Let's be honest, Britney's last album Circus wasn't bad by your average artist's standards - 'Womanizer', 'Shattered Glass' and 'Unusual You' anyone? - but as a follow-up to the near-perfect Blackout, we don't mind telling you that we were left somewhat underwhelmed. Given that she's spent two-and-a-bit years working on a follow-up - one that she claims is built "for the clubs" and is her "edgiest and most mature sound yet" - we have a sneaking suspicion that the feeling was mutual. Question is, does Femme Fatale hit the mark?
The LP's two trailer singles have already raised the bar from what Circus offered us, having served up a pair of club-thumping stompers in the form of saucy 'n' seductive 'Hold It Against Me' and hi-NRG 'Till The World Ends'. Both helmed by producer-du-jour Dr Luke and longtime mixing buddy Max Martin, their dub-pop hybrid is both fresh yet undeniably 'Britney'.
Fortunately the LP's ten remaining tracks continue the trend, with the anthemic 'I Wanna Go', self-assured '(Drop Dead) Beautiful' and ballsy 'Gasoline' all tailor-made dancefloor choons; while the lyrics range from 'Inside Out's' blatantly slutty: "Baby shut your mouth and turn me inside out," to the supremely self-assured: "I wanna go down town where my posse's at/ Because I got nine lives like a kitty-cat" on 'How I Roll'.
Despite the album's well-worn producers and slightly obvious theme, the production is polished, intriguing and - best of all - fun. The dub-steppy 'Inside Out', the much-welcomed piano breakdown on the will.i.am-assisted 'Big Fat Bass' and the pagan-like flutes in closing track 'Criminal' all keep us guessing - albeit while feeling suitably pumped - for the full 65 minutes.
Future singles? She's spoilt for choice here, but if 'I Wanna Go', 'How I Roll' and 'Criminal' don't at least get a look-in, well, we'll be having strong words.
It may have taken four years to arrive, but Femme Fatale ultimately feels like the post-Blackout comeback we were waiting for, albeit with one important distinction: rather than feeling like we'd caught a worse-for-wear Britters at an underground, Red Stripe-soaked "party", this time we're joining her at an altogether classier venue, locking arms and ushering the barman for a round of raspberry Mojito's before throwing some serious shapes. Yes, she's teamed up with producers that her contemporaries are well-aquainted with, and the subject matter rarely shifts from the superficial, but what ultimately sets it apart is Spears's unrivaled ability to seduce us, which, given the album's title, is something she clearly knows all too well.
The following italicized article is from www.popjustice.com:
So the recent history of Britney is a bit like this: recorded by a detached superstar at the height of some rather desperate lows, 'Blackout' quickly established itself as Britney's surprise masterpiece. Britney's next studio album was 'Circus'. Despite an amazing lead single 'Circus' sounded like the work of a popstar who was involved too much and too little at the same time, the victim of the sort of absent-minded hands-on approach that does more damage than good. 'Circus' was not the sort of album Britney Spears should have been making. It was, quite simply, not very good.
Well we had a listen to 'Femme Fatale' earlier. And here's the good news: 'Circus' feels like the work of a different artist. Here's the even better news: 'Femme Fatale' is another 'Blackout'. It's bursting with all that album's best bits - the slightly deranged production, the hard and dark spirit, the massive beats and the big tunes. And while it might be less of a surprise, as Britney is obviously pretty much back on top of things now, on first listen it might just be as much of a masterpiece. It's also a relief, because if 'Femme Fatale' had been a bit of a dog's dinner Britney-as-a-recording-artist would have been over.
To listen to 'Femme Fatale' we went over to Britney's label earlier tonight. The tracks only arrived in the UK at about 6pm, having been whizzed across the Atlantic via a spooky download link thing for internal use by Sony.
For anyone amused by the apparently tokenistic dubstep breakdown in 'Hold It Against Me' - and the genre's trademark gloomwobble did rather seem to appear from nowhere then disappear back there just as abruptly - the big news from 'Femme Fatale' is that the foray into dubstep was more than just flirtation. There's dubstep in the DNA of this album. It's rarely as blunt as in 'Hold It Against Me' - there's no "ooh look at me I'm dubstep" showboating - and 'Till The World Ends' is a far better indication of the album's sound. With some exceptions, this is a heavy, dark and dangerous-sounding Britney album. It's a sound you'll hear in 'Inside Out', one of various songs leaked so far in clip form.
Even the will.i.am track 'Big Fat Bass', which sounded unbearable on first listen and seemed likely to reinforce will.i.am's reputation for turning in the worst tracks on otherwise amazing female-fronted pop albums - sounds great. We made notes on the songs one by one and had prepared the title 'Big Fat Pile Of Shit' in anticipation of this song starting but, halfway through, we'd crossed that out. It was surprisingly bearable partly because the second clip that emerged is a far better reflection of the track and partly because the rest of the album makes sense of it.
Lyrically - well, on the surface it's about what happens when you go out and what happens when you get back home, and beneath the surface it may well turn out to be that too. Pop right now doesn't really feel like it needs another set of songs about how great it is to a) go clubbing and/or b) have sex, and 'Femme Fatale' is preoccupied by both those topics, but it feels like Britney manages to sidestep the clublolz trap in the usually awful David Guetta sense or that sometimes awful Ke$ha sense. 'Femme Fatale' is an album with a perfectly defined sound and a clearly established personality. It's a club record in the same sense 'Blackout' was. It hangs together, it makes you feel like having a bit of a dance. It's playful. Gone are the slightly laboured, joyless moments of 'Circus'.
