Thoughts on 'Britney Jean', the new album by singing sensation Britney Spears

We’ve been thinking about Britney’s new album for around a week, which is probably about twice as long as Britney herself spent thinking about it, and here are some dis­join­ted so-called ‘musings’ on ‘Britney Jean’.

• The best songs are: 'Alien', 'Passenger', 'Perfume', 'Tik Tik Boom', 'Til It’s Gone'.
• The worst songs are: 'It Should Be Easy', 'Chillin' With You' and 'Don't Cry'.
• The song which is neither best or worst, and is therefore pointless, and is therefore arguably worse than the worst ones is: 'Body Ache'.
• And then there is ‘Work Bitch’.
• We've added up all the star ratings we would have given this album had we illegally down­loaded it and put it into iTunes, and it's a 6/10.
• If they wanted to launch this whole ‘era’ with a big EDM banger as the first single they should have gone for 'Till It's Gone' because that seems to be holding up over repeated listens rather than ‘doing a “Work Bitch”’ (ie slumping to a 6–7/10 fairly quickly).
• (Although parts of ‘Work Bitch’ are still great.)
• When it gets to this point in an artist’s career — really, any point after album three — all you really want (or can reas­on­ably expect) are three songs to add to your Ultimate playlist. Think of all your favourite popstars: there are very few excep­tions. Our Ultimate Britney playlist is already longer than most, but following the ‘let’s just have a few additions’ rule we think ‘Britney Jean’ succeeds. The good bits are good.
• Some songs, like ‘Tik Tik Boom’, feel like a con­tinu­ation of Femme Fatale, which in turn makes this album feel like less of an event. We’re not sure if every album any artist ever releases should neces­sar­ily be wildly different to the one that came before, but when eras seem to overlap you lose a certain sense of occasion.
• ‘It Should Be Easy’ should, quite frankly, not be on the album. It is an extremely bad song.
• In some ways the instant reaction we (and a sur­pris­ing number of hardcore Britney fans) have had to this album — namely ‘Couldn’t she have done something else?’ — poses one big question: what should a Britney album sound like in 2013? Well we will give you three options. Firstly, it could have been a straight­for­ward EDM banger­thon. Of the Avicii variety, rather than the will.i.am variety. Secondly, it could all have been more along the lines of ‘Perfume’ and ‘Passenger’: songy songs from start to finish. The third option is a kind of super­styl­ised blogpop type album with all those Dev Hynes / Danja-type people who were sup­posedly involved early one. One does wonder if the early plan was for this album to be one of those three things, before someone panicked, decided to hedge their bets, ditched the third route and went for a mix of options one and two.
• Alternatively, she could have just covered the Tegan & Sara album in its entirety.
• Or she could have done something like this. Imagine if Britney had come back with this song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOa3vAQUJSE

• Re the above song, you can’t imagine Say Lou Lou getting an A‑List radio hit with it, but if Britney had come back with 'Beloved' her involve­ment  might have forced it onto radio. And you might say “well ‘Work Bitch’ didn’t exactly force its way onto radio and that actually DID sound like something you’d hear on the radio”, but that is perhaps the problem: it was so close to everything else on the radio, but so clearly inferior, that it was easy to put it to one side. ‘Beloved’ would have been such a shock, and would have been so confusing, that it would have been hard to instantly dismiss. (Also it is obviously brilliant.)
• Unfortunately what this album could or should have been has probably been skewed by people going MAKE IT MORE VEGAS.
• It’s a shame Britney’s duet with her sister isn’t more of a Moment. Ways it could have been a Moment: 1. A ‘The Boy Is Mine’-style feud song. 2. Actually let’s just stick with a ‘The Boy Is Mine’-style feud song.
• If there's one album this year that could have done with some Max Martin magic, it's the Jake Bugg one. If there's a second, it's ‘Britney Jean’.
• People seem to be wondering precisely how personal this album is but some of the lyrics are certainly good good enough to have been written by Britney.
• It’s easy to go “oh will.i.am ruined this” but he did ‘Perfume’ and that was great. And he was on 'Til It’s Gone’ too.
• It’s also easy to point the finger at will.i.am for the exclusion of the Dev Hynes, Naughty Boy etc songs but when we spoke to him about it he explained that the decision was not his.
• It’s inter­est­ing to hear so many different vocal styles across the ten songs. There are even vari­ations on Britney sounding sup­posedly ‘natural’, which makes you wonder if any of these are in fact natural at all or if they’re all as processed as the more obviously tampered-with will.i.am ones.
• Dev, Danja, Naughty Boy and everyone else whose songs didn’t make the final cut should give those songs to Myah Marie,  Britney’s long­stand­ing backing vocalist, and she should make The Britney Album That Never Was.
• The bonus tracks might be good. 'Amnesia' was a bonus track and it was one of the best of the 'Circus' era.
• Ambitious. That’s a word you wouldn’t quickly fling in the direction of ‘Britney Jean’.
• The good thing about this not being Britney's 'Ray Of Light’, as had initially been suggested (or did we all just want that to be the case?) is that Britney can still make her 'Ray Of Light'.
• That'll do.
• 'That'll do’ just about sums up this album, doesn’t it.