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A GUIDED TOUR THROUGH THE WORLDS OF POP, ROCK AND RAP
BY GREG KOT | E-mail | About | Twitter | RSS

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March 25, 2011

Album review: Britney Spears, 'Femme Fatale'

Rating: 2 stars (out of 4)

It takes a village to keep Britney Spears doing what she does best: Selling stuff.

No fewer than 28 songwriters and 13 producers manicured the 12 songs on “Femme Fatale” (Jive), Spears’ seventh studio album. In that respect, it is scarcely different from most of her previous albums, committee efforts that position Spears as a brand rather than an artist with potentially dangerous thoughts of her own.

In a world where Lady Gaga aspires to turn dance-pop “entertainment” into an art form, Spears is perfectly happy to let her collaborators do the heavy lifting and the heavy thinking.

To her credit, she has never pretended to approach it any other way and it has turned her into a very wealthy icon, with more than 100 million album sales worldwide since her 1999 debut. On “Femme Fatale” she doesn’t even bother to shake down a songwriting credit, preferring to let the highly paid professionals do it instead. If nothing else it only adds to her aura: That of a teen-pop heiress entrusting the hired guns to do her bidding – or to use her any way they choose so long as they keep her in the Top 10.


She’s smart that way. “Femme Fatale” dispenses with the messy personal baggage and real-life subtext attached to her two previous albums, “Blackout” (2007) and “Circus” (2008), and simply goes for the dancefloor gusto. It succeeds as pure escapism, a testament to the ability of producers such as Dr. Luke, Max Martin and, especially, Bloodshy and Avant to jack up jam-packed discos.

Spears allows herself to be treated like another passenger in these rhythm trains. Her nasal, pinched voice has never been particularly astonishing, and now it’s mashed and distorted into another texture, a wall of Auto-Tuned bleeps and bionic loops.

It’s just as well when given lyrics such as “Your body’s so sick I think I caught the flu” and metaphors that assert her libido is “steaming like a pot full of vegetables.” Pass the asparagus.

She cheerfully submits because Spears prefers pop immediacy to revelation. If “Blackout” and “Circus” showed evidence of self-reflection, a Gaga-like ability to comment on herself as a Pop Object, “Femme Fatale” reduces Spears’ world to lusting bodies and lustier music.

Though larded with filler (Spears, after all, has always been about singles, not albums), “Femme Fatale” contains enough slammers to ensure that the celebrity-singer’s place on the pop charts will be secure for at least the next year. And that’s really all that matters. “Till the World Ends” sets the tone with its steady climb into Euro-disco ebullience, with stuttering, wordless vocals and grand washes of synthesizers. “Keep on dancing till the world ends,” Spears chirps, and several songs follow her command: “I Wanna Go,” in which a whistled melody answers a springy bass line; the arcade-game fireworks of “How I Roll”; the wicked grind of “Hold It Against Me,” easily the hardest-edged Spears single yet despite a chorus that resurrects an old Groucho Marx joke.

There’s also a flash of avant-pop in a more subdued vein: “Trip to Your Heart,” produced by the Swedish team of Christian Karlsson (Bloodshy) and Pontus Winnberg (Avant). Over a clipped backdrop that at times sounds like white-noise static, bell-like notes accent an airy, almost vaporous vocal. The voice belongs to Spears, but it could be anyone’s – an anonymous ghost in the dance machine.

greg@gregkot.com

Comments

FAIL. on your part, not hers.

Great op-ed about Lady Gaga, Mr. Kot!

It's clear that you began this review with the desire to cast the Femme Fatale era in a Britney vs. Gaga light, and were too foolish to hide your pro-Gaga bias. To you, Gaga's music is somehow "an art form," even though she became famous for singing about booze, boys, and sex. Do you care to point to the song in which Gaga "reflects upon herself as a pop object?" Just Dance is about being wasted at a party. Poker Face is about sex. Love Game is about the male anatomy. Paparazzi, Alejandro, and Bad Romance are about relationships and boys. Telephone is about not wanting your man to call you when you're at the club. Born This Way is a typical love-yourself anthem. Where is this arty substance you keep referring to?

If you want to review the album instead of make the subtext of this review about your thoughts about why Gaga is s0o0o0o much cooler than Britney, be my guest. But this flop review isn't about Femme Fatale. It's about why Greg Kot likes Gaga more than Britney.

I agree with all the points that you've raised. And I just found out (from your review) that it took 28 songwrites and 12 producers to make 12 songs. :-O Clearly shows the amount of talent Britney has. GaGa's going to dominate 2011 yet again.

LOL @ you thinking Gaga is so deep because she wears weird clothes.

Britney has been breaking ground in pop music for years with her sound and doing it without all the pretense and arrogance of some wannabe hipster.

