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GAFPOP |OT8| Don't Forget the self-clockiesT of 'em all_

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D

Dr. Malik

FlatAss_
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you are now free to create more iconic moments

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M

Mumei

Member
The Inevitable Boringness of a 'Personal' Britney Spears Album

In her 2004 music video for “My Prerogative,” Britney Spears issued this warning before crashing her speeding sports car into a fancy pool: "People can take everything away from you, but they can never take away your truth. The question is: Can you handle mine?" In 2013, on the eve of her eighth studio album, Britney Jean, the question is more like this: Do people even want her truth in the first place?

[...]

There’s never been much evidence that Spears has much to offer as a songwriter. The last time she had as many writing credits as she does on Britney Jean was a decade ago on In the Zone, but for every “Everytime”—Spears’s haunting, piano-ballad response to Justin Timberlake’s “Cry Me a River”—there’s “Someday (I Will Understand),” her forgettable pregnancy prophecy. (As we’ve also learned from Beyoncé, a pop performers having a songwriting credit doesn't necessarily mean much.)

[...]

It's fitting that Spears was a one-season judge on singing competition The X Factor, because the title of the show is really the only way to explain the career longevity she's had at this point. (This mild album, and the 32-year-old’s impending Vegas residency suggest she may be winding down.) Even when she's half-heartedly going through the motions of her choreography or lip-syncing in “live” performances, the Spears fandom often operates on the assumption there's something she's holding back, and it clings furiously to evidence that supports this notion.

But as Britney Jean unfortunately suggests, a solid and successful Spears album isn’t one where fans get “the real Britney.” It’s one where she sounds just human enough and just invested in her work enough to let fans project their fantasies of whatever “the real Britney” is: someone still hungry for creative control and agency, someone whose vocal idiosyncrasies bring out the best in producers, someone who isn’t a total zombie. Britney Jean forces fans to confront the fact that the truth—her truth—is probably a disappointment.
Click to expand...

Ouch.
 
T

twobear

sputum-flecked apoplexy
Mary Jane Holland said:
But wait, more tea regarding pop stars and their imperial phases



The Fame Monster summed up in a paragraph.
Click to expand...

So I reread this article, and then serendipitously, Bad Romance came up on my massive pop Spotify playlist, and I suddenly became aware of how pop music felt back in 2009 when BR had just hit, and how it was so absolutely perfect a piece of pop music, and suddenly every other pop girl in the biz suddenly seemed kind of completely irrelevant. And it's now become even more crazy to me—absolutely insane, really—that anyone could possibly claim with a straight face that anything Gaga has done since TFM and Bad Romance is even in the same league, let alone better. Gaga bottled pop lightning with that single and that EP, and it's becoming increasingly clear that she'll probably never manage it again.
 
S

SaintZ

Member
Young and Beautiful has been nominated for Original Song at the 18th Satellite Awards. It begins.

ib23c2ke2dskp5uxbd2.gif

Demi's Let It Go was nominated as well

The ceremony is on March 9.
 
C

Crumpet Trumpet

Banned
Mumei said:
The Inevitable Boringness of a 'Personal' Britney Spears Album



Ouch.
Click to expand...

Hm. I was always so worried about getting a "personal" Britney album, just because I knew it would be superficial (and in an unintentional way, in contrast to the intentional hedonism that characterizes the majority of her discography). People always ask me why I like still like Britney Spears, given that she doesn't sing or dance well anymore, and I've always relied on the "at least we have the music" angle. I've realized recently that I'm not particularly fussed with Britney herself, I'm more interested in the "Britney Spears" brand of pop music. Her music is always firmly and unabashedly in the mainstream and yet there's always something a little bit off-kilter and sinister lurking behind it. It's genius, and it's genius precisely because it doesn't know that it's genius, unlike other popstars who knowingly try to combine their TOP 40 POP and EDGY ART proclivities and end up seeming even more manufactured than the Queen of Artifice herself.

It might just be because I follow her story: virginal child star ---> Slave 4 U sexpot ---> breakdown ---> recovery and conseratorship- and that might allow me to see darker shades of meaning in her music that perhaps aren't necessarily there and I'm just imagining them. But that's precisely why I was dreading a personal album; when she makes it explicitly clear that this album is personal, there's no room for theorizing and guesswork. She's pulled back the curtain and there was nothing there all along and I feel dumb for having such a pseduointellectual connection to her past music.

I'm still a fan of course, but I'll just take her music at face value now...which is a lot less fun, even for someone who genuinely likes pop music.
 
