a third person on the stage. It has long since become apparent that Aguilera's vocals should properly be placed in context with those of Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston before her.

The more natural comparison for Spears is with Kylie Minogue, and Madonna. Both have recently released records attempting to modernise their pop-dance sound with an approximation of the current leading edge, but neither "X" nor "Hard Candy" can match "Blackout" - not musically, and most importantly, not in terms of the natural ease with which the younger woman feels at home in her delivery of the material. And whilst Britney has some way to go to match them both for longevity, she undoubtedly surpasses Kylie already for genuine, lasting, pop significance, after a decade in the public eye.

Spears probably cannot match the output that Madonna enjoyed in that first five-year period between "Holiday" and "Express Yourself" - an era that produced seventeen singles that each sold (often well over) a million copies, including "Like A Virgin", "Papa Don't Preach", "La Isla Bonita" and "Like A Prayer". But then again, nobody can match that - short of Susanna Hoffs, Cyndi Lauper and Belinda Carlisle arguing a case between all three of them. Actually, there's no probably about it. But for all of her constant reinventions and PR, the truth remains that Madonna hasn't had a hit that truly mattered since "Vogue", and that was back in 1990. Of course she kept making pop music, some of it good, but the culture moved on, and her relevance, in as much as she had any, was in sales of her nostalgic greatest hits record - which evoked the spirit of the eighties to a whole generation - as well as the increasingly ambitious stage shows she has performed during her world tours. The music industry changed in the intervening years, and it was Britney who spearheaded the resurgence of popularity in the teen market around the turn of the century, with her breakout hit, "Baby One More Time", coming in Autumn 1998. Perhaps nothing she did afterwards again matched the impact that her Swedish producer Max Martin's instant classic had on the popular imagination back then - at least not musically - although "Toxic" and "I'm A Slave 4U" stand the test as fine singles that were possibly slightly ahead of their time. Even so, worldwide, the first two Britney Spears albums both outsold any Madonna album.

Spears has greater currency as an avatar of celebrity - to be studied and worshipped in the popular press with constant fascination - than she does as a singer - although her talent is real. The moment she transcended her genre has so long since passed that it hardly matters any more if pretenders like Avril Lavigne, Girls Aloud and Rihanna put out better records than she does - and she was reputedly offered the single "Umbrella" after Mary J. Blige had refused it. Her status is assured.

All you need to know about the marketing campaign for "Blackout" is this: In September 2007, Britney appeared at the MTV Awards; looking tubby and slightly spaced-out, she mimed and danced her way through her latest single and the audience watched on like the witnesses to a slow motion car wreck. Immediately afterwards, the comedian Sarah Silverman took the opportunity to eviscerated her on stage. "Wow, she is amazing. I mean, she is 25 years old, and she has already accomplished everything she's going to accomplish in her life. It's mind-blowing." Silverman herself then mimed something that's too crude to describe.

The album "Blackout" was released at the end of October. The bad publicity continued in a series of debacles through the end of the year and undoubtedly boosted sales. Although Spears was able to shoot a pair of music videos, her medical and legal problems saw to it that she was scarcely available to provide the kind of promotional face time that a major label would expect for a release of this scale. Reviews were favourable but the public mood was reserved, even jaded. "Gimme More" and "Piece of Me" sold a combined three million units, and "Blackout" itself has sold upwards of 800,000 copies in the USA to date.

My own personal opinion is that her producers and writers actually do good work on this record - they probably had more freedom to do what they wanted under the circumstances they found themselves. The two big singles certainly are very good by the standards of contemporary chart pop. The problem is Spears, to be kind, was a complete mess for the marketing phase, and obviously there was a big backlash. With Britney they really do need to get the public perception part of the bargain right - because it's a long time now since her teen pop days and so people have to be primed to know what to expect from the machine behind her. Once the fan base has been told it's okay to like her, the record label is not short of collaborators who can deliver the musical goods. Britney has the budget to buy the best.

One key writer/producer on "Blackout" is the Timbaland protégé Nate "Danja" Hills who contributes to five tracks, including "Break the Ice" and "Gimme More". On "Hot as Ice" he collaborates with T-Pain. Danja also received five co-credits on the last Madonna record, but has more room to manoeuvre here. Four more tracks, including "Piece of Me" are provided by the Swedish production duo Bloodshy & Avant, who had previously delivered "Toxic". They have two credits on the last Kylie record, but none of the hits. The track that closes the record is by Pharrell Williams. He is credited with seven tracks on the Madonna record. There are some other names as well who cut across more than one of the records. The incestuous nature of the production circles should be obvious, but the Spears record is superior to the other two - although it's not as good as the recent Nelly Furtado and Gwen Stefani records, with which it also shares common ground, and which benefited from the best level of work available from Timbaland and The Neptunes respectively. Furtado and Stefani both have enough cache to appeal to a hipper market, and don't have the traditional pop base that Spears would normally need to cater for - if indeed "Blackout" had been produced under typical circumstances - although they have largely broken that market too with their recent hits. Christina Aguilera has also shared a number of other songwriters and producers with those singers named above, although the quality of her voice has allowed her to branch into different directions. It can be an instructive exercise to map out who wrote and produced which singles in a given year and to see which musician could have compiled the strongest album if they had put out all of their pop material in their own name. The results, full of unexpected connections, are frequently surprising. So much of the contemporary chart scene is not what it seems.

In many respects "Blackout" sounds like something of a sonic mongrel that is stronger for the opportunity to take more risks, but which ultimately can only travel so far from home when the babysitter isn't looking. Nevertheless, the lyrics to "Piece of Me" are inspired, and Spears revels in them. "I'm Miss American Dream since I was seventeen / I'm Mrs Lifestyles of the rich and famous / I'm Mrs Oh my God that Britney's shameless / I'm Mrs Extra! Extra! this just in / I'm Mrs She's too fat now she's too thin." This statement is much more apposite and perceptive than the now empty protestations sang by the tragic but shallow Amy Winehouse on her song "Rehab". Winehouse is herself propped up to an unknown extent by collaborators such as Mark Ronson and the Dap-Kings, as well as judicious choices of source material. It's fair to say that Winehouse outstrips Spears in terms of writing and singing, but not in dancing and charisma, and so it is that Spears is the bigger icon, and deservedly so. Somebody somewhere is watching both of them and taking notes on how to make headlines. The next evolution may be to pretend to have a nervous breakdown in public. Pray that nobody's that stupid.

It was unsettling during Britney Spears' recent troubles that rather than sympathy for a national treasure, the tone at large was mostly one of derision and ridicule. The message was that the culture empathically forgives and applauds artistry from the verge of psychological breakdown when it comes from beat poets and jazz musicians, abstract expressionists and method actors; but not from iconic pop stars. Yet, ironically, the episode appears to cement the ascension of a new star to join the constellation shining brightest through the smog above the Hollywood hills; one that plots a lineage back to Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley amongst others. Maybe Tom Cruise should have bounced a little higher on that couch, because the mythmakers were hiring; when the history books choose their idols par excellence, nobody will remember who fluffed the final interview. For twelve months Britney Spears was the seer who stared into the abyss for us all; her piece of performance art delivered a critique of the rampant gossip society driving the nexus between consumer-capitalism and celebrity on the internet at the outset of the twenty-first century. This was the soundtrack.

Summary: Britney Spears may return to the MTV Awards in September 2008. Russell Brand will be hosting....