Oh you're just another middle aged white guy who some how thinks it's "cooler" to like Gaga because she's a east villiage art school kid who made it big, meanwhile her songs are generic sex and party songs. Unless of course you are celebrating her total ripoff of Madonna's express yourself for her 2011 version of Christina Aquilera's 'Beautiful'

Lady Gaga is only mentioned once in the review, seems like Alex is just an upset Britney apologist with a Gaga vendetta.

Now you Britney fans are just butt hurt. As someone who isn't a stan of either of these girls but one that actually does like to have mindless pop in my ipod when I'm on a treadmill, the bottom line is that Gaga plays the game acting like an "artist" better than Britney. Strip down the music and lyrics and outside of a couple songs here and there most of it is generic pop that anyone can sing but Gaga with her outrageous outfits and better hitting singles makes it more enjoyable.


The breakdown seems to have sucked the life out of Britney. She seems boring which is a dangerous place to be in pop music. On a good note she seems to have a very loyal fanbase that will stick with her forever (hey if you stuck with her through shaving her head, having her kids taken away and be carried out of her house on a gurney I think its safe to say ya'll (ha, Britney word) are in for the long haul) but for to capture the public's fascination again she's going to have to open up a bit. I actually don't mind the album, for that genre its very well crafted pop/dance album that's towers over Kesha's and Katy's crap. But outside of criminal, Britney is very closed to the public which is odd since supposedly her idol is Madonna who was always open and pushing buttons.

The ONLY pre-release showing and party will be in Chicago at the Portage Theater at Six Corners Milwaukee-Cicero-Irving Park....Monday, March 28 at 6 pm....

@Dom -- Gaga is mentioned twice, and in both contexts, they are there to refer to her as the Gold Standard, to which Britney apparently falls short. Gaga is referred to as someone turning pop "into an art form," who supplies reflective commentaries on fame and celebrity.

I mean, when Greg Kot says that "Blackout" featured "Gaga-like abilities," I have to think: just how heavy are his blinders? How thick is the wool over his eyes? Blackout was released a year before anyone knew who Lady Gaga was. Gaga, and many others in the new ranks of pop, took her cues from Blackout.

No one ever seems to be able to point to a good example of Gaga's "artistic nature." It's an aura she's created. Try to make it concrete and everyone sees how absurd it is. (And eighty percent of it is ripped off from Madonna or Roisin Murphy, anyway.)

Thank you, Alex.
This so called music reviewer acting as if BLACKOUT was better because it somehow took cues from GAGA's music, when in reality it was THE FAME that came out afterward and took cues from Blackout as did MOST new euro/futuristic sounding pop in America. Blackout was a very influential album for the American pop music scene.

and this:


"No one ever seems to be able to point to a good example of Gaga's "artistic nature." It's an aura she's created. Try to make it concrete and everyone sees how absurd it is. (And eighty percent of it is ripped off from Madonna or Roisin Murphy, anyway.)?


BRAVO!!

This indeed was a very biased review. The thing I don't get is how is Britney "all about singles"?

Her albums have always done well and all her albums since In The Zone contained no filler at all. Just because you don't like a particular song as much as the rest of the album does not make it filler. It's only filler when it sounds just like another song on the album or sounds like it was put together in an hr. Just to fill up space.

And I agree with what Michael said. Could not have said it better myself.

Take away Gaga's outfits and her stage antics, she'd be another average boring performer. Piano is the only thing she is truly good at. All her songs sound the same and lately sound like someone else's work (Alejandro - Ace Of Base, Born This Way - Madonna)

Gaga is not doing anything to pop music that has not been done before, she just bringing publicity upon herself.

And as for song lyrics, um.. what about "bluffin with my muffin"?

Diana Ross
Tina Turner
Aretha Franklin
just to name a few NEVER wrote a song NO NOT ONE!
Britney has written before, her master piece Blackout. Rihanna didnt pen her latest Loud but it's a great piece of art! Flop-ga obviously should have spent a little of her money to get an "ORIGINAL" album. I used to like her in Fame Monster and was a fan, I just don't get this "new" gaga. I am really dissappointed that she had to copy madonna. there is nothing new about this song being a BLATANT RIP OFF and COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT on gaga's part. The fact that people are okay with this just speaks to the lack of originality. She has talent just lacks originality.

I guess Im just SICk of all the gimmicks and wierdness. I doubt she will have a career 5 years from now, there is only so many wierd outfits a person can wear till people are just tired and frankly I am the lil monster we ex monster that calls her out. She really dissappointed me and I refuse to buy a cd ONLY SHE says "is the album of the decade" knowing very well she didnt spend not one second on it.

She says she wrote the album for "the gays" then five seconds later for "Whitney Houston?!" but it sounds like Madonna..oh and Madonna's Publicist Blantly told CNN she never sent gaga any email.

Gaga if you want me as your fan again, get in the studio and produce real one of a kind music, not Madona rip offs!


