Rolling Stone Review! 3 & 1/2 stars!

 

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Britney Spears 'Blackout'

 

*** 1/2 / *****

 

Well, this is unfortunate. While judges debate her child-visitation rights, Britney Spears has released an album whose title seems to have been inspired by a major flirtini binge. On Blackout, she's singing that she's "so damn high I can't come down," anticipating a night of "dancing tabletop," and issuing a proclamation that's enough to make Sean Preston use Jayden as a protective shield from Mommy: "Maybe I'm a freak, but I don't really give a damn/I'm as crazy as a motherf***er!"

 

Those words may or may not reflect Britney's true feelings — she didn't write them — but what's notable is that Blackout is the first time in her career that she's voiced any real thoughts about her life. The old provocation game is still afoot, but Britney's stubbornly holding on to her freakness — it's the only form of rebellion she's got left. With a VIP list of puppet masters including Timbaland, Pharrell Williams and Bloodshy, she's all vox-tweaked and ready to bring back the stellar heavy-breathers of her youth, from the Berlin-style New Wave disco of "Heaven on Earth" to the stadium-stomping "Ooh Ooh Baby." It's telling that Blackout's two best tracks — the tabloid-bashing banger "Piece of Me" and the papa¬≠razzi-tease "Freakshow" — suggest that she believes playing the part of the cage-dancing bear is the best way to mess with the media. "Wanna see crazy?" she sings on "Freakshow." "We can show 'em!" When she's not gearing up for a meltdown, Britney's wielding more melting-ice imagery than An Inconvenient Truth: She's gonna "break the ice," "hit defrost on ya," 'cause she's "cold as fire, baby, hot as ice." Fire and ice — Robert Frost said the world will end in one of those two ways, consumed by passion or frozen by rationalism, and it's clear which option Brit will take. But meanwhile, she's gonna crank the best pop booty jams until a social worker cuts off her supply of hits.

 

 

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Rolling Stone Review! 3 & 1/2 stars!

 

wow that's brilliant rolling stone are really harsh critics so 3 and a half stars is great

Yep, In The Zone got 3 stars and so did Britney. BOMT got 2.5 stars, and OIDIA and Blackout have both gotten 3.5 stars ^_^

favourable review from All Music Guide:

 

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Public image is vital to pop stars, but few stars have been so inextricably tied to their image as Britney Spears. Think back to "...Baby One More Time" — it has an indelible hook but what leaps to mind is not the sound of the single, but how Britney looked in the video as she pouted and preened in a schoolgirls' uniform, an image as iconic as Madonna's exposed navel. Every one of Britney's hits had an accompanying image, as she relied on her carefully sculpted sexpot-next-door persona as much as she did on her records, but what happens when the image turns sour, as it certainly did for Britney in the years following the release of In the Zone? When that album hit the stores in 2003, Britney had yet to marry, had yet to give birth, had yet to even meet professional layabout Kevin Federline — she had yet to trash her girl-next-door fantasy by turning into white trash. Some blamed Federline for her rapid downward spiral, but she continued to descend after splitting with K-Fed in the fall of 2006, as each month brought a new tabloid sensation from Britney, a situation that became all the more alarming when contrasted to how tightly controlled her public image used to be. The shift in her persona came into sharp relief at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards, as she sleepwalked through a disastrous lip-synch of her comeback single "Gimme More," a disaster by any measure, but when it was compared to such previous meticulously staged VMA appearances as her make-out with Madonna in 2003, it made Britney seem like a lost cause and fallen star.

 

All this toil and turmoil set the stage for her 2007 comeback Blackout to be a flat-out train wreck, which it decidedly is not — but that doesn't mean it's a triumph, either. Blackout is an easy album to overpraise based on the lowered expectations Britney's behavior has set for her audience, as none of her antics suggested that she'd be able to deliver something coherent and entertaining, two things that Blackout is. As an album, it holds together better than any of her other records, echoing the sleek club-centric feel of In the Zone but it's heavier on hedonism than its predecessor, stripped of any ballads or sensitivity, and just reveling in dirty good times. So Blackout acts as a soundtrack for Britney's hazy, drunken days, reflecting the excess that's splashed all over the tabloids, but it has a coherence that the public Britney lacks. This may initially seem like an odd dissociation but, in a way, it makes sense: how responsible is Britney for her music, anyway? At the peak of her popularity, she never seemed to be dictating the direction of her music, so it only stands to reason that when her personal life has gotten too hectic, she's simply decided to let the professional producers create their tracks and then she'll just drop in the vocals at her convenience. Even the one song that plays like autobiography — "Piece of Me," where she calls herself "Miss American dream since I was 17" and "I'm miss bad media karma/another day another drama," complaining "they stick all the pictures of my derriere in the magazines," as if she wasn't posing provocatively for Rolling Stone as soon as "Baby" broke big — was outsourced to "Toxic" producer/writers Bloodshy & Avant, who try desperately to craft a defiant anthem for this tabloid fixture, as she couldn't be bothered to write one on her own. Instead, she busies herself with writing the album's two strip-club anthems, "Freakshow" and the brilliantly titled "Get Naked (I Got a Plan)" (surely the successor to such trash-classics as Soundmaster T's "2 Much Booty (In Da Pants)" and Samantha Fox's timeless pair of "Touch Me (I Want Your Body)" and "(Hurt Me! Hurt Me!) But the Pants Stay On"). Every piece of gossip in the four years separating In the Zone and Blackout suggests that her head is in the clubs, yet it's still a bit disarming to realize that this is all that she has to say.

