Ok, here's my review on the 'Circus' tracks.

 

Womanizer - 9/10 - the first single we all know and love. After listening to the album as a whole it does get a bit overshadowed by some greater tracks on it, but it still is one of Britney's best when it comes to catchiness and visuals (the video is the $h!t).

Circus - 9.5/10 - Amazing follow-up, incredibly catchy chorus and a certain success, imo. Its video also seems like it'll be huge too (I think we're going to get the best videos from Britney on this era).

Out from Under - 10/10 - Beautiful ballad, very emotional with great vocals and melody. This is obviously the big ballad on the album.

Kill the Lights - 8.5/10 - It was actually a 10 on first listen, but it sort of wore off after a few listens. Still an amazing track (8.5 is a hell of a rating after all) and I'm glad this is some kind of a sequel to the killer single 'Piece Of Me'.

Shattered Glass - 7/10 - More pop than anything else on the album (regular version at least). This song actually lacks something, I can't put my finger on it but it might be a grower, though.

If U Seek Amy - 10/10 - A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! Can't believe this! So sexual, so great, pop at best and the 'la la la' intro is one of the best intro to a Britney song ever.

Unusual You - 7.5/10 - I know I will get eaten alive for this, but I don't see the whole fuss about this one. It's pretty average for a Bloodshy & Avant production and as a mid/tempo track, it reminds me too much to 'Heaven On Earth' (musically) which I wasn't too keen on either.

Blur - 8/10 - What's with all the hate people? This song isn't bad at all, it doesn't have the best melody but it's not the tuneless effortless number I was expecting to hear after reading all of this reviews. I think this will be one of the most underrated songs on this album.

Mmm Papi - 9.5/10 - Fun! Fun! Fun! Unbelievably catchy hook to this song, it could've been a total mess but it actually works very very well!

Mannequin - 8/10 - Hmmm! Hmmmmmm! Not as great as it should've been but still great, imo. It's overproduced, though... pointless, imo.

Lace and Leather - 9/10 - Very enjoyable fun track. I love the melody on the verses, very different to anything else on the album.

My Baby - --/10 - Can't rate as I haven't heard it yet.

 

Here comes the bonus tracks.

Radar - 10/10 - Cannot figure out the difference between this and Blackout's version. Still it's one of the best from the aforemetioned album.

Rock Me In - 9/10 - It's quite weird that the bonus tracks are better than some of the album's main songs. Rock Me In really stands out as a great catchy number.

Phonography - 10/10 - This is so amazing, again, why leave it as a bonus?? Dance/pop at best... on the same league as the likes of Radar, Get Naked and Breathe On Me!!!

Amnesia - 11/10 - OMFDLG (Oh My f***ing Dear Lord God!)... BEST POP SONG IN A VERY VERY VERY LONG TIME! How could a tune be so catchy, so cute (the 'oh-oh' made me die and come to live again in less than a second), so cheeky and so purely perfectly POP at the same time? Britney's definitely done it yet... such a murder this has been left as a mere bonus track. Single material, really!

Quicksand - 10/10 - See 'Amnesia' but at a slightly lower orgasmic level (lol). Another pure pop perfection, were these two songs penned by Lady GaGa?? If that's the case then I love this Lady GaGa now!!!!!

Rock Boy - 6/10 - Quite meh... a bit messy and like someone said before it sounds too demo-ish.

Trouble - 10.5/10 - :o Can we Get Together? I really, I really want to be with you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This songs is one of the best pop songs since I heard 'Amnesia' lol. Great lyrics, great vocals, it samples one of my favourite Madonna songs ever so great melody as well! A duet with Madonna at a Britney concert would be a dream come true, but since this was left as a pre-order track only that'll not be possible I'm afraid :(

 

Britney's best album? Hmmm, yeah I think so! Well, I think I'll be quite sure of this after a couple of months of listening to it all the time. And I agree with Britney when she says Blackout was darker and edgier, you can really notice that when you listen to both albums in full the same day!