@Michael I agree for the most part, but you shouldn't have included the "ripped off" part. Madonna was critisized for ripping off Marilyn Monroe early into her career; it's a cycle.

i think that this writer is old to handle brit's young funky pop synth songs. Go home old buddy!

I don't wanna be unpleasant... but Britney perfomed dance music and electropop sound before Lady Gaga... Don't you remember of Stronger, Toxic, And Then We Kiss, Blackout... Most of Britney's songs are dance-pop oriented !!! Since 1999 !!!

Woow haha this is the second time the chicago tribune has given a gaga favored review instead a review of the album(Femme Fatale), and i have bought every britney album and enjoyed every song, none of them are just "fillers". If you want just filler albums go talk to kesha or katy perry.

Isn't Greg just pointing out that Gaga writes her own songs and Britney uses songwriters? Even if Gaga's songs aren't great, at least she crafts them herself. That makes her an artist, while Britney is a performer (not a bad thing). They both entertain millions. Different approaches to pop music. Wilco still rules.

old people shouldn't review pop music. they just don't get it and never will. it's not about the lyrics. it's not about who wrote what. it's not about who produced what. it's about what songs you want to hear when you're dancing in a club at 1 in the morning and that's why britney is still popular. people want to hear her music when they're getting ready to go out and they want to hear it at 1 a.m. that's it nothing more and britney knows that and that's why she does what she does the best.

This is valid as an opinion but the opinion of just one person in the world, but I think that this guy doesnt know a lot about electro pop music or the music of this century, I dont care that Britney is not writing her songs but the album is good, there's a lot of good producers and writers and that is showed in her songs.
Its pathetic to think that Pop music is about what they call Art, Pop music is for enjoy, to dance not for thinking , we can use it for give a message to the people like GAGA did with Born this way but Britney has been clear all the time we just want to enjoy . and thats what this album is about! Chicago Tribune I think You need a younger album reviewer , at least for Pop music.

all you girls need to stay quiet. I can't believe all these people take the time to talk trash about the honest review. This cd is trash, you have have very questionable tastes.

First of all, why does a comment need to be approved? This authoritarian censorship must go.

Frankly, I have wondered the same thing the author is communicating-how on earth does Britney Spears, the most predictable, 1-dimensional singer of her generation (in a generation of them at that) sustain her popularity? She has none of Madonna's charisma on record or point of view or involvement in her records and it has always shown. For some reason, just as her popularity was wanning, her record company suddenly started getting behind her with Blackout, paid off Clear Channel, and now she's consistently been on the radio with her pop concoctions created mostly by outsiders.

She's just so dull and always has been. She was a teen pop star from the 90s and should have stayed there. Bring on the new Gaga record already please. She is Madonna's heir. Although preannointed so by the press, that was an aspiration Britney could never have realistically have hoped to attain.

Oh, and for the record, Franklin did write a lot of her own material, writer above is wrong ("Think," "Since You've Been Gone," "Rock Steady" and many others).

What's strange reading the review and the comments is that it doesn't matter. This critic gave his opinion. I don't have to like it. I don't have to agree with it. Take it with a grain of salt. Other critics are raving. This is just one person.

Britney Spears is who she is despite all the bad crap thats happened to her. Lady Gaga is a different person different kind of monster. Buy the cd and think for yourselfs.

I like pop music a lot. I like a lot of artists from that genre. In fact, I do love Britney's past albums, especially up 'til 2005. From that, you can't say I'm biased or anything like that. But to the people that think this album is good... I don't know what you're listening too. The first 4 songs are OK, the best one being I Wanna Go, but the rest of the songs are BAD. I mean, they are not catchy or consistent... they're just bad pop music. I think this is easily her worst album.

And if you want to compare her with Gaga... Britney doesn't write or produce her own music, doesn't sing live (and by that you think how much of her singing in this album is real and how much is computers), her music is not as consistent, you can notice she doesn't involve in her albums as much as Gaga, etc. etc. etc.

Well, a very dull pop record.

Izz makes a GREAT POINT!.

so what if gaga writes her own music, there terribe lyrics as well. then redone goes in to over produce it with influnences of other artists. ha.
Knot is the only one thats given the album thus far a low rating. ha, get with it homeboy. music sense is changing!

Does anyone even care if Britney Spears releases an album anymore? Radio will force it down our throats and it'll generate some cash for a record company but it will immediately be forgotten.

"Electro pop music?" People, feel free to disagree with the review but Greg Kot knows more about music than just about anyone writing about it in Chicago today. "t's not about the lyrics. it's not about who wrote what. " Considering that people in the industry fight tooth and nail over these credits and the money they generate, it very much IS about who wrote what. That's why Spears tried to pretend she was a songwriter on her last two albums. Kot's saying she's back to not pretending here.

All of you people saying this is great art are no doubt the same people who once thought Hootie & the Blowfish's second album was great art, too. You'll all get over it.

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