Some tracks are fast and some are slow but the nearest 'Femme Fatale'-era Britney gets to a ballad is closing track 'Criminal' (clip here) which has the flavour of 'American Life'-era Madonna - the 'Intervention' and 'Love Profusion' sort of sound. Flute (FLUTE) and guitar are high in the mix here but with hefty, whalloping beats. To these ears it's a darkly comic song about a guy who's basically awful ("he's a killer just for fun fun fun") and whose various character flaws are described all the way through the verses until the chorus arrives with "but... Mama I'm in love with a criminal, and this type of love isn't rational, it's physical; Mama please don't cry i will be alrgiht, all reason aside I just can't deny, I love that guy". Typing those lyrics out it looks a bit bad. But it sounds great. Really great. And when the middle eight swings around we're in classic - and by classic we mean the 'Oops!' album - Britney territory. Coming moments before the album's end it's a brilliantly timed glimpse of the traditional tuneage that put Britney at the top of pop over a decade ago. It doesn't sound much like anything else on 'Femme Fatale', but what's interesting is that it doesn't jar either. Her new album may be stuffed with fantastically aggressive robopop but, at the end of the day, Britney's still Britney.
We'll be able to discuss the album in more detail in coming days via a track by track sort of review but the key points from this overview are:
1. No crap songs.
And that, really, is all you need to know.
Usual disclaimers apply: we heard it all the way through once, it might sound less amazing on repeated listens but, equally, it might end up getting even better.
This hasn't been a very well written review so apols for that but finally, if you're still reading, we would like to say a thing. From what we've heard from this album (which is the whole thing, bar deluxe edition bonus tracks) and from what we've heard of the Lady Gaga album, they are entirely different bodies of work with entirely different influences and objectives from two entirely different artists at entirely different stages in their respective careers. Between them they offer a fantastic account of pop music in 2011 and should be viewed as complementary, not contradictory. There is room for both. Let's all just try to get along.
The following italicized article is from www.rollingstone.com:
Ever since Britney Spears' demo version of Lady Gaga's "Telephone" leaked this week, fans have been buzzing. Producer Rodney Jerkins quickly confirmed that it really was Britney singing, but any seasoned Britneyologist could already identify it by ear within a couple of bars — nobody else pronounces the consonant "r" or the long vowel "e" like our girl. It has all the distinctive vocal tics of Britney, or at least the laptop that does her singing. At this point, I've come to love Britney's demo even more than Gaga's already-brilliant hit version. Even though it's a more bare-bones production, it amps up all the seething rage in the song, stripping it down to the killer combo of a plucked harp and a jaded party girl strung out on Auto-Tune and paranoia.
"Telephone" actually sounds a lot like Britney's 2007 hit "Piece of Me," proving yet again how much impact Britney has had on the sonics of current pop. People love to make fun of Britney, and why not, but if "Telephone" proves anything, it's that Blackout may be the most influential pop album of the past five years. The demo is lighter than Gaga's production, cutting out all the rock bombast, but that just makes the song more linear and urgent. It reduces "Telephone" to a drum machine, that harp, a magic box of vocal effects, and the concept that a girl's soul and a magic box of vocal effects can sometimes be the exact same thing.
Britney uses Auto-Tune the way Bob Dylan used his harmonica — for punctuation, for atmosphere, for an alienatingly weird sound effect. It's a blast of vocal distortion, harsh on the surface, but expressive, capable of sounding wildly funny or abrasively pissed-off or seductive. In "Telephone," as in "Piece of Me," the Auto-Tune does for her voice what the harmonica does for Dylan's in "It Ain't Me, Babe" — a way of telling the world to keep its hands off you. Britney is talking to her phone, talking to the boy who keeps calling, talking herself out of compulsively checking her phone. The way her voice fades in and out of Auto-Tune — mostly in — is totally brilliant. Like Bob Dylan (and I swear this is the last time I'll mention his name right now, despite the millions of things he and Brit have in common) Britney loves to cross-fade between a human voice (hey world, take a look at me, I'm a star, I'm somebody, pay attention) and a machine voice (hey world, fuck off, you can't reach me, I don't believe you, you're a liar).
The point isn't whether Britney is punching the buttons herself. (When is that ever the point with a pop star?) It's the romance going on between the voice and the machine. Part of what makes Britney the perfectest of perfect pop stars is the way she expresses her personality most passionately when she's turning herself into a machine — surrendering to the beat, disappearing into the thrill of the pop moment, singing like a robot. That's what makes her sound so human after all. In "Telephone," she doesn't want to think any more, talk any more, feel any more — she just wants to hit the floor and dance to the rhythm machines until she turns into a machine herself.
Nothing could express the Britney cosmology like a phone song, since phone songs are usually a place where singers distort their vocals to sound like they're on the line — my favorite might be ELO's "Telephone Line," Kraftwerk's "The Telephone Call," or maybe Missy Elliott, Timbaland and Nicole Wray's "Make It Hot." But it's ideal for Britney — especially when the phone song doubles as an "I'm out on the club jumping on strange boys" anthem. She's kind of biz-zaaay. She's kind of biz-zaaay. You can't hurt her, can't even touch her, because she's kind of biz-zaaay. Call all you want but she's not at home, and you're not gonna reach her telephone.