 

Britney may not have much on her mind but at least she pockets so deep she can buy the best producers, hiring Bloodshy & Avant, the Clutch and the Neptunes, among others, to help craft an album that cribs from Rhianna's sleek, sexy Good Girl Gone Bad and the chilly robo-R&B of Justin Timberlake's FutureSex/LoveSounds. Emotionally, this isn't a progression from In the Zone, but it is a cannily contemporary dance album, sounding nearly as fresh as Rhianna and JT, even if it's hardly as trendsetting as either. Then again, Britney hasn't set the pace for the sound of dance-pop since her first two Max Martin-driven productions, and her skill — conscious or not, it doesn't really matter — has always been to get the right producers at the right moment, which she surely does here. Those producers turn Blackout into a sleek, shiny collection of 12 guiltily addictive dance tracks where the only weak link is Britney herself. Never the greatest vocalist, her thin squawk could be dismissed early in her career as an adolescent learning the ropes, but nearly a decade later her singing hasn't gotten any better, even if the studio tools to masquerade her weaknesses have. Strangely enough, the computer corrections either emphasize her irritating, strangled delivery — nowhere more so than on "Piece of Me," where she's sharp, flattened, and clipped, the vocoder stabbing at the ears like a pick — or she disappears into the track entirely, just another part of the electronic tapestry. Naturally, the latter cuts are more appealing, as they really show off the skills of the producers, particularly the Clutch's lead single "Gimme More," Bloodshy & Avant's relentless "Radar," the new wave shimmer of "Heaven on Earth," the stuttering electro-clip of "Break the Ice," or the spare, silly chant of "Hot as Ice." When Britney is pushed to the forefront, she garners too much attention, as she tries too hard to be sexy — a move she could pull off before, when carefully controlled pictures of her in schoolgirl uniforms, cat suits, and tight jeans filled in the blanks her voice left behind. Now, those images are replaced by images of Britney beating cars up with umbrellas, wiping her greasy fingers on designer dresses, and nodding off on-stage, each new disaster stripping away any residual sexiness in her public image, so when she tries to purr and tease on Blackout she repels instead of seduces. That's the new Britney, and as she's always been an artist who relies on image, her tarnished persona does taint the ultimate effect of her music, as knowledge of her ceaseless partying turns these anthems a bit weary and sad. But if you block that image out — always hard to do with Britney, but easier to do here since the tracks sound so good — Blackout is state-of-the-art dance-pop, a testament to skills of the producers and perhaps even Britney being somehow cognizant enough to realize she should hire the best, even if she's not at her best.

 

AMG Track Picks: Gimme More, Radar, Heaven on Earth, Get Naked (I Got a Plan), Hot as Ice

Where can I get the 3 Bonus Tracks? :o

Where can I get the 3 Bonus Tracks? :o

 

US iTunes, or the Japanese edition of the album...

WHYYYY 'Get Back' isnt on the album i really don't know.

Its AMAZING :o

I bought the album after uni on Tuesday afternoon and i was pretty much looking forwards to playing it as soon as i got in.

 

After listening to it twice (yes twice!) i wasn't all that impressed! Her fist studio album in 4 years could have been better, i'd say i prefer 'In the Zone' and 'Britney' more! However, not all is bad and i find 4 really good tracks that i really think she should put out as singles!

 

I'm a big fan of Gimme More (who isn't?) Toy Soldier is just bangin', Get Naked is sooo hawt and Piece of Me is cool!