T

twobear

sputum-flecked apoplexy
Crumpet Trumpet said:
Hm. I was always so worried about getting a "personal" Britney album, just because I knew it would be superficial (and in an unintentional way, in contrast to the intentional hedonism that characterizes the majority of her discography). People always ask me why I like still like Britney Spears, given that she doesn't sing or dance well anymore, and I've always relied on the "at least we have the music" angle. I've realized recently that I'm not particularly fussed with Britney herself, I'm more interested in the "Britney Spears" brand of pop music. Her music is always firmly and unabashedly in the mainstream and yet there's always something a little bit off-kilter and sinister lurking behind it. It's genius, and it's genius precisely because it doesn't know that it's genius, unlike other popstars who knowingly try to combine their TOP 40 POP and EDGY ART proclivities and end up seeming even more manufactured than the Queen of Artifice herself.

It might just be because I follow her story: virginal child star ---> Slave 4 U sexpot ---> breakdown ---> recovery and conseratorship- and that might allow me to see darker shades of meaning in her music that perhaps aren't necessarily there and I'm just imagining them. But that's precisely why I was dreading a personal album; when she makes it explicitly clear that this album is personal, there's no room for theorizing and guesswork. She's pulled back the curtain and there was nothing there all along and I feel dumb for having such a pseduointellectual connection to her past music.

I'm still a fan of course, but I'll just take her music at face value now...which is a lot less fun, even for someone who genuinely likes pop music.
Click to expand...

Thanks for putting this better than I ever could have done.
 
S

Soulscribe

Member
Crumpet Trumpet said:
Hm. I was always so worried about getting a "personal" Britney album, just because I knew it would be superficial (and in an unintentional way, in contrast to the intentional hedonism that characterizes the majority of her discography). People always ask me why I like still like Britney Spears, given that she doesn't sing or dance well anymore, and I've always relied on the "at least we have the music" angle. I've realized recently that I'm not particularly fussed with Britney herself, I'm more interested in the "Britney Spears" brand of pop music. Her music is always firmly and unabashedly in the mainstream and yet there's always something a little bit off-kilter and sinister lurking behind it. It's genius, and it's genius precisely because it doesn't know that it's genius, unlike other popstars who knowingly try to combine their TOP 40 POP and EDGY ART proclivities and end up seeming even more manufactured than the Queen of Artifice herself.

It might just be because I follow her story: virginal child star ---> Slave 4 U sexpot ---> breakdown ---> recovery and conseratorship- and that might allow me to see darker shades of meaning in her music that perhaps aren't necessarily there and I'm just imagining them. But that's precisely why I was dreading a personal album; when she makes it explicitly clear that this album is personal, there's no room for theorizing and guesswork. She's pulled back the curtain and there was nothing there all along and I feel dumb for having such a pseduointellectual connection to her past music.

I'm still a fan of course, but I'll just take her music at face value now...which is a lot less fun, even for someone who genuinely likes pop music.
Click to expand...

I love this post, and I totally get it.
 
C

cory64

Member
Crumpet Trumpet said:
Hm. I was always so worried about getting a "personal" Britney album, just because I knew it would be superficial (and in an unintentional way, in contrast to the intentional hedonism that characterizes the majority of her discography). People always ask me why I like still like Britney Spears, given that she doesn't sing or dance well anymore, and I've always relied on the "at least we have the music" angle. I've realized recently that I'm not particularly fussed with Britney herself, I'm more interested in the "Britney Spears" brand of pop music. Her music is always firmly and unabashedly in the mainstream and yet there's always something a little bit off-kilter and sinister lurking behind it. It's genius, and it's genius precisely because it doesn't know that it's genius, unlike other popstars who knowingly try to combine their TOP 40 POP and EDGY ART proclivities and end up seeming even more manufactured than the Queen of Artifice herself.

It might just be because I follow her story: virginal child star ---> Slave 4 U sexpot ---> breakdown ---> recovery and conseratorship- and that might allow me to see darker shades of meaning in her music that perhaps aren't necessarily there and I'm just imagining them. But that's precisely why I was dreading a personal album; when she makes it explicitly clear that this album is personal, there's no room for theorizing and guesswork. She's pulled back the curtain and there was nothing there all along and I feel dumb for having such a pseduointellectual connection to her past music.

I'm still a fan of course, but I'll just take her music at face value now...which is a lot less fun, even for someone who genuinely likes pop music.
Click to expand...