I'm definitely not disparaging Gaga's version — I couldn't live without it, especially not her Beyoncé video epic. But "Telephone" has so much Britney in it, it's no big surprise to learn that Gaga may have written the song for her. Since Britney is the perfect pop star, and songs about telephones are always excellent, it's a just plain mathematical fact that Britney's "Telephone" is a perfect pop song, and the world is an infinitely better place because it exists.
Bizarro note: despite all the advances in phone technology over the past 25 years, both versions of "Telephone" end with the same recorded message from the Replacements' 1984 punk rock classic "Answering Machine." That Britney — she is so punk.
The following italicized article is from www.x17online.com:
Britney Spears is ready for the world to hear her new sound, which a source says will be "more energetic" than the last album.
A person familiar with the project tells X17online exclusively:
"Right after this year's Grammy Awards, Britney met with all of the producers for her next album to explain the vibe she's looking to capture. Brit, who is co-writing many of the songs, explained that she's looking to give the new album a vibe like the song Get Naked from Blackout."
Our source says that the pop princess, who we're told is "not only a hard worker, but an incredible mother," has recruited many of the same producers from her Blackout album like Bloodshy and Avant, Danger and Corte Ellis. According to the source, this new album "will be like Blackout times 100!"
X17online has learned that the album was set to be released this summer, but the project may now be pushed back. Our source says that very soon we'll be hearing some new Britney on the radio.
Calls to Jive Records were not immediately returned.
The following italicized article is from www.digitalspy.co.uk:
Rating: 5/5 stars
When Britney released '...Baby One More Time' at the tail-end of the last century, few would have predicted that she'd still be around today. Sure, it quickly became obvious that the track - reportedly rejected by TLC - was one of the great pop singles, but the history books are littered with the remains of stars that instantly light up the charts only to burn up just as fast. Despite some filler-heavy albums, Britney has always been something else, and this compilation perfectly captures the career of one of the best singles artists of the last ten years.
Where her 2004 Best Of, My Prerogative, was let down by some needless inclusions, unsatisfying sequencing and under-written new material, the 18-track Singles Collection is as lean as the star herself after a couple of months on the road. Better still, it features the best singles from the Blackout and Circus albums, which salvaged Britney's career as a pop artist in the face of a personal breakdown. The only possible quibble is having newbie '3' tacked on the start rather than the end - ruining the otherwise chronological tracklisting - but in the grand scheme of things that matters not-a-jot.
Running from '...Baby One More Time' to 'Radar', you get a single-disc timeline that shows a progression in style and substance from school uniform-wearing pop ingénue to sultry motorik saucepot. There's an argument that the 65-minute run-time should have been extended to include a few more songs, but in the main it's the slowies that have been dropped, and that's no bad thing. Of course, there's little you can say about the songs themselves that hasn't already been said. Hits like 'Toxic' and 'Oops!... I Did It Again' proved their cultural cachet by featuring in Doctor Who and John & Edward's most magical moment respectively. Even the oft-forgotten 'Stronger' boasts two stone-cold classic pop moments: the lyrical inversion of her debut hit ("My loneliness ain't killing me no more") and that sound drop-out at two-and-a-half minutes that teases before the chorus slams back in.
Britney's voice has long been a source of contention, but while the debate about the value of a lip-synced live concert continues to rage, this compilation underlines her worth as a distinctive pop singer, at least on record. She certainly doesn't have the pipes of contemporaries Christina or Shakira, let alone the likes of Mariah or Whitney, but as last year's X Factor finalists showed, it's not as easy as it looks to make these songs sound as good as they do here.
And there's nothing that sounds out of place. The thematic muddle of wedging a coming-of-age ballad ('I'm Not A Girl...') between two slabs of sexed-up hip-pop ('Slave 4 U', 'Boys') looks dodgy on paper, but sounds perfect in the listening. Best of all is the double-header of 'Everytime' and 'Gimme More', where you get Brit's best ballad jammed up against a throbbing robopop thriller that's rightfully survived her infamous VMAs performance. The only arguable weak link is the Madonna-featuring 'Me Against The Music', but in this context what once looked like a respectful passing of the baton now seems like an unconditional surrender of pop Queendom to its rightful heir.
The following italicized article is from www.billboard.com:
Britney Spears' "Radar," which is both a track on her 2007 "Blackout" album and a single from her 2008 album "Circus," is new to the Hot 100 at No. 90.
"Radar" gives Spears the most Hot 100 songs from one of her albums.
During a recent interview, Keri Hilson, the mastermind behind ‘Gimme More’, revealed that Britney is by far the most dedicated artist she has ever worked with. According to Keri, Britney, who was heavily pregnant with Jayden, ‘was the size of a house’ but would still spend hours on end in the recording studio laying down tracks for her album ‘Blackout’:
“I don’t know if I could be as dedicated as she was. “Having to stand up for hours in her condition and sing? I never would have guessed how normal she is.”
Keri goes on to say that Britney would use her time in the studio as an “escape” from the intense media scrutiny she was put under at the time:
“She was catching so much hell from all corners, but she left it all outside the studio and came in ready to work.”
The following italicized article is from www.insidebayarea.com:
There have been points over the last five years when the chances of Britney Spears mounting a successful comeback seemed about as likely as George W. Bush being elected mayor of Berkeley.
At other moments, the odds looked even worse.
