Early Review of Britney's "Blackout"

[Shawn]

Okay, so the reviewer doesn't say many nice things about her or her voice, but for the most part, they think the album is, in his words, "slammin'".

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/m...w_cd_sound.html

Studio tricks make Britney's new CD sound like robot singing

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Monday, October 22nd 2007, 5:31 AM

She may no longer dance with flair, lip-sync on cue, keep her dress down, or even be judged a suitable mom, but Britney Spears can still turn up on some slammin' new songs.

The much-whispered-about, oft-giggled-over "Blackout" album, the singer's first in four years, contains flashes of the zippy pop and propulsive dance beats Brit fans treasure, despite the singer's, shall we say, distracting activities of the last year.

On the contrary, those adventures may only have helped matters for the disk, out next Tuesday. After all, Britney the singer was never exactly the center of her songs.

Her twerpy chirp of a voice and flirty Lolita persona serve mainly as mascots for the music, providing the brand name and raw goods that a massive cast of writers, producers and marketers then manipulate into something commercially attuned.

If Britney is indeed as out of it as she appears, that would only give the behind-the-scenes experts more freedom to prop the pop queen into whatever settings they deem most flattering.

Much of "Blackout" suggests as much. On many tracks, Britney sounds so worked over, she doesn't even seem like a person. Instead, she comes off like some machine that bleeps and bloops out an airy array of oohs, ahhs and groans. If a blowup sex doll could sing, this is what she'd sound like.

In terms of studio trickery, Paris Hilton's album was practically "Unplugged" compared to this.

Certainly, the material on "Blackout" makes the most of that mechanized character. The 12-cut disk features wall-to-wall electro-fueled club cuts. There's not a ballad in the bunch. The synth-dance smash single "Gimme More" tips off the rest.

"Radar" matches a sniping electronic beat to a snappy bubble gum tune. "Ooh Baby Baby" takes a Gary Glitter-style drum pattern and adds its own catchy chorus, while in "Hot as Ice" (perhaps the only song in which Britney sounds like a human being) the sound men concocted a striking dance-rock melange.

Lyrically, Britney spends most of the CD in a state of erotic mania. "My body is calling for you, bad boy," she coos in "Get Naked."

"I've waited all my life for you - your love, your tongue," she drools in "Heaven on Earth."

"My God, that Britney is shameless," she allows in "Piece of Me."

Actually, that last bit finds her reporting on how other people view her, a perspective she thankfully indulges in during only a few tracks. The self-references had come up in the single, but they find a more sustained voice in "Piece of Me," where she calls out the paparazzi with a very punk "You wanna piece of me" dare.

In "Why Should I Be Sad" Britney gets even more personal, taking a swipe at K-Fed. "My friends said you would play me/but I just said they're crazy/while I was crying frantic/was it true?"

Of course, there's something a tad disquieting about trying to link up the central image pushed by "Blackout" - Britney as the in-control erotic master - with her out-of-control real life.

If you think about it too much, it's hard not to see her as that old Saturday Night Live "drunk girl" character, the sad lush pawing men at a party.

Luckily, with music this fun you won't have to think about that too much. Instead think about this: How wonderful it is that, in the world of slick pop, even if stars can't deliver, the machine behind them still can.