Britney Spears waited over two years to deliver her eighth album. In that time, she embarked on a successful tour, got engaged, and landed a judge's spot on "The X-Factor". Things went sour when Spears ended the engagement and was subsequently booted from the judge's panel. Rather than get consumed by another media circus, Britt decided to use her personal strife as a pivot to create a new record, one that's decidedly more 'personal' than her previous outings. Indeed, Britney clung to this assertion during the album's production --all handled by will.i.am, who happened to produce one of "Femme Fatale"'s highlights "Big Fat Bass"-- and while this new record may carry some of this weight, it's a description that's a bit too welcome, if perhaps over-extended. But to get the obvious joke out of the way, yes Britney has never had a vital role in her music --her songwriters and producers have carefully crafted her career since "Baby One More Time"-- so her more 'personal' works end up as just another producer's showcase (even in her first artistic statement "Britney", way back in 2001). However, after fourteen years in the business, Britt Britt is aware of this, and a close look at the credits for "Britney Jean" shows how keen she is. Every song here bears a writing credit from her (to put that in perspective, she didn't lift a pen for 2011's "Femme Fatale", and contributed only five writing credits for "Blackout" and "Circus" combined), so it's clear that she was determined to have a more prominent role in her music, and she enlisted the best producers money can buy to bring her vision to life --in addition to will.i.am, William Orbit, David Guetta, Diplo and Anthony Preston also contribute. The stage was certainly set for the insular club-paradise Britt wanted, but as the rhyme goes: "all the king's horses and all the king's men, couldn't put Humpty Dumpty back together again".
Britt has been on a long slow slide since her cringe-tastic "Blackout", and no amount of song credits and sympathetic producers could piece her career back to the way it was before. "Britney Jean" does offer sincere moments of personality, such as the opener "Alien", a sprawling Orbit produced track that no doubt sets up the rest of the record. Britney isn't one of us, she never really has been and even after the trials and tribulations of the mid-2000s had faded, there's no doubt that Britney is still lost in her own world, unable to fully connect to the mainstream, or even herself. This struggle is only compounded when there are so many different collaborators here, all working overtime to reach the peaks of Britt's early years. Sia assists in the album's nadir "Perfume" (no doubt Britt's annual entry into the worst ballad of all time sweepstakes), David Guetta gives "Body Ache" an intoxicating club pulse, and will.i.am does deliver in the album's best track, the lead single "Work Bitch!", a perfect piece of dance-pop with an important message to boot. That song is significant, not because it's one of Britney's best-ever singles, but because there is a considerable chasm that separates that song from the rest of the album. Most often, "Britney Jean" offers just enough to be considered progessive, even more than Lady Gaga's "ARTPOP", and it once presents us with some pretty off-kilter club-crawlers in the vein of "How I Roll", but as far as being a personal record, it fails. True, Britt confronts the split from Jason Trawick in "Perfume", the will.i.am assisted "It Should Be Easy", and the standard edition's closer "Don't Cry", and sure, "Work Bitch!" and "Alien" document her struggles to stay abreast the ever changing modern landscape, but the high count of songwriters and producers here actually work against "Britney Jean". They bury these sentiments under neon-drenched productions and muddy breakdowns, thus flattening out any sort of human persona Britney could have provided and once again work this record into another "Blackout" remake. Ultimately, though, the songs do their job. The club songs, of which there are a bunch, ignite the dancefloor, while the ballads contain their signature Britney sweetness to cool it off. It's all solid entertainment, all enjoyable to an impeccable degree. Simply put, this is standard issue Britney Spears, but it's still such a shame. If the emotions had dug deeper, the breakdowns further explored, the whole enterprised extended past ten tracks and 36 minutes (47 minutes on the deluxe edition, which by the way is the better deal, containing three songs that hint at what could've been), this would've been Britney's best album, possibly the best pop record of the year.
Recommended Tracks in Bold:
1. Alien 2. Work Bitch! 3. Perfume
4. It Should Be Easy 5. Tik Tik Boom 6. Body Ache
7. Til’ It’s Gone 8. Passenger 9. Chillin’ With You
10. Don’t Cry
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