People round here know me --- correctly, mostly --- as an avid prog head, sometime metal head and a rocker in general, but there are a lot of genres I don’t subscribe to. The guys are trying to help me address this by assisting me in my soon-to-begin exploration of the world of jazz, and reggae is on the cards somewhere too, possibly soul, who knows? But one genre I have pretty much very little time at all for is the generic pop or chart music, particularly what passes for “r’n’b” these days. To me, it is really the lowest common denominator when it comes to music. It’s basically throwaway, wallpaper music with about as much thought put into it as a Steven Segal movie.
I’m a great one for slagging off pop/chart music, but with this being a new year and all, and having been mightily impressed with the debut album from Chvrches, I’ve decided to dedicate a spot to reviewing pop albums. Mostly new ones, though they won’t always be. I’ll try to review them with my usual lack of bias, but will be mentioning what I thought of the artiste (if anything) prior to hearing the new album and how, if at all, my opinion of them changes after that.
Britney Jean --- Britney Spears --- 2013 (RCA)
And who better to start with than a lady who made her mark on the charts with poppy, bland little dance songs but who looked great in a school uniform? After seven albums Britney is now more a musical corporate entity than just a singer, and she’s certainly been down the “bad celeb” route, none of which particularly interests me. What I want to know is, is this, her eighth album in fourteen years, any good? To be fair, I’ve never heard a Britney album up to now, but who could not be familiar with her hits. I said HITS! Yes, I know I used that joke before. Yes I know it’s annoying. Yes I know I’m still doing it.
But what are her albums like? I’ve pointed out before that sometimes the hit singles are not the real measure of the person. Labels will of course release the catchiest songs off an album with the hope that they will become hits, get into the charts or at least garner some airplay for the artiste. But often hiding away on the album are some pretty excellent tracks which would never be released, and may show a whole different side to the performer.
Or not.
Hey, if The Batlord can listen to Britney then so can I, huh? The opening track doesn’t impress me from the start, with its staggered synth and the autotune seeming to be used on her voice. “Alien” moves at a sort of mid-pace, and it’s co-written with William Orbit, so I guess I can hear his trance-y sound here. Give her her due, she has a hand in writing every song here, so you’ve got to admire that. I actually think I’ve heard this song before. Meh, it’s okay. I do find again the amount of people involved in an album like this a bit ridiculous. Including producers, engineers, photographers etc there are over
sixty people credited here! “Work bitch” is an annoying eurodance song with plenty of synth and that thumping beat that always turns me off trance music. Bleh.
She sings well, there’s no doubt about that, and this is one of those songs that, despite my initial dislike of it, I can see bouncing around in my head for hours after finishing this review. Damn it! This was the first single, or so I’m told. “Perfume” is slower, with again synth backing and piano, a song on which Britney exercises the more passionate side of her voice, the yearning tone we’ve heard in the likes of “I’m not a girl, not yet a woman”, sort of a bitter revenge type song. Wiki calls this a power ballad, eighties-influenced. It’s not. It’s nothing close to that. I wouldn’t even call it a ballad. Nice track though. Think I’ll end up with this in my head too later on.
Featuring a guest vocal from Will.i.am (why can’t he just call himself William?) “It should be easy” typifies the kind of pop I hate: autotune, bouncing piano and synth, empty vacuous trash. And I mean that in the best possible way. No I don’t. This is bloody awful. This is the kind of crap I would regularly hear pouring from my neighbour’s bedroom on a hot summer afternoon and wish her teenage daughter would listen to some real music as I turned up my own metal or rock. Sigh. On we go. Another guest is rapper T.I who lends his voice to “Tik tik boom”, on which Britney’s voice is certainly sexy on a sort of half-rap in a mid-paced tune with some nice keys, but I really don’t have time for rappers sorry. He certainly sounds good at what he does, this T.I chap, but it’s not for me. Mercifully it’s not a long song and we’re on to the next one, which is called “Body ache” and is another dance number.
So far, this album is exemplifying pretty much everything I hate about the charts, dance and pop music. It all just sounds empty to me, soulless. Well, not all of it. But a lot of it. Too much squawking synth, not enough guitar. Possibly not any guitar, or if there is any there I can’t hear it, drowned out by the mutliple banks of Korgs, Moogs and whatever else. “Till it’s gone” features that “ay-ay-ay” thing I hate in pop vocals, where they stretch out each word to infinity. It’s yet another electro/dance number, and bar the second and third track so far I’m hearing little to recommend this album to me at this point. The autotune is as ever very annoying, as are the bouncing, growling, farting synths.
I suppose I should be grateful that at least the songs are all short, with only one over four minutes. It could be so much worse. But even so it’s pretty bad. I’m in the same frame of mind as I was when reviewing Kylie’s “Aphrodite” album. After one decent single I was crushed by how bad the rest of it was. This is turning out the same. Generic pop pap, nothing to so far change my mind, either about Britney nor about pop music itself. A slower, slightly menacing track is “Passenger”, with a much better vocal from Britney and even some guitar coming through. Sort of reminds me of Imagine Dragons or someone like that. “Chillin’ with you” features a duet with her sister, Jamie Lynn, who apparently has chosen the country music route for her bid for fame, and has at least some nice acoustic guitar driving it. Balladic certainly, it features drum machines but slower than has been the case up to now until the chorus when it speeds up a little, kind of ruins it.
The closer then is “Don’t cry”, with a western feel to it, whistling intro and acoustic guitar then some really nice basswork taking us into a kind of anthemic ballad that finishes the album much more strongly than I had been expecting. Actually, the last three tracks greatly improved the overall quality of the songs on the album but we’re still left with a midsection of pretty mediocre tracks after a reasonably good beginning. To use an old football metaphor, the forwards are good and the defenders know what they’re doing but the midfield needs a lot of work.
TRACKLISTING
1. Alien
2. Work bitch
3. Perfume
4, It should be easy
5. Tik tik boom
6. Bodyache
7. Till it’s gone
8. Passenger
9. Chillin’ with you
10. Don’t cry
They say this is a concept album. I don’t see it. I’ve read the overview and I still don’t understand it. What I do know is this is a pretty formulaic album that falls back on the usual tricks of bringing in songwriters, producers and guest vocalists that pop music seems to revel in. I still can’t get my head around why one album needs so many personnel? But to be fair, if what resulted was a masterpiece, a classic, then I would accept it. This is not, in my opinion, a masterpiece. But then, maybe it wasn’t intended to be.
I know, as I say, little of the vagaries of pop music, but the albums I’ve listened to all seem to follow the same basic formula, the formula that seems to bring them chart success, so maybe that’s all Britney Spears is doing here. Gotta eat, after all. And buy clothes. Lots of clothes. Still, it’s not for me and has done nothing to change my mind about pop music. Perhaps next time? But as far as Britney is concerned, I’d have to say, baby, don’t hit me one more time...