While Blackout was all about sex, hotness, club bangers and party crashers; Circus has more diversity and it's a return to main pop for Britney, especially when some of the songs include the cuteness we used to know from early Britney.

my ratings :D

 

Womanizer - 9/10

Circus - 9/10

Out from Under - 10/10

Kill the Lights - 10/10

Shattered Glass - 8.5/10

If U Seek Amy - 10/10

Unusual You - 7.5/10

Blur - 7/10

Mmm Papi - 7.5/10

Mannequin - 7.5/10

Lace and Leather - 9/10

My Baby - 9.5/10

Radar - 9/10

Rock Me In - 8/10

Phonography - 11/10 - Pure Amazement my fave love the play on words

Amnesia - 9/10

A week to go! :D

'Shattered Glass' is nothing short of IMMENSE. When the chorus and the post-chorus kick in and there's all that synthyness going on it's pure ecstasty. That and 'Unusual You' are two of Brit's best songs-ever, easily.

I have heard nothing but amazing things about 'Unusual You'...hopefully it's a single!

I have heard nothing but amazing things about 'Unusual You'...hopefully it's a single!

It is a great song, and I wouldn't mind it as a single either!

My ratings -

 

09/10 - Womanizer

Great song, I don't think I like it as much as 'Gimme More' but the whole general package has been better for it and the video is just incredible. It hasn't gotten old for me yet either, it still sounds really fresh!

 

10/10 - Circus

I ADORE this. Perfect 2nd single choice I think! I love the slow bridge leading up to the chorus too :wub: Amazement

 

08/10 - Out From Under

Wasn't so sure when I first heard it but it's grown on me quite a bit now I think. I really like the lyrics to it too, I always have loved a good Britney ballad

 

8.5/10 - Shattered Glass

Really like this! The chorus is amazing, my only criticism of the song is that it seems a bit too short for my liking. :( Other than that it's great!

 

7.5/10 - If U Seek Amy

Hmmm don't think it's quite as good as some people are making it out to be but I do still really like it. Catchy!

 

10/10 - Unusual You

Just stunning :wub: Wasn't instant with me though but now I just adore it, the sensualness and how subtle it is makes me really like it. It's my joint fave I think

 

06/10 - Blur

Bit of a boring mess tbh :( The lyrics are good and the chorus is okay-ish in places, it's just hard to remember how it goes for me though.

 

7.5/10 - Mmm Papi

Hot mess but in a good way! I love the chorus and the mmmmpapa bits haha. Shouldn't be a single but still a great album track!

 

05/10 - Mannequin

I really don't like this! :( One of the few I don't like actually. It's just a bit too messy and the male vocals going AAAHHHHH OOOOOOHHH is annoying as f***. Hope it isn't a single!

 

07/10 - Lace And Leather

Kinda reminds me of Perfect Lover, I really like it! It's not as standout as some of the others but it's still really good.

 

7.5/10 - My Baby

This is so cute :wub: I love her cutesy innocent vocals on it too. Sounds much like early Britney though.

 

8.5/10 - Phonography

Sexy and amazing. I really love this and the play on words in the lyrics too. Shoulda made the album

 

10/10 - Amnesia

Amazing. GaGa + Brit = Heaven. The chorus is just amazing and could easily be a single :/

 

9.5/10 - Quicksand

Amazingness. Not quite as good as the previous track but it's still pop perfection

 

09/10 - Trouble

Amazing use of sample and great vocals and lyrics too

I haven't seen you in forever! :o

 

And I think that Circus will do very well Jark...MOST people seem to really like it...

 

i knowwww.... nothing exciting really on the music scene.... but now xtina and brit are back ill be round more!! :P

So can this thread be re-named Circus [Album Discussion] or similar? :P

 

Two reviews in:

 

All Music Guide *** (3 stars)

 

With its title, Circus nods knowingly at the madhouse that is Britney Spears' life, acknowledging that things got a little rough after the release of 2007's Blackout. It's no secret that Blackout's launch didn't go as planned: the furor surrounding her stumbling VMA lip-sync of "Gimme More" was eclipsed by her institutionalization -- a drama played out live on TV, as so much of her life is -- and the loss of custody of her two young boys to ex-husband Kevin Federline, all of which pushed Blackout far, far to the background. Britney herself didn't exactly seem engaged on Blackout -- it was a club album, a producer's showcase, so it didn't matter if Spears didn't give herself over completely as the behind-the-boards team carried her through. That distance combined with her troubles did give Britney the appearance of losing control completely, and the best way for a pop star to right herself is through image -- hence Circus, a friendly remake of the hedonistic Blackout that posits that all is better with Brit-Brit now, thank you. If Blackout was a producers' album, Circus is a handlers' album, intent on sweeping away any recent unpleasantness -- the only acknowledgement is that title -- and acting like nothing ever happened, imagining that this is still a world where Britney remains envied and desired, where she can be dolled up as a gauzy Farrah Fawcett pinup on her album cover, where she can sing a drippy ballad about "My Baby" and have nobody raise an eyebrow. She can get away with the former with a bit more ease than the latter if only because all the time, effort, and money is poured into the club tracks, such as the thumping, stuttering first single "Womanizer" and its better, the relentless "Kill the Lights," so sleek and sexy it winds up diminishing the rest of the record.