The former teen dream had spent the last five years becoming the ultimate tabloid queen. Her sad tale unfolded before us at the supermarket checkout lanes, as headlines screamed out the latest misadventures of the former "Mickey Mouse Club" sweetheart; with each paparazzi payday it seemed like Spears was taking another step toward the point of no return.
Connecting with the public
Yet a funny thing happened on the way to the land of pop culture has-beens: Spears somehow managed to turn things around, at least professionally. Her new album, "Circus" debuted at No. 1. Her concert tour is doing strong business. She's turning out to be one of 2009's most convincing comebacks.
How did this happen when things, not so long ago, seemed so bleak? Some point to the surprisingly good quality of her 2007 album "Blackout," which, ironically, was a commercial failure. But an even larger element seems to be that she was able to turn all her messy trials and tribulations into a legitimate connection with the public. We really wanted her to turn things around
As fans prepare for Spears' three Northern California concerts — Saturday at Arco Arena in Sacramento, April 12 at HP Pavilion in San Jose and April 22 at Oracle Arena in Oakland — it seems apropos to look back at Spears' recent rollercoaster ride of a career and hopefully shed some light on why Britney has succeeded in an area where so many others have failed.
'Til death do us part'
During the first half of her career, Spears seemingly could do no wrong. She rose to stardom with the 1998 single —...Baby One more Time" and released hit album after hit album, becoming the first female performer to have four consecutive discs debut atop the charts. She did all this while managing to maintain a highly marketable public image that, for the most part, successfully married teen idol and sex kitten. She also had a storybook romance with another emerging Mouse Club alum, Justin Timberlake. It seemed the young princess of pop would someday marry her equally attractive prince in a wedding that would be the grandest since Prince Charles wed Diana.
Instead, they broke up. And if one had to nail down a date for when it all began to unravel for Spears, one might point to Jan. 3, 2004, the day she surprised the world by marrying childhood friend Jason Allen Alexander at a Las Vegas chapel. The fact that the marriage only lasted 55 hours before being annulled gave the impression that the starlet didn't have a firm grasp on her personal life.
From there, things began to snowball. She married a second time, to little-known dancer Kevin Federline, who abandoned his girlfriend and their two out-of-wedlock children to take up with Britney. Spears had two children with K-Fed, did things that made mothers-at-large cringe, then divorced her second husband and fought for custody of their children.
Living la vida loco
Spears become a constant fixture on the celeb night life scene, and revealing photos of her (such as that infamous panty-less shot), once considered the Holy Grail for Web-browsing peeping Toms, became as ubiquitous on the Internet as ads to refinance your home.
She shaved her head, for no apparent reason, and was hospitalized for psychiatric evaluation, for very apparent reasons. There was talk of drug use, and her career was stalling: Her fifth disc, 2007's "Blackout," became her first not to top the Billboard album charts.
As late as February 2008, Rolling Stone magazine ran a cover story titled "The Tragedy of Britney Spears," which summed up the public perception of the fallen star. The whole thing was like some grandiose Greek tragedy, starring a former Mouseketeer from Mississippi, and oddly enough people couldn't get enough of it. Or, perhaps, the appeal wasn't so weird after all.
What Spears had succeeded in doing, with all her personal failures, was to create a celebrity image that felt far more "real" than nearly anything the public had ever seen (with a downfall that rivaled Lindsay Lohan's for media access). It's hard for regular folks to truly identify with a megastar who's on top of the world and selling millions of albums, but it's not hard to connect with one going through breakups, child custody battles and financial woes. Spears was unable to do something that she was never able to do before 2004: She made us feel like she was one of us.
Now, seemingly every celebrity is attempting to accomplish something similar. Countless pop culture icons, who once nurtured the image of being different from the public at-large, are going out of their way to come across like Average Joes and Janes. They use their blogs and Twitter to keep fans up to date on everything from what they had for breakfast to how their relationships are going. Think John Mayer and Pete Wentz. None of them, however, have consistently given us more of interest, without seemingly trying, than Britney.
The public might be fascinated with a "crash and burn." But people love a comeback. Spears certainly qualified for the former, and she showed enough resilience to give watchers hope that she might also make it to the latter.
'Circus' comes to town
By Britney standards, "Blackout" was a commercial disappointment, though many critics (including this one) thought it was her best record to date. And it plays a big role in Britney's comeback. It propelled Spears to a big night at the MTV Video Music Awards on Sept. 7, 2008. The CD's key single, "Piece of Me," would garner trophies for Best Female Video, Best Pop Video and Video of the Year. Suddenly, Britney was getting good press.
Spears' record label, Jive, capitalized by quickly releasing the first single from her forthcoming sixth CD to radio. The track, a contagious dance ditty called "Womanizer," shot to the top of the charts by mid-October and — surprise, surprise — Britney found herself with one of the biggest hits of her career.
When the album "Circus" was released at the end of November, it debuted at No. 1. It's one thing to persuade a fan to drop $15 on a CD (or download), but it's quite another to get people to spend hundreds of dollars on concert tickets. Spears proved up to that challenge as well.
The singer's road show is turning out to be one of the year's top tickets. That's definitely the story in Northern California, where the tour — the singer's first major outing in five years —is expected to see nothing but full houses during its three stops.
"Anytime an artist is away from the scene for awhile, you have to wonder if their audience will still be around," says Gary Bongiovanni, editor-in-chief of the concert industry trade publication Pollstar. "Obviously, Britney has a legitimate fan base that still wants to see her perform live."
