On Blackout, Britney Spears’ Sinister Technopop Finds Power in Distance
Britney Spears for her album, Blackout (via Dazed)
To listen to Britney Spears’s Blackout is to enter an alien world: one in which voices are warped beyond recognition, sound is drenched in a haze of sinister synths and warblers, and everything is synthetic. It’s also an album that is almost completely separate from the artist/subject herself. Upon its release in 2007, it was overshadowed by Spears’s very public struggles, which have been called the most public breakdown of any celebrity ever. But years later, it would be heralded by many critics as the best album of her career, as well as one of the most influential albums of the twenty-first century.
Though Blackout’s technical wizardry can still be enjoyed regardless of how much you know about Britney Spears, it's also undeniable that much of the album’s conceptual and effectual weirdness emerges from how the album clashes with Spears’ image and personal life. At a time when there was seemingly endless discussion of Spears’ personal life, Blackout is shockingly impersonal. In an album of twelve songs, ten are almost exclusively about sex, love, and more sex. And as for the two songs which could be considered personal, “Piece of Me” and “Why Should I Be Sad?,” neither feature a writing credit from Spears. Thus, even the songs that claim to be about Spears are not really her own thoughts, but rather others’ thoughts about her.
This impersonality is also reflected in the album’s vocal production. Spears' coquettish southern drawl is as iconic on Blackout as ever, but it is also drenched in autotune, pitched impossibly high or low and produced in a way that can make her almost unrecognizable on her own album. It’s an effect that is particularly prominent on lead single “Gimme More,” where the chorus alternates between pitching her stretched out “mores” high and low, and also on “Piece of Me.” In this ostensibly personal song, which hits back at Spears’ critics, Spears’ voice is autotuned, warped, and often lost in a sea of backing vocals. It serves to abstract Spears’ from her own narratives, one which wasn’t written by her in the first place, in a way that resembles the distorted media narrative around her.
As a result of this impersonality, critics at the time lamented that Spears had “become a spectral presence - on her own album.” There is a certain accuracy to this claim that Spears can feel absent and distant on Blackout, but was she ever really there in the first place? Spears’ first four albums often appear to be personal, but it's undeniable that Spears’ image was being defined by a relentless pop machine whose job was to create a narrative not for Britney Spears the person, but for Britney Spears the pop star. In 2007, at long last, she had no manager, agent, or publicist and her label had mostly cut contact with her. She was a pop star who was, for better or for worse, unmoored from the systems that usually accompany celebrities. Blackout is also the only album of Spears’ in which she serves as executive producer. Thus, Blackout may have been the only time in Spears’ career where she was truly in control. It is incorrect then, to assume that Spears' seemingly spectral presence on her own album is reflective of some kind of disengagement or lack of interest. Rather, it reflects Spears’ own wishes to distance her music from her personal struggles.
In this way, the album functions almost as an escapist fantasy: one defined by braggadocious swagger, lust, and the innovative and weird soundscape created by producers Danja and Bloodshy & Avant, who collectively produced nine out of the album’s 12 tracks. Even though the EDM trend in mainstream pop that Blackout helped inspire has long gone, the album still sounds fresh. Listening to Blackout can feel like stepping into a club in 2050 and hearing the popular music of that time, rather than 2007; there is a genuine weirdness to many of these songs that has never been recreated. Case in point is the centerpiece of the album: the sixth track, “Get Naked (I Got a Plan).” The title tells you everything you need to know about the song’s subject matter, but it can’t prepare you for the unhinged, alien nature of the song. For five minutes, Spears and producer Danja trade vocals, with Danja’s vocals extended out into a sinister drawl, over layers of dark, pulsating synths, which slow down, speed up and surround both of their verses with an otherworldly amount of technical wizardry. And then there is the album’s fourth track “Break the Ice,” also produced by Danja, which in its last minute and a half drops out into a chorus of ooh, aahs, and strings punctuated by a synth that might call to mind an alien spaceship more than anything human. But all of this is also infused with a sinister and chaotic energy that can feel almost uncomfortable, as if the darkness of Spears’s life is intruding in just around the edges, a reminder of the impossible situation that Spears’ herself is in.
Today, Blackout’s impersonal escapism can feel more out of touch with contemporary pop music than its off-the-wall production. More and more, pop stars of today are asked to be “authentic,” an ill-defined quality that often entails speaking “honestly” of their personal struggles and releasing albums that double as fun dance music and personal confessions. Ariana Grande, Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato, Taylor Swift, and others have all built careers on the illusion that you “know” them and “know” their struggles, filtering their personal pain into shimmering top 40 hits. Spears was a victim of this as well, as a ravenous tabloid media turned every facet of her life into dehumanizing, invasive news stories. But Blackout wisely resisted this “tell-all” urge endemic to and expected of, pop stars. Spears wasn’t trying to defend herself, or present her “truth.” She makes it clear that she does not want to be known and turns the cameras away in the only way she could: an act that feels more brave and revelatory than the avalanche of uncomfortable confessionals that deluge us today. In this way, Blackout is actually quite profound. While many often point to long, poetic elegies from songwriters as being the kind of lyrics that are most philosophical, simplicity can work just as well. The album’s lead single and first track, “Gimme More,” does this with its title and chorus. It's composed of only two words, “gimme more,” but it serves to define not just Spears’ career but the idea of fame itself. If there’s one thing she knows about celebrity, it’s that we’ve never stopped wanting more.
Edited by Adam Light, editor of Reviews
Cover art by Shira Silver