 

6/10 :)

Grades: A (Best) to E (worst)

 

01. Gimme More [A]

02. Piece of Me [A]

03. Radar [A]

04. Break the Ice [C+]

05. Heaven on Earth [b+]

06. Get Naked (I Got a Plan)

07. Freakshow [C+]

08. Toy Soldier

09. Hot as Ice [b-]

10. Ooh Ooh Baby [D]

11. Perfect Lover [C]

12. Why Should I Be Sad [C+]

 

Overall: B

 

General comments:

"Freakshow" certainly isn't as bad as people are making out..

"Heaven On Earth" you either love or hate - it's AMAZING

The first 3 tracks are classic Britney

"Ooh Ooh Baby" is HORRID.

 

This is probably the best album Britney's ever released. I'm SO delighted, with only 2 songs I don't care for

 

:wub:

Britney Spears: 'Blackout'

Released on Monday, October 29 2007

By Nick Levine - Digitalspy.com

 

The early signs are enough to make a pop fan weep. Blackout, Britney Spears' first album of all-new material in four years, drops as the former Mouseketeer is enduring the most tumultuous period of her life. As she acknowledges on 'Piece Of Me', Blackout's second track, "I'm Miss Bad Media Karma – another day, another drama". Holding it in your hand, it’s difficult to comprehend how Spears found time to record this album amidst the meetings with her divorce lawyers, the trudges in and out of rehab, the court appearances, the club dates with Paris Hilton and the jaunts to the barber shop. Does the woman never sleep? On second thoughts, don't answer that... Then you notice that Blackout lists Spears as its sole 'executive producer', and your heart plunges. Right now, only a fool would trust Spears to water his hydrangeas while he pops to the coast for the weekend; it's nigh on unfathomable that anyone would allow her to steer the make-or-break record of her career.

 

And yet, against all odds, Blackout is the most danceable, modern and thrilling album that Spears has ever made, the disc where she finally shakes off the last remnants of her Mickey Mouse Club image. There's not an 'I'm Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman' in sight. The majority of the album is helmed by Nate 'Danja' Hills, the Timbaland protege who produced its triumphant lead single 'Gimme More', and Bloodshy & Avant, the Swedish hitmaking duo who reinvigorated Spears' career with 'Toxic'. All parties have conspired to turn Spears into a strutting, rutting, dry-humping-in-the-middle-of-the-club electro-diva.

 

They've pulled off this conceit by positioning Spears at the bleeding edge of contemporary pop music. 'Radar', a rave-tinged electro blipathon on which Spears is vocodered to the point of sounding extra-terrestrial, and 'Break The Ice', a booming slice of multi-layered electro R'n'B, are as avant-garde as pop gets in 2007. The self-mythologising 'Piece Of Me', meanwhile, is simply the most knowing song that Spears has ever recorded. (And, let's face it, 'Overprotected' and 'Stronger' weren't exactly the handiwork of an ingenuous naïf.) "I'm Mrs. Extra! Extra! This just in!," she croons in a girlish tone totally at odds with the media-savvy lyrics. "I'm Mrs. She's too big, now she's too thin."

 

Unsurprisingly for a woman whose virginity was the subject of years of gossip rag tittle tattle, Spears seems to equate rampant, crotch-thrusting sexuality with growing up and taking charge of her life. Blackout is as obsessed with sex as a 14-year-old boy who just bought his first copy of FHM. "If I get on top, you're gonna lose your mind," she pants on 'Get Naked (I Got A Plan)', before announcing on 'Freakshow' that she wants people to "clap while we perform". Only 'Heaven On Earth', a swooning pop song on which Spears gets all gushy over near-industrial beats and a quivering, 'I Feel Love'-style bassline, suggests that Spears might crave love more than sex.

 

Bold and bracing as Blackout is, there are times when Spears' personal problems manage to raise their bald, publicity-addled head. When she squeals "It feels like you got me going insane" on 'Break The Ice', the mind can't help but drift away from her music. Is Britney talking about the drop dead gorgeous guy she's just spotted at the bar? Or is she lambasting a particularly intrusive paparazzo? Hmm. Perhaps a strong-willed barber man has attracted her ire by telling her no, he's not handing over his electric razor?

 

As Spears croons a bitter kiss-off to K-Fed on Pharrell Williams' 'Why Should I Be Sad' - Blackout's final track and the only song here that even threatens to resemble a ballad – the missing piece of the Blackout jigsaw looms large. As confident, seductive and lust-fuelled as Spears sounds on this album, she never really seems happy. That, we can but hope, will come very, very soon.