The more I come to understand, the touch of Crumpet's keystrokes.
 
Y

Yado

Member
Ya Hey was the only song I liked on that album. I think I've only liked one or two songs off their previous albums so maybe their music doesn't do anything for me.
 
T

twobear

sputum-flecked apoplexy
Yado said:
Ya Hey was the only song I liked on that album. I think I've only liked one or two songs off their previous albums so maybe their music doesn't do anything for me.
Click to expand...

Mess. I honestly believe that V-Dubz have never put a bad track on one of their albums.
 
Y

You Know Nothing

Member
I've only listened to Modern Vampires of the City. But there isn't a flaw to be found. Every damn song is a bop and memorable in some way.

When will the other girls?
 
T

Touchdown

Banned
Crumpet Trumpet said:
Hm. I was always so worried about getting a "personal" Britney album, just because I knew it would be superficial (and in an unintentional way, in contrast to the intentional hedonism that characterizes the majority of her discography). People always ask me why I like still like Britney Spears, given that she doesn't sing or dance well anymore, and I've always relied on the "at least we have the music" angle. I've realized recently that I'm not particularly fussed with Britney herself, I'm more interested in the "Britney Spears" brand of pop music. Her music is always firmly and unabashedly in the mainstream and yet there's always something a little bit off-kilter and sinister lurking behind it. It's genius, and it's genius precisely because it doesn't know that it's genius, unlike other popstars who knowingly try to combine their TOP 40 POP and EDGY ART proclivities and end up seeming even more manufactured than the Queen of Artifice herself.

It might just be because I follow her story: virginal child star ---> Slave 4 U sexpot ---> breakdown ---> recovery and conseratorship- and that might allow me to see darker shades of meaning in her music that perhaps aren't necessarily there and I'm just imagining them. But that's precisely why I was dreading a personal album; when she makes it explicitly clear that this album is personal, there's no room for theorizing and guesswork. She's pulled back the curtain and there was nothing there all along and I feel dumb for having such a pseduointellectual connection to her past music.

I'm still a fan of course, but I'll just take her music at face value now...which is a lot less fun, even for someone who genuinely likes pop music.
Click to expand...

it8uzk2YfztKW.gif
 
Weapxn

Weapxn

Mikkelsexual
I feel like my life is in shambles.

Gypsy might be replacing Monster as my favorite Gaga song.

What has my life become?
 
P

Partition

Banned
Weapxn said:
I feel like my life is in shambles.

Gypsy might be replacing Monster as my favorite Gaga song.

What has my life become?
Click to expand...

let her art and pop in

Gypsy really is one of her best, if not her best song. I've been saying that from the beginning.

My only complaint is that the "I'm I'm I'm, I'm I'm I'm, a gypsy gypsy gypsy I'm" part should punch harder production wise. If it had some clapping and stomps in the background it would be perfect.
 
T

Trigger

Member
Gypsy is a motherfucking grower. Everytime I listen it just grabs me more.

Mary Jane Holland said:
I've only listened to Modern Vampires of the City. But there isn't a flaw to be found. Every damn song is a bop and memorable in some way.

When will the other girls?
Click to expand...

Have you listened to Contra? If not you should. Modern Vampires of City is cute, but Contra is still my favorite album from them.
 
P

Partition

Banned
Mary Jane Holland said:
Gypsy's pretty great.

I still maintain that Monster sounds like something Cascada would make as a ripoff Gaga song, though. I don't much care for it.
Click to expand...

never liked Monster. It doesn't really go anywhere or do much for me.

TFM is pretty average all over the place. The only songs I consider really great or that I still use are SHICD and Alejandro. I never listen to Bad Romance and DITD leaves me flaccid from the shitty chorus.
 
Y

You Know Nothing

Member
#shots fired

Trigger said:
Have you listened to Contra? If not you should. Modern Vampires of City is cute, but Contra is still my favorite album from them.
Click to expand...

I haven't. But I definitely will. I'm still busy absorbing Modern Vampires of the City's slayage.

ARTPOP said:
never liked Monster. It doesn't really go anywhere or do much for me.

TFM is pretty average all over the place. The only songs I consider really great or that I still use are SHICD and Alejandro. I never listen to Bad Romance and DITD leaves me flaccid from the shitty chorus.
Click to expand...

Bad Romance, Alejandro, Dance in the Dark, Speechless, and Teeth. Top five. Don't care for Telephone. So Happy I Could Die is good but not top five good for me. And Monster is Monster.
 
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