Artist: Britney Spears

Album: ‘Femme Fatale’

Record Label: Jive Records

Soundwaves: 1.5/5

Sounds Like: Every other Auto-Tuned pop album that hits the charts

There are some things in this world you don’t want to watch, yet you still can’t seem to turn away from them. No matter how disastrous the catastrophe unfolding before your eyes gets, you can’t help but peek through the fingers of one hand and use the other hand to grab some popcorn as the meltdown happens.

You’re watching the recent career of Britney Spears.

No longer the teen vixen who was the object of most ’90s boys’ affection, Spears has been derailed by one long losing battle against swarms of paparazzi. Nostalgic listeners, who still fondly remember Spears as an underdressed schoolgirl in her infamous video ‘Baby One More Time,’ expected a splashy return. What they got, however, comes as a massively disappointing letdown to even Spears’ most loyal fans. Her latest effort, ‘Femme Fatale,’ is in the same sonic vein as her last release, ‘Circus’: Both albums offer danceable electro-pop tunes, only if the listener can get past the schmaltzy production and robotic Auto-Tune-fueled vocals.

‘Femme Fatale’ starts with a one-two punch by opening with its two singles ‘Till the World Ends’ and ‘Hold It Against Me.’ The first is a vacuous melody lacking in emotion that somehow transitions into a hook-laced chorus consisting of nothing more meaningful than monosyllabic ‘whoas’ — exactly the sound Ke$ha hoped for when she penned it. It’s catchy and should coast to a comfortable spot on the Billboard lists, but has no real wit or charm.

‘Hold It Against Me’ dabbles in dubstep territory, driven by an overwhelming bass line and outdated synthesizer keys that belong back in the 1980s. However soul-sucking the verses are, Spears more than makes up for it with a fantastically written chorus, obviously not written by her. Infamous record producer Dr. Luke lends a heavy-handed touch to the album. As the brains behind Katy Perry’s ‘E.T.’ and Ke$ha’s’We R Who We R,’which are both hit singles, he’s no stranger to writing throwaway, catchy pop songs.

‘Inside Out’ is loaded with more sexual innuendos than Bo Burnham’s comedy act and is about as subtle as a car crash. Spears’ vocals are glossy and shine on the track. But the electronic-style arrangement is headache-inducing, almost as if the producers had a contest to see how many different effects they could haphazardly inject into the song. It holds a distant second place to ‘How I Roll,’ which starts with Spears vocalizing and breathing heavily into the microphone. Rambling incoherently for more than three and a half minutes, its only standout lyric is ‘Downtown where my posse’s at, nine lives like a kitty cat.’

‘I Wanna Go’ is a tune for the dance floor that goes heavy on the drum machine as Spears does her best impression of her ’90s voice, but this time with less feeling and more copious doses of Auto-Tune.

Spears collaborates with Will. I. Am. on ‘Big Fat Bass,’ the absolute lowest point of the album. Critics who have jumped all over Rebecca Black’s ‘Friday’ should grab their pitchforks and torches and go after Spears for her lyricism. Spears was never a wordsmith on par with Shakespeare, but when a song repeats the lines ‘I can be the treble and you can be the bass’ and ‘the bass is getting bigger’ over and over and over, it makes for an overblown and self-indulgent mindless pop tune.

Overall, because of a lack of consistency in song quality, listening to Spears’ ‘Femme Fatale’ is like watching a slow-motion train wreck. The first few tracks are listenable and fun to sing along and dance to, but the album slides into mediocrity with three or four tracks in the middle, stuffed together in a one-note, pounding-bass bread sandwich. Spears’ effort is lackadaisical at best on the last few tracks of the album, featuring the exact same instrumentation about three times over and vocals that sound like Spears picked up her check for the album before she finished writing the closing songs: half-hearted and unmotivated.

So if you choose to listen to one Britney Spears record this week, do yourself a favor and make it ‘Baby One More Time’ instead of the hot mess that is ‘Femme Fatale.’

ervanrhe@syr.edu

Published on April 3, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Erik: ervanrhe@syr.edu | @therealvandyman