 

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My Review:

Britney Spears - Blackout

 

Firstly, I should mention that I'm not a big fan of Britney, I have always been in the "Team Xtina camp" and the only previous album of her's that I own is My Prerogative : The Greatest Hits. However, I used to manage an evening shift at work and a colleague was a Britney fan so I have heard all of her albums which have been IMHO patchy affairs.....

 

If ever there was an album that had bad omens then Blackout was surely it. With Britney's personal life appearing to be in an ever increasing meltdown, then the odds of this late 1990s Pop Princess making a great comeback album appeared to be reducing by the week.

 

The bad news: If you are a hardcore Britney fan, then I can imagine this being a major disappointment, because at times Britney sounds like a guest vocalist on her own album. Probably as her song writing credits consist on just 2 of the 12 main tracks. Also listening to various tracks I can very easily imagine different artists singing these songs, due to their productions & soundscapes which at times make Britney sound like a computerised robot. Also there is absolutely nothing resembling a moody ballad like Everytime. (But in retrospect Britney was right to reject the Justin Timberlake/Duran Duran written, Timbaland produced track Falling Down as it would have killed the vibe of this album)

 

The good news: If you thought Madonna's Confessions on a Dancefloor was a great album, then think again as this album blows it away. As Britney is the Executive Producer then it is safe to assume that it was her concept to make a dance album that sounds like a soundtrack to sleazy nightclubs. But thanks to the fantastic up to the minute productions of Timbalands prodigy Danja, Sweden's Bloodshy & Avant and Kara DioGuardi with a strong set of songs to match this album easily meets its target:

 

Gimme More - A fantastic throbbing Danja co-written/produced track. A great lead off single. Spoiled only by the memory of the rubbish half-hearted poll-dancing video and awful VMA performance. 10

 

Piece Of Me - Incredibly Britney had no part in these fantastically sarcastic self-mythologising lyrics. It had to be the 2nd single. 10

 

Radar - A bit too over vocodered & with too many electronic blips for my liking. On the chorus it is nearly impossible to tell that it is her singing. 8

 

Break The Ice - Another fantastic Danja production. Reminds me of Nelly Furtado singing a not as good Promiscuous Girl or Say It Right 8

 

Heaven On Earth - A fantastic futuristic Giorgio Moroder disco take on Donna Summer's I Feel Love for the verse with a hook-laden chorus that Kylie Minogue would kill for. My fav track. Personally I think it would make a great single in Europe to be released at the same time as Toy Soldier in America. 10

 

Get Naked (I Got A Plan) - Yet another fantastic Danja production, with hooks to match. Vocally I could imagine the PCD's performing this track. However Britney does sound like a guest vocalist on this track compared to Danja's contribution. 9

 

Freakshow - The first mis-step on the album. Sounds like a Gwen Stefani album track. How this made the main album with Get Back only a bonus track is an utter mystery to me. 5

 

Toy Soldier - Clearly a musical homage to Gwen's Hollaback Girl. With lyrics that demand a video to go one up on Xtina's Candy Man. 9

 

Hot As Ice - A catchy tune that reminds me of TLC's Silly Ho meets Rihanna. Another great Danja production. 9

 

Ooh Ooh Baby - A catchy, but ultimately lightweight song over a glorious Glam Rock backing beat. 7

 

Perfect Lover - Another great Danjahandz production does its best to hide a so so song which would have probably been better suited (at least visually) in the hands of the PCD's. 6

 

Why Should I Be Sad - A good song let down by a weak production. Well Pharrell Williams & The Neptunes are so 2004 aren't they. As the track suggests it ends the album on a sad note. 7

 

Conclusion:

There is nothing on this album as ear splittingly cringeworthy as Me Against The Music or Outrageous. Or as rubbish as her cover of I Love Rock'N'Roll or Don't Let Me Be The Last To Know. Forget recent albums by P!nk, Madonna, Christina, Nelly F, etc. This beats the lot of them. For neutrals listen without prejudice. 8 out of 10

 

 

^^^^ amazing review TIP

it was a nice read ^_^

^ I agree :D

Gimme More - 10/10 **GOOD CHOICE FOR SINGLE #1*****

Piece of Me - 9/10 **THERE ARE BETTER SONGS, BUT BEST CHOICE FOR SINGLE #2 CONSIDERING HER LIFE RIGHT NOW FITS THE SONG!!**

Radar - 3/10 **DON'T REALLY LIKE THIS ONE!! HER VOICE SOUNDS HORRIBLE AND TOO OVERLY COMPUTERIZED!!**

Break The Ice - 0/10 **WHY DO PEOPLE LIKE THIS SONG? IT SUCKS!!**

Heaven On Earth - 10/10 **SHOULD BE SINGLE #4***

Get Naked (I Got A Plan) 11/10 ****SHOULD BE SINGLE #3---LOVE LOVE LOVE THE CHORUS WITH DANJA!!****

Freakshow - 2/10. THIS IS THE WORST SONG!! SOUNDS LIKE A HORRIBLE B-SIDE!!