That fan base is also willing to pay top dollar for the opportunity. Tickets for her local concerts run as high as $750. That's a lot of dough to drop in these tough economic times, especially for an artist who has seemingly given her fans every reason in the world to stop caring.
Yet, if anything, they seem to care even more than ever.
"I want my kids to see her succeed," says Castro Valley resident Arlene Chaves, who is spending some $2,000 to take her family to the Oakland concert. "I'm excited, personally, to see the show, because I really feel bad for her. I feel bad for what she's been through, and it makes me feel good to see her come back."
The following italicized article is from www.billboard.com:
Britney Spears must make other pop stars angry.
Beyonce, Pink, Justin … none of them would dare use pre-recorded vocals during their live shows, despite the complex choreography of their performances. Madonna and Janet are guilty of using backing tracks to carry some of vocal weight, but certainly not all of it. Hell, even the Pussycat Dolls sing live.
But Britney? She is, and always has been, about blatant, unapologetic lip-synching. Case in point: at the New York stop of her anticipated comeback tour, Spears used her actual vocal chords only three times – twice to thank the crowd, and once to sing a ballad (though the vocals during that number were questionable, as well). Even the spoken bits in the songs came from a DAT. Somewhere, Ashlee Simpson has a dartboard with Brit's face square in the bull's-eye.
Of course, none of this bothered the 16,000 fans that turned up to cheer the resurrected icon at Nassau Coliseum Wednesday night. Britney merely paid lip service to her songs, but the audience members screamed the words to every hit at the top of their collective lungs – even if it was obvious they were the only ones really singing.
Why does Britney get a pass when so many other pop stars keep it real? Has her audience become more forgiving after watching their heroine publicly wrestle with her personal demons over the last few years? Perhaps, but sympathy alone doesn't fill arenas to the rafters. The truth is that vocal prowess has never been the fuel that powers the Britney Machine. Singing simply isn't the point. Spears is an entertainer; a put-on-a-show kind of girl. And despite what happens behind the curtain, Britney's Circus tour is indeed quite a show.
Focusing largely on material from her last three albums, Spears' first outing in five years is a dazzling, racy, in-the-round spectacle that's a little Cirque de Soliel, a little Skinemax, but all Britney at its core. Designed to play up her biggest strengths (i.e. her well-honed dance skills) and distract from her shortcomings, the highly choreographed show features an over-the-top array of acrobats, magicians, clowns, and no less 12 dancers on stage at any given time. The scale of the concert is so massive, in fact, it at times threatens to eclipse its star. Still, despite all of the smoke and mirrors, the most alluring aspect of the show remains Britney herself.
Looking more lively (and more fit) than she has in half a decade, Spears donned 12 different costumes as she shimmed and shook her way through a 17-song set that featured some of her biggest hits, including "Piece of Me," "Toxic," "Womanizer," and funky new remixes of "Slave 4 U" and "…Baby One More Time."
After years of studying the playbooks of Madonna and Janet Jackson, Britney has learned a thing or two about showmanship. When not strutting her scantily-clad stuff from one end of the arena to the other, Spears had plenty of other tantalizing ways to keep the crowd captivated. One minute, she was being sawed in half. The next, she was a straddling dancer suspended 20 feet in the air. If she wasn't writhing around in a gilded cage, she was giving a center-stage lap dance to one very lucky audience member.
But entertainment wasn't Britney's only goal. More than anything, she wants this tour to prove to the world that she's stronger than yesterday, and that she's back in control of her own circus. Her assortment of authoritative costumes (Sexy Ringleader! Sexy drill sergeant! Sexy policewoman!) helped to drive the point home, but the biggest evidence of Spears' rebirth was simply the confidence and vigor behind her performance. For the first time in ages, she actually worked for the applause – and, like the Britney we once knew, she seemed to have a great time doing it.
Thanks to her infectious enthusiasm, Spears managed to pull off the biggest magic trick of all – she erased the image of the sad, wayward diva that has been plastered across the tabloids for the last few years. And for many fans, that alone was cause for ovation.
The following italicized article is from www.nytimes.com:
Eighteen months ago Britney Spears took the stage at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards and, it surely seemed, doused her career in lighter fluid and struck a match. In her brief performance she looked fatigued, unhappy and disoriented. With Ms. Spears already in the middle of a hostile run in the tabloids, this was something worse than self-injury; it was a speeding car with no driver. Surely no good ending was possible.
That she might attempt a tour on the scale of the one that arrived at the Nassau Coliseum here on Wednesday night would have appeared laughable and worrying. That she pulled it off was nothing short of a shock.
Even though Ms. Spears is essentially operating under the auspices of her father, Jamie Spears, who last year was granted legal conservatorship over her, she is 27 now, a mother of two and finally in righteous possession of the anger and frustration that have long animated some of her best music, but never her persona.
Not that she was sneering her way through this warp-speed-quick hour-and-a-half performance. This was less a concert — the vocals appeared to be recorded — than a Las Vegas-style revue of intimidating complexity. Throughout, though she spoke little, Ms. Spears appeared radiant and unfettered, often smiling and never uncommitted.
There was efficient, expert use of a huge stage set in the round, featuring about a dozen backup dancers choreographed impressively by Jamie King.
The rigid execution extended to image management as well: Ms. Spears’s handlers denied access to photographers except under the strictest of usage terms.
