It’s safe to say that Britney Spears’ latest album “Femme Fatale” will be a chart topper.
Its success will not be because of Spears’ talent or the quality of songs, however, but because she is a major brand to the music world — an entertainment icon who, regardless of actual talent, is a must-have to just about everybody.
At almost 30, Spears has more than a decade of Top 40 hits under her belt, branding herself as the quintessential good girl/bad girl American pop icon. Every fan from casual to rabid will eat up her songs and praise her for her brilliance.
And, to be fair, she has mostly earned this praise. Spears, and Spears alone, is probably the biggest female pop icon of the past decade. As thin as her voice may be or as vapid as her song writing generally is, she is unique to the music world.
Even the kooky attempts of Lady Gaga to brand herself as “unique” fail in comparison to Spears’ ubiquitous presence as an entertainer and artist.
That being said, “Femme Fatale” really doesn’t do her any justice. The album acts as a platform for what its producers can do with the music, and Spears is nothing more than a spokesperson for them.
An album review from Rolling Stone Magazine said this album may be her best one yet, mostly because the synthesizers, thumps and beats cover up and alter her voice. And, as writer Jody Rosen points out, the producers may have done this because she doesn’t have much vocally.
And Spears really doesn’t. In comparison to her ’90s pop rival Christina Aguilera, Spears’ voice sounds flimsy and soft. But Spears does have the brand and pop power that has driven her popularity over Aguilera. Her voice is really just a tool to drive her brand as an over-sexualized teen pop icon, whose popularity is more associated with an image than music.
That image is buried under a lot of unoriginal music and some laughable lyrics (which Spears had no writing credits for) on her latest album. The album as a whole is redundant, and the individual songs lack any structure. Every song on the album sounds like a bad techno remix version of the songs that made Spears famous in the late ’90s.
The album is pretty much a dance party, filled with a lot of sex and a little melancholy.
It begins with the song “Till the World Ends,” and the obnoxious chorus merely repeats “oh oh oh oh oh oh!” in a robotic, synthesized version of Spears’ voice. The rest of the album follows suit, with the same kinds of beats and lyrics. “How I Roll” is one of the few songs that strays from this pattern, sparing us the overwhelming techno, instead replacing it with a simple, understated beat. But even on this song, Spears’ presence is weak and buried.
Fortunately for her, Spears will never fade as a star. Like Michael Jackson, her influence to American pop is too important to ever be forgotten. Unfortunately, “Femme Fatale” probably won’t be remembered as a landmark pop album.
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