 

"Kill the Lights" may be exceptional, one of Britney's best-ever singles, but it also doesn't have much competition here: it's one of a handful of tracks that follow through on Blackout, while the rest of Circus plays it safe, never hitting the beats hard enough to alienate a pop audience but perhaps layering on a bit too much saccharine for dance fans. It's careful and considered, right down to the single-entendre "If U Seek Amy," a Katy Perry-styled exercise in crass commercial carnality that is at once the best and worst song here. Best because Max Martin once again works his undeniable pop magic, turning this into a trashy stomper that feels inevitable and eternal, working against any sense of taste or decorum, something that the lyrics work overtime to undercut as they insist that all the boys and all the girls still want to F, U...well, spell it and you'll get the picture, and if you don't, Britney's elocution will paint it for you. This sexy strut doesn't work not because Spears' desirability took a nosedive in the five years since In the Zone -- although it did -- but because Britney's sexiness never was this explicit; she teased and hinted, at least in her music, and it feels wrong to have her be so nakedly vulgar here. Still, it was a necessary move, a way to stir up headlines and perhaps snatch the tabloid tiara from Katy's head, but the rest of the record doesn't follow through as it resorts Spears' standard formula: a couple of great dance singles, a couple of pretty good chillout cuts (best being Bloodshy & Avant's "Unusual You"), a couple of not-good-at-all ballads, and a whole bunch of stuff in the middle. If she feels marginally more connected here than she did on Blackout, it's a Pyrrhic victory, as Circus never feels as sleek or addictive as its predecessor.

 

*

 

This one is absolutely hilarious, I've bolded the best parts:

 

The Guardian *** (3 stars)

 

The last time Britney Spears released an album, barely 12 months ago, there understandably wasn't much promotional activity: the singer was too busy yo-yoing in and out of rehab units and psychiatric wards to give interviews. Nevertheless, she was still afforded a Rolling Stone cover feature, meticulously detailing what it called "the most public downfall of any star in history". Perhaps the most startling of its revelations was that, in the midst of all the mayhem, Spears appeared to be having fun. "She is," it concluded, "enjoying the chaos she is creating."

 

She certainly sounded as if she was enjoying herself - albeit in an eyes-rolling-madly-in-the-sockets way - on Blackout, the album she wasn't promoting. It smartly dispensed with the ballads that invariably provide the nadir of any pop release and instead fizzed with distorted electronics and screw-you defiance. A relentless, risky album made by a woman whose obituary was apparently being prepared by Associated Press, it proved a tough sell, shifting only 3.1m copies worldwide. To put it into some kind of perspective, that's 22.9m fewer than her debut album sold.

 

Understandably, whoever has wrested control of the apparently recovered singer's affairs has elected to send out the signal that normal service has been resumed with Circus. A tour is planned, interviews have been given and, alas, the ballads are back, bringing with them the inevitable sprinkling of tedium. Listeners with delicate constitutions might feel the urge to fast-forward the minute a dribbly tribute to her kids called My Baby starts, but are advised to stick around for the bit where she inadvertently suggests the fruits of her loins are cursed with oral hygene issues: "I smell your breath, it makes me cry." You want to try giving them those Listerine strips. Tell them they're sweets.

 

Occasionally, you wonder if Circus's more conservative feel is entirely intentional or the result of a lack of new ideas from the assembled array of hit-factory producers. There are decent tunes here, and hooks that sink into you with ruthless efficiency, not least the chorus of current single Womanizer, but you expect cutting-edge pop to deliver not just hooks and tunes but a degree of sonic daring. The one time that happens is on Mannequin, which amasses a bizarre swarm of electronic noise behind Spears's voice in lieu of a melody. Elsewhere, there are collisions of blaring rave synthesisers and glam beats, kitsch 80s references on Leather and Lace, knowingly ersatz indie guitars, and the equally knowing application of so much auto-tuning to her voice that Spears resembles a robot with a sinus problem: all ideas that once seemed thrillingly audacious, all now starting to sound over-familiar, like default settings.

