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Seven years ago, as I was still mocking Britney’s In the Zone album (before I realized over the subsequent years that I actually loved it), I would’ve been embarrassed to select a Britney album as a favourite album of any year. The usual reasons/excuses apply: she doesn’t sing live, she doesn’t have much creative input into her songs (if any), the lyrics of her songs are banal, etc.

Over time, however, I’ve realized and fully accepted the fact that the worth of a Britney song has very little to do with her vocal technique (although I do believe she can actually sing well, if she chooses to challenge herself), her lack of creative input, or the lyrical depth of the material. To me, it’s all about the songwriters and the producers who provide the music for her albums.

With her cultural status, her longevity in the ever-fickle pop music scene, and her roller-coaster-like public persona (though it seems to have stabilized recently), Britney always gets the A-team, whoever they may be at the moment; she gets the best songs and productions from the biggest and hippest talents in the music industry. And that is what I listen for and enjoy.

I dig most of Britney’s singles, and while I wouldn’t call myself a big Britney fan, I’ve also listened to some of her albums. In the Zone is a standout, as Britney took a big step away from her world-conquering bubblegum pop into club bangers and urban jams that get me dancing every time. However, what impressed me most was that the album was musically multi-faceted and varied; in addition to club tracks like “(I Got That) Boom Boom” and “Outrageous”, there were tracks like “Early Mornin’” and “Touch of My Hand” that relied on atmospheric production and strange sounds as much as, even in lieu of, straightforward verse-chorus songwriting and pounding dance or hip-hop beats to succeed.

This shift from classic pop song structures into a focus on beats and sounds (a shift that has also occurred in the pop music landscape overall) continued on Blackout and Circus, both of which I also enjoy greatly. While the former is almost entirely a spotlight on the grimy, sweaty dancefloor, and is filled with killer hooks, wacky and creepy (but killer) sounds are sprinkled throughout Blackout (the haunted-mansion voice singing the hook on “Get Naked”, the bass synth and pitch-f**ked vocals on “Freakshow”, the entire chorus of “Hot as Ice”), adding unexpected flavours to a very synthetic and processed album. Also, in addition to melodic verses and choruses, spoken and two/three-note simple chants populate the tracks (like on infamous first single “Gimme More”), a trait that deepens on Britney’s latest album Femme Fatale.

On “Break the Ice”, a highly regarded Britney track of recent years, there is even some radical pop song structuring in addition to the strange-but-delightful sonic production (a cathedral choir in the intro, an extended breakdown/outro that sounds like a dance club submerged deep underwater, complete with whale [?] voices). During sections of the chorus of the song, typically a hi-energy point where arrangements are piled on to ramp up the intensity after the verse, the beats drop out, re-casting the climax of the song as a smoothed-out, slowed-down simmer. This then further morphs into the breakdown, where an entirely new and crazy beat comes in. The hook then gets added in, recontextualized a second time from a typical pop chorus into an outro chant.

This look-ma-no-beats trick is repeated again on Circus’s title track and second single, during the buildup of the pre-chorus, on a track that is otherwise a return to traditional (and excruciating CATCHY) verse-chorus pop structuring. On the rest of Circus, which IMHO is not lesser than Blackout, the weird and inspired sonic production and genre-mashing continue, and is arguably ramped up. First single “Womanizer” takes chanting and dashes off with it, repeating not just words but syllables, and drills itself into everyone’s head.  “Mannequin”, an awesome club joint with dark lyrics, features a pitch-stretched voice that’s more remarkable than the actual hook of the song. “Unusual You”, which must be a hardcore fan favourite, could be an indie-rock track if the four-on-the-floor beat was removed, overdriven guitars were added, and a whiny male frontman with a British accent was singing instead. The atmosphere and even the lyrics are also not typical Britney, i.e. not about f**king or dancing, instead conveying a mysterious and confused vibe, worlds away from the immediate, in-your-face style of “…Baby One More Time” and “Toxic”. And then there’s “Mmm Papi”…

To see what I think of Britney’s latest, Femme Fatale, click here.