Toy Soilder - 7/10 GOOD SONG, BUT NOTHING SPECIAL.

Hot As Ice - 6/10 OK

Ooh Ooh Baby - 5/10

Perfect Lover - 11/10 ***CATCHY BEAT!!!***

Why Should I Be Sad - 8/10 **VERY SOOTHING SOUNDING!!**

 

 

favourable review from UK newspaper 'The Observer' (interspersed with a rather un-favourable review for Kylie's new album)

 

As the bottom end of the mainstream pop market fails to throw up any new stars, it naturally falls to two of the planet's enduring singers - back following greatest hits albums and not exactly the best few years of their respective lives - to lead the way.

X and Blackout are two of the most talked-about albums of the year and the unusual outcome is that 'deranged' Britney has delivered the best album of her career, raising the bar for modern pop music with an incendiary mix of Timbaland's 'Shock Value' and her own back catalogue, while 'comeback queen' Kylie's X is a somewhat dated-sounding album which could have existed at any point in the past seven years. It is true that Blackout benefits from extremely low expectations (and that the total opposite is true for X) but while Blackout stands as one of 2007's happiest surprises, it genuinely succeeds on its own merit as a frequently genre-busting redefinition of mainstream music, largely thanks to the contribution of Timbaland cohort Danja.

 

Listening to upbeat but flimsy tracks such as 'Wow' and 'Sensitised', it would be easy to accuse Kylie's X of being lazy but the reverse is more true: this is an album so over-thought and so painstakingly plotted that during its construction any sense of perspective seems to have been lost. Blackout, however, has a sense of spontaneity and fun splashed across the whole thing - the chants of 'break it down, break it down' in the 'Maneater'-esque 'Hot As Ice' are delicious moments, while the addictive new twist on 'Toxic' in the demented 'Ooh Ooh Baby' is brilliantly catchy. One of Blackout's standout tracks is the crunchy 'Piece of Me', in which this 'Miss American Dream since I was 17' executes a wonderfully detached chant of 'I'm Mrs "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous", I'm Mrs "Oh My God, That Britney's Shameless", I'm "Mrs Extra Extra This Just In", I'm Mrs "She's Too Big Now She's Too Thin".'

That's Britney addressing some of the stuff that's written about her, of course. So, one wonders, what does X tell us about the past few years in Kylieworld? Well, basically nothing. Listening to X you wouldn't know that Kylie has looked death in the face or seen one of the most significant relationships of her life implode. Instead, you would think she has just been out dancing quite a bit. Pop of this variety need never dwell on muso notions of cred or authenticity but the emotional distance on X - Kylie's 10th studio album, hence the name - does make you wonder whether there will ever be anything more to Kylie's lyrics than meaningless trilling about 'get me on the floor', 'DJs spinning up my favourite song', 'Boy, you got it, got it, you got me feeling crazy about my body/ I cannot, cannot stop it, you got me moving, got me rocking'. While Britney's fondness for larging it in clubs has been endlessly documented - making some of the more club-based tracks on Blackout seem like a true reflection of her life - Kylie's is virtually non-existent, although she did recently appear DJing at east London cred-magnet Boombox. Boombox specialises in incredible, cutting-edge electronic music. So are Justice, Rex the Dog, Riot in Belgium or Chromeo twiddling knobs on this album? Of course not. X could have been the album to take overground a burgeoning underground club sound; instead, it's largely an approximation of club life fronted by a woman who doesn't go clubbing.

 

Madonna learned when she followed American Life with Confessions on a Dance Floor that the coolest thing she could do was simply be huge and brilliant and stupid and danceable. Credibility came not from pursuing other people's concepts of sonic cool but by defining it herself, with a fun, modern pop album. Kylie, whose quest for a balance between popularity and peer-approved credibility is a recurring theme, should perhaps have taken note. There are some incredible moments on X such as comeback single '2 Hearts', the explosive Calvin Harris collaboration 'In My Arms' and 'The One' - a sad disco epic which ranks as one of her best ever songs - but the high points are best viewed as four great tracks for her next greatest hits collection rather than any reflection of this album's cohesion.

 

While Blackout is an amazing album, X is merely a slightly above average collection of tracks. A typical Kylie album, in other words. It's business as usual, but it's beginning to sound like it.