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[Nina West]

It has been 6 years since Britney Spears released her 8th studio album 'Britney Jean' & think we can all agree that this was her worst album to date. Described by Britney herself as her most personal album ever made and what we got was something clearly rushed and not very personal at all with some terribly dated production (namely by Will.i.am) and plus some really questionable vocals & some bad decisions made all round. I don't think the album was all bad, there were some decent moments on there and think there was some potential in there somewhere. For a start I would have had this as a full studio album & instead make it an EP of 6 to 8 tracks and scrap the weak tracks.

However in this topic I'm gonna talk about the entire era. What could have been better? What went right? & etc, these are just my opinions and people can give their views on my choices and make your own comments, so here goes...

The Single Choices

Work Bitch - Probably the only correct choice made during this era by having this as the lead single, this definitely sounds like a hit, it has the rhythm, the energy and still remembered to this day, this has definitely grown more popular with Britney fans through the years & has become a Britney classic. The music video was great also and a very promising start to the era.

Choosing 'Perfume' as the 2nd and final single wasn't a good decision and things started really going wrong. I do like the song, its definitely one of the album's highlights, but the song is just not second single material and it sure doesn't live up to 'WB' (its poor chart performance proves that). Stopping after just 2 singles just felt like they gave up.

The second single should have been another club banger and my choice would have been 'Til' It's Gone', this seems like a less obvious choice (like 'Toxic' on 'ITZ'). The song is great and doesn't get mentioned enough with good vocals and some great frenzied production that could have easily been a club hit and seen some success.

The third single 'Alien' of course, her most personal song on the album & definitely one of the better moments on this otherwise uneven album, its emotional yet catchy as hell, but for its release I'd have it slightly re-recorded to fix that glitch and give some of the vocals a slight retouch that could make this even better.

For the fourth and final single THEN release 'Perfume (The Dreaming Mix)'' which has better production and more clearer vocals, along with the original planned music video (which has Britney has an hitman), instead of that boring official version we got. Plus this is the type of song that takes time to grow on you and releasing it later could benefitted its success better.


Promo

While she did give a lot of promo interviews and talk shows, she looked great and most of the time she seemed really happy doing it, nice to see some of the old Britney again. But all that seemed to stop after the first single and what could have been done better was the performances, for 'Work Bitch' she should have least performed it at some high profile award shows (VMA's, EMA's & etc) Same goes for the 2nd single (maybe at the 'Billboard Music Awards') and do some radio interviews for the 3rd single. Maybe some live & acoustic performances could have worked to show off her vocals. Same could have gone for the 4th single at the 'Brit Awards' (maybe) and plus a medley of all the singles and some of her old classics on another high profile award show.

Most of the era she promoted the 'Vegas Residency' instead of promoting the album. Her team was to blame for that.


Production

To call this era controversial is an understatement, there was so much potential in this project, but its the poor production is what killed it, having Will.i.am involved in this project certainly didn't do this any favours, he made the songs he produced sound dated & cheap (including the awful track he featured on 'It Should Be Easy' is a prime example). Also the Myah Marie scandal whose clearly singing on several of the tracks instead of Britney, she even said herself that she had no idea of what happened with this album, she barely had any control or say with this project and wanted it to be very different to what we got.

Britney should have had more control over this album and I also remember when she said that she wanted to make it a 'Blackout 2.0' but more personal? that would have been amazing and definitely would have been better than this.


So these are my views? Do you agree or disagree? please share your own views if you want.