From the tour’s title — “The Circus Starring Britney Spears” — on down, the night was rife with blunt-force imagery: Ms. Spears locked in a cage and working her way out, Ms. Spears suspended in a picture frame, Ms. Spears as a ringmaster wielding a whip. During many segments of the show she and her dancers wore bondage-inspired outfits reminiscent of early-’90s modes of sexual transgression.
And there was no room for reflection; the past had moved by far too quickly to dwell on it. Ms. Spears performed a version of her first hit, “ ... Baby One More Time,” and, in a video montage before the encore, flashed through scenes and images from her entire career. (Her kiss with Madonna at the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards received the biggest cheer.) But otherwise there were no references to her first two albums. Any song with even a whiff of naïveté was stricken from the record — no “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman,” no “Sometimes,” no “From the Bottom of My Broken Heart.”
Instead she leaned heavily on the surprisingly strong “Circus” (Jive), her sixth album, released late last year, and her previous album, “Blackout,” from 2007: songs about empowerment and disempowerment set to frantic production. Rarely varying from script, she resisted deep reading, though midshow she briefly erupted into a military shout. “I don’t know what you’ve been told,” she said. “This mama is in control.” She seemed certain of it.
The following italicized article is from www.accesshollywood.com:
On Tuesday night, Britney Spears will make her comeback to the arena tour circuit and today fans got a sneak peek of the pop princess’ set list.
The singer’s official Web site posted the set list for, “The Circus starring Britney Spears,” tour and fans now know that the show will be packed with a host of Brit’s most beloved songs.
The show will kick off with the title track from Britney’s sixth studio album, “Circus,” and will be followed by “Piece of Me,” from 2007’s “Blackout.”
Other Britney favorites cropping up on the set list include a Bollywood version of “Me Against The Music,” the song Britney originally dueted on with Madonna, leading some to wonder if the Queen of Pop will be appearing by video on Brit’s tour. After all, Britney did the very same for Madonna’s “Sticky & Sweet” jaunt last year.
Britney will also perform “Toxic,” and a remix of her uber-classic first single, “Baby One More Time.”
The encore will include “Womanizer” and another version of the opening song, “Circus.”
And, according to Women’s Wear Daily, design house Dsquared has only just finished up the pop star’s costumes for the upcoming 30-date trek.
Dan and Dean Caten, who make up Dsquared, were brought on last year to design stage wear for Britney and they told WWD they were honored to be a part of the “Circus.”
“We are enormous fans of Britney, and have been waiting for the perfect moment to collaborate with her,” twin designer Dan and Dean told the fashion daily. “It’s going to be wild.”
The following italicized article is from www.telegraph.co.uk:
The attraction already has several Spears waxworks at its museums across the world but wanted a glamorous new model to depict the pop star's return to form.
The statue, which was unveiled in London this morning, shows the 27-year-old singer in a sparkly silver dress with plunging neckline, holding one of the three MTV Video Music Awards she won in September.
"We are delighted to be featuring Britney at Madame Tussauds London for the second time," said the venue's Liz Edwards.
"Her original figure captured a provocative pose from her 2001 Dream Within A Dream Tour and was extremely popular.
"However, she's undergone a huge transformation since then and we wanted to reflect her as she is now."
The broad smile and long blond hair are a far cry from images of Spears in 2007, when she was filmed shaving her head in a salon window during a high-profile breakdown.
But the former Disney child star has rebuilt her career and her world tour is due to hit the UK this summer at London's 02 Arena.
She recently released her sixth studio album Circus, a follow-up to her album Blackout which was popular with the critics despite expectations due to her well-documented personal troubles. Spears is one of the top-selling artists of the last decade and has sold more than 62 million albums worldwide.
To celebrate her latest wax incarnation, Madame Tussauds has launched an interactive dance experience. The Britney Dance Chain will allow visitors to learn some of Spears' best moves, enter a "dance tunnel" and strut their stuff on camera.
The following italicized article is from www.mtv.com:
Well, there's really no denying it now: Britney Spears really is back! Back to selling tons of records, at least.
Her Circus album will debut at #1 on next week's Billboard albums chart, selling just under 505,100 copies. It's Spears' fifth album to debut at #1 on the chart, and it sold nearly twice as many copies as last year's Blackout album, which was denied the top spot on the chart by the Eagles' Long Road Out of Eden.
Circus' first-week sales total is certainly big, but it's only the sixth biggest opening of 2008, behind albums like Lil Wayne's Tha Carter III, AC/DC's Black Ice, Coldplay's Viva la Vida, Taylor Swift's Fearless and T.I.'s Paper Trail. Still, it outpaced the first-week numbers of some of Brit's pop peers, including Beyoncé's I Am ... Sasha Fierce, Mariah Carey's E = MC2 and Miley Cyrus' Breakout.
Interestingly enough, the Brit-sanity was so high among album buyers that Blackout also managed to return to the charts, selling more than 4,600 copies to land at #198.
Spears' manager, Larry Rudolph, told The Associated Press that the success of Circus really does signify Brit's triumphant return. "At the end of the day, I think she is America's pop princess, and the world's pop princess, and this just reconfirms it to everyone who doubted it," he said. "Professionally, she's feeling great. ... It's great for her to hear that she's got a #1 album again." Those sentiments were seconded by in a statement from Jive Records, Britney's label. "We're absolutely thrilled for Britney," the statement reads. "The response to Circus is a testament to how great the album is, and to how connected and supportive Britney's fans are to her and her music."