 

Perhaps that's why Spears, never the most emotive vocalist, frequently sounds disconnected, even a bit bored. If U Seek Amy is a better pun than it is a song, but there's a relish about her delivery of the chorus - "all the boys and all the girls are begging to F-U-C-K me" - that's noticeably lacking elsewhere. Kill the Lights attempts to raise the kind of ire found on Blackout, but falls flat. You might think she could inject a bit of pathos into Blur, a tale of hungover regret, but no. "Hope I didn't but I think I might," she sings blithely, as if singing about having an inadvisible dollop of chilli sauce on a late-night kebab, rather than say, being photographed staggering around LA at 2am without a skirt on, knickers covered in blood.

 

Sometimes the desire to suggest that order has been restored in Spears' world leads to catastrophe. Someone has come up with the demented notion that what she needs to do at this critical juncture in her career is revisit the coquettish Lolita persona of ... Baby One More Time, hence Mmm Papi. The results are pretty bilious. That's partly as a result of the arrangement, which was evidently arrived at only after an arduous, but ultimately successful brainstorming session to devise the most irksome music imaginable.

 

But the main issue is that there's something grotesque about any 27-year-old woman who thinks it's sexually alluring to do a goo-ga-ga baby voice: "You pappy ... I mommy ... which mean we lovey." You listeny, which may mean you pukey: it's the most stomach-churning song about sex since that Jacques Brel number in which he swore on the wet head of his first case of gonhorrea that he could hear the voice of a "queer lieutenant" every time he thought about his first visit to a mobile army whorehouse.

 

In fairness, it's a rare lapse into abject awfulness. Circus isn't bad as pop albums go, but whether by default or design, it's substantially less edgy and exciting than its predecessor. You're left to conclude that the sound of Britney back on track is substantially less interesting than the sound of Britney going off the rails.

 

Source.

 

*

 

Slightly cruel but pretty amusing. And I love Mmm Papi!

 

I guess the general concensus is that it's good to see she seems to be back on track but that the music itself is too safe in parts and overall a step back from Blackout. I prefer Circus myself...

I'm suprised the guardian even picked up Circus.

In fairness, I think overall I do prefer Blackout to Circus. This album is a little safer, more like the format of her other albums. Blackout was dangerous and edgy. But if the price of a 'dangerous' album is what we've seen the last 2 years, I'd rather not pay it.

Oh also, I assume these have been posted somewhere, but just incase:

 

http://britneyspearsblackout.com/?p=6368

 

http://britneyspearsblackout.com/?p=6247

Got the deluxe edtion today, and I'm kinda disappointed by the package. The booklet is really thin (like 2 or 3 pics of Brit, WTH! lol), and I don't care about the poster :lol:

The DVD got the Womanizer vid and a 9:34min documentary, in which you see quite a long part of shooting the Circus video, yay !

Woo mine just came through the letterbox this second! woo

Both of the versions just came through my post! :w00t:

:drama: Mines not arrived yet :cry: Bloody HMV :cry: I won't get it till Monday now :(

Oh God, just echoing everyone in here... TRAVESTY Amnesia isn't on the standard album.

IMO it's the best song from the Circus era!

Is 'Amnesia' on the deluxe version of the album in the UK? HMV listed it as a bonus track but I'm not inclined to believe that! :lol: That'd be pretty cool if it was on a version of the album besides being only on the Japanese edition!

Is 'Amnesia' on the deluxe version of the album in the UK? HMV listed it as a bonus track but I'm not inclined to believe that! :lol: That'd be pretty cool if it was on a version of the album besides being only on the Japanese edition!

 

Not sure, my copy hasn't arrived yet :cry:

Sunday Times (UK):

 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00136/rating_stars_4_136526a.gif

 

One day before her 27th birthday, and with a mere 16 years in show business behind her, Britney Spears releases her sixth studio album. Circus may not be as strange or disturbing as last year’s superb Blackout, but it knocks for six recent efforts by rivals such as Madonna and Beyoncé. In part, this is because Spears seems to collect around her collaborators who treat her albums as repositories for their wilder and weirder ideas, and hang the commercial consequences. But it is also because Spears herself represents so cruelly perfect and fascinating a picture of the price stardom exacts; complaining that she makes plasticised pop is surely missing the point. And songs here such as Circus, If U Seek Amy (try saying it very quickly) and Mannequin are far better than music by such a troubled and supposedly doomed veteran has any right to be.

 

*

 

Good stuff!