Swift's Fearless lands in the #2 spot on the albums chart for the second-straight week, selling 193,500 copies. Beyoncé's Sasha Fierce is at #3, with sales of more than 152,800 copies. Last week's chart champ, Kanye West's 808s & Heartbreak, drops to #4, with sales of close to 141,700 copies. Nickelback's Dark Horse rounds out the top five, selling 133,400 copies.
The rest of the top 10 features the "Twilight" soundtrack at #6; the week's other big-name debut, Akon's Freedom at #7; the soundtrack to "High School Musical 3" at #8; the ubiquitous hits collection Now That's What I Call Music! 29 at #9; and David Cook's self-titled effort at #10. Aside from Circus and Freedom (which sold 110,600 copies), other notable debuts on next week's chart include Scarface's Emeritus (#24, with 42,000 copies sold), Neil Young's Sugar Mountain: Live at Canterbury House 1968 (#40, with 26,400 copies sold) and the soundtrack to Beyoncé's new movie, "Cadillac Records" (#66, with 15,600 copies sold).
The following italicized article is from www.mtv.com:
Britney Spears' longtime manager Larry Rudolph has been by his client's side as she stages her comeback with the release of Circus and her documentary, "For the Record" (premiering on MTV November 30).
"I was very involved in putting [the film] together, so I saw the process," Rudolph told MTV News on Thursday night at a media preview of the film in Los Angeles. "It was a very interesting process. We made a deal from the very beginning — everybody sort of shook hands with the understanding that there were going to be no boundaries on this thing. We were going to make an open and honest film and that we weren't going to leave the good stuff on the cutting room floor.
"We went there with it," he added. "You see Britney in a light you're not used to seeing her in. She's intelligent, she's introspective, she's honest. By the end of the film you really understand who she is in a way that you just never imagined. ... It is so not a puff piece."
Rudolph, who is credited with shaping Britney's early career, wouldn't speak about how he and Spears reunited after a falling-out in 2007. At the time, many speculated that she fired him for encouraging her to enter rehab.
Focusing the conversation on the doc, Rudolph insisted that it shows everyone what he already knows about the singer: "She's got a unique set of talents. She's got a blend of certain talents. She's a great singer. She's a great dancer. She's got an amazing image. She's incredibly likable," he listed. "She's got this intangible thing that makes her a star."
"For the Record" is part of the game plan for reintroducing Britney, the pop star rather than the tabloid magnet, back to her fans, Rudolph said. The movie makes a case for Spears' future, by giving the audience "a good taste of the music and where she is and where she is going."
The next step in Brit's comeback is a video for the album's second single, "Circus," shot by "I'm a Slave 4 U" director Francis Lawrence, set to debut around the release of the album on December 2. "It is amazing," Rudolph said. "The video is extraordinary. It is really, really good."
Although Blackout came out only a year ago, Rudolph said that this was an organically right time for her to put out new music again. "It wasn't that there was a rush," he explained. "The album got completed on its natural timetable. And it just was the right time to put it out. So we decided to put it out on her birthday and make it a birthday present to her and to the world."
The following italicized article is from www.popjustice.com:
'CIRCUS'
This is the title track. This means the song's called 'Circus', and it's from the album 'Circus'. "I run a tight ship," Britney announces, "so beware - I'm like the ringleader, I call the shots, I'm like a firecracker I make it hot, now put a show". What does this mean? Well, she is a ringleader on a ship - we presume this is something to do with a special circus on a cruise liner of some sort. Basically Britney is comparing herself to lots of things at the same time. Your English teacher will tell you this is a silly thing to do - but Britney is allowed to do it, because she is Britney. The track comes with massive thudding electronic R&B production and there's a lot of stopping and starting, including a a built-in MTV-style dance breakdown segment. The chorus lyric is "all eyes on me in the centre of the ring just like a circus" but the best bit's the bridge, with its "I feel the adrenaline moving through my veins, spotlight on me and I'm ready to break, I'm like a performer with this world as a stage" bit. There's all sorts of other stuff about "don't stand there watching me, following me, show me what you can do". Bits of it are a lot like 'Break The Ice' from the last album, but with an extra layer of Big Production.
OUT FROM UNDER
'Blackout' didn't have any big ballads so here is one for 'Circus'. It's incredibly similar to this version...
...of the song but with more guitar (weedy guitar, not big proper guitar). The production's a lot less sparse and a great deal more 'Britney ballad' (in the 'I'm Not A Girl Not Yet A Woman' tradition). Basically the most interesting thing about Britney's version that you can't hear on the Joanna Pacitti original is the finale, which ends with a great "from under, from under, from under" bit.
IF U SEEK AMY
This is the one people are excited about because the words "if you seek Amy" sound like "F-U-C-K me". After a "la la la la la la la la, la la la la la la la la" intro the song sort of throws itself into a ridiculous faux-lesbo 'romp' in which Britney looks for girl called Amy in a club ("oh baby baby have you seen Amy tonight, is she in the bathroom?"), can't find her while the club's closing, bangs on about "love me hate me, say what you want about me but all the boys and all the girls are ready to f-u-c-k me" and then goes bonkers over a lot over a thunderous Timbaland vs Scooter production job. There are some "ha ha he he ho ho ho" bits, a great whooshing noise into the final chorus and an overriding sense that this might be one of Britney's most ridiculous recordings to date.
'VERDICT': It's 'Blackout 2.0' - this is good news, 'Blackout' was a phenomenal album - but seems to include a lot of posturing and also seems to be quite gimmicky, which hopefully won't extend across the entire album. The inclusion of a song like 'Out From Under' suggests that this album, as a whole, might be a bridge between 'In The Zone' and 'Blackout', or at least a bridge between 'Blackout' and a next album more along the 'In The Zone' lines. That didn't make any sense at all, did it. Anyway if these are the very best songs on the album we're probably heading for a 7/10 sort of affair but it's hard to second guess a Britney album so what it will end up like is anybody's guess.
The following italicized article is from www.billboard.com:
Everyone loves a good comeback, though it's ironic that commercially, Britney Spears never went anywhere. If anything, her personal troubles heightened interest in last year's "Blackout" album and top five smash "Gimme More." This year has seen a less public Spears —certainly none of the bizarre behavior of the past couple of years. "Womanizer" from new album "Circus" (Dec. 2), finds Brit in futuristic electronica mode (similar territory to peer Christina Aguilera). Credit producers/ writers the Outsyders for injecting a bit of reality into her lyrics, in this case directed at a certain ex, in which Spears chastises, "You say I'm crazy . . . I got your crazy." While the repetitive hook might affect chart longevity, the best news here is Spears' engaged vocal, unlike last year's tracks, which focused more on production tricks to cover unfocused delivery. After triple-play wins at MTV's Video Music Awards, where a coherent Spears appeared grateful and surprised —and a creative (albeit gratuitous) video that's igniting blogs—could it be our Britney is truly back?
The following italicized article is from www.abcnews.com:
Britney Spears' new single "Womanizer" made a record-breaking leap to top spot on Billboard's Hot 100 singles chart on Wednesday, underscoring her musical comeback after making headlines with her personal woes.
Billboard said the song, the first from a new Spears album due for release in December, jumped from No.96 to No.1 in the past week and returned Spears to the top of the list for the first time since her 1999 debut single "Baby One More Time."
"Womanizer" is also No. 1 on iTunes charts in Canada, France, Spain and Sweden, Spears' record company Jive said.
Billboard said the unprecedented leap of "Womanizer" was spurred by first-week download sales of 286,000, the biggest opening week tally by a female artist since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking digital downloads in 2003.
The charts were released as expectations rose that Spears would start a tour in early 2009 -- her first since 2004 -- to support the new album "Circus" to be released on December 2.
Spears, 26, looking recently more like her old pop princess self, told a New York radio station last month that she planned to tour around the world next year but gave no details.
Last year, Spears performed a handful of club shows in southern California but did not go on the road to promote her last album "Blackout," which had a good chart debut in November 2007 but faded quickly.
Spears has been on the mend this year after making headlines for shaving her head, attacking paparazzi with an umbrella, losing custody of her two sons and two admissions to psychiatric hospital units.
Her father took control of her business affairs in February and, in September, Spears won three awards for her 2007 song "Piece of Me" at the MTV video music awards.
She plans to set the record straight about her highly public meltdown in a 90-minute documentary to be aired on MTV on November 30.
The following italicized article is from www.ok-magazine.com:
Among the chorus of celebrity voices cheering Britney Spears to a triumphant comeback is Fabolous, who remixed Britney's "Break the Ice" last year. The rapper says he's impressed at how the singer was able to bounce back from adversity.
"A lot of people were counting her out and thinking she could never come back," he said at last night's VH1 Hip Hop Honors in NYC. "It’s not as good as before, it’s even better. That’s an admirable thing right now."
As for her new album, Circus, which will be released on Dec. 2, Fabolous thinks Britney's got what it takes for it to be a success.
"She’s just gotta get back to doing what she’s used to doing," he says. "Making a great album, making great songs and being herself. Being as sexy as she wants to be because that’s what Britney feels and it truly came across. Not just pleasing, just get back to doing what she’s doing."
Although Fabolous only worked on one of Britney's songs from Blackout, he says he'd be open to working with the formerly troubled singer again.
"It was a great joint," he says of "Break the Ice."
"We’ll see what’s possible in the future if it happens again," he adds. "We weren’t able to do a video because of what was going on with her at the time but I’d love to do it again."
Break the Ice is a blog dedicated to the one and only, Miss Britney Spears. So original, right? I decided to create this blog because I was getting sick of going to fans sites that didn't update as frequently as I wanted. Our goal here at Break the Ice is to bring you ALL Britney news ALL the time. Tom and Cool are the administrators and Beautiful Sinner, Joel, Tekkie, Johnny, Juicy UK, Marcus and Jenna Pixie are updaters. Together, we form the Break the Ice team!
Any questions/comments/concerns? Please e-mail us at breaktheiceblog@aol.com. Enjoy!
Let's be honest, Britney's last album Circus wasn't bad by your average artist's standards - 'Womanizer', 'Shattered Glass' and 'Unusual You' anyone? - but as a follow-up to the near-perfect Blackout, we don't mind telling you that we were left somewhat underwhelmed. Given that she's spent two-and-a-bit years working on a follow-up - one that she claims is built "for the clubs" and is her "edgiest and most mature sound yet" - we have a sneaking suspicion that the feeling was mutual. Question is, does Femme Fatale hit the mark?
