So, I saw a tweet from Gay Times earlier this week, linking to a feature on their website, ranking Britney’s 9 studio albums to date. I felt compelled to start a rank-off (I said rank) with the long-running publication, as their columnist, Daniel Megarry reckoned “Glory” was the best she’s managed in her whole 21-year recording career…
Anyway, without further ado…
9 Britney Jean (2013)
I won’t be too mean and say the album is a f*cking embarrassment, shambles, Myah Marie’s debut album proper etc. However…
There was an air of excitement around the launch of this album, particularly when Britney returned to the public eye for the first time since she’d topped the charts worldwide with the Tulisa-penned “Scream and Shout”, 9 months before her appearance in the Nevada desert one September morning in 2013. She was there, with a gaggle of Britney-alikes to announce the announcement of her Vegas residency! Also, there was news that will.i.am was the executive producer on the forthcoming album, which Britney herself proclaimed to be her most personal album to date…if I didn’t think someone had been drugging her before……
Logic should have said something was going to be wrong with that statement… a “most personal” album, executive produced by a man, who had become famous the world over for taking any trace of personality out of the big-mega-radio-smashers he produced.
There was no reason for any PR to tell Britney to tell her interviewers, that the album was going to be that meaningful. She had been the queen of bops for 14 years by that point. However, her fans would have liked to have heard her voice on more than just one song, the Sia-penned “Perfume”. If and when Britney is heard on the rest of the album, she’s been layered numerous times with effects and/or Myah Marie, the controversial “backing singer” who was given a more prominent role on Britney albums by 2013.
The backlash was obvious: upon hearing the album, it tanked in the charts, with her lowest peaking album to date in the USA (#4) and even worse in the UK (#33). Team Britney realised the mis-step as well. Other than the one saving grace on the album, the top 10 hit “Work Bitch”, no other song was performed from “Britney Jean” on the Piece of Me residency by the time the next album was released just 2 years later.
5/10
8 Circus (2008)
This album was out in a flash; a clever piece of damage control on Team Britney’s part. I’ve mentioned Team Britney a few times, implying I don’t think Britney has been capable of doing anything herself. This isn’t her fault particularly. The way she has been put out there since the ambulance incident of January 2008, has suggested she has become more of a pop puppet since then, than when she was on top of the world in 2000/01.
The album came a year after the release of “Blackout” and sounds like its weaker sibling. Danja was on hand for the album’s best deep cuts, including “Kill The Lights”. The album also had a perfect collection of singles “Womanizer”, “Circus” and “If U Seek Amy”, all accompanied by killer promo videos. The best song otherwise, was relegated to “bonus track” status, the garage-band-lite “Amnesia”. I think the reason why the song works so well is it’s one of the few songs Britney doesn’t sound electronically perfect, in fact she sounds so out of tune in parts, it’s refreshing! The rest of the album is either filler, unheard of on any Britney album since her 1999 debut (“Blur”, “Phonography”) or it’s verging on cringeworthy (“Mmm Papi”, “My Baby”, raise your hands). However, the damage was controlled successfully and a major tour went without a hitch if we ignore the Australia episode.
6.5/10
7 …Baby, One More Time
From reading articles on this album and its singles, I seem to be in the minority of people who think the Stop! Remix of “Crazy” is superior to the original mix, as featured on Britney’s debut album. It’s appearance would have been welcome on a hypothetical reissue of this collection.
Like with many pop debuts, a lot of shit was thrown at the wall to see what would stick. No surprises, it was the Max Martin songs which shone the most (the title track, “Crazy”, “I Will Be There”) and would shape the sophomore album. Her first single carries the collection well enough on its own to not be further down this chart.
Other notable songs: “Born To Make You Happy”, “From The Bottom Of My Broken Heart”.
7/10
6 Glory (2016)
A lot of fans regard this as part of the “Holy Trinity” of Britney albums, along with “In The Zone” and “Blackout”. I can only assume that is because it’s the first album in recent history where Britney sounded like a human rather than a humanoid.
This is Britney Spears, a girl/woman who made a brand for herself by being affiliated with songs that you danced hard to, shoved a straw behind your ear and pretended to have a microphone to lip-sync in (just me?…) I don’t know anyone who bought into the brand for her vocal acrobatics. Her tone is enough (this is no excuse for Myah though!). They should have just let the music do the talking.
Instead, what we were given as an apology for “Britney Jean”, was a collection of MOR songs which wouldn’t have sounded wrong on a Justin Bieber album. No surprises then, that the same writers that he used on his most recent album were drafted in to create most of “Glory”.
There were some high points, don’t get me wrong; “If I’m Dancing” (WHAT A SONG!), “Private Show” (yes, I’m the one who likes “Private Show”), “Do You Wanna Come Over”, the modern day sibling of “Toxic”.
Although Britney’s worst selling album to date (this can be somewhat attributed to the collapse of the physical album market against her aging core fan base), “Glory” served the purpose of telling people Britney is still around, to a small degree…but not enough that she needs to carry on down this route for the forthcoming 10th album. Please bring Danja, Max and Bloodshy & Avant back!
7/10
5 Britney (2001)
I was bought “Britney” for my 16th birthday, by which point the song “I’m a Slave 4 U” had been the only single from this album. I therefore didn’t hold much hope that this album would be a patch on her previous collection, “Oops….”
For all the bitching the stans do about Britney’s team, the more I type, the more I realise how much of Britney’s career has been successful because of the team who are now so derided.
This album was the one where she started to become a woman (“I’m Not a Girl”…) and was loosely the soundtrack to Britney’s only feature film to date, “Crossroads”. It was also the last album for 10 years that Max Martin and his writing team at Cheiron were involved with. Bubblegum was out and Janet Jackson mk2 was in.
For me, it took until I was 22, to get into this album. Then it all clicked. The collection has a lot of of-its-time sounds in the form of tracks like “Lonely”, “Boys”, “Slave” but also one of Martin’s best compositions “Cinderella”. Word has it the upcoming Britney musical will feature this track which is excellent news! This is also the last album where you really hear “sweet” Britney, in the form of “When I Found You”.
A great album, even if it took me 6 years to realise it.
7.5/10
4 Oops! I Did It Again… (2000)
This is one of those albums I remember where I was the first time I listened to it- the listening post in Our Price, Burton-on-Trent. It was like an eargasm, hearing the first growling note of “Stronger”, coming straight off the back of the “innocent” on its title track, without a stop for air, before it abruptly hushes….just stops, in fact. Like WTF?!
Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough pocket money that day to buy the album there and then. Sad times.
When I did finally have the album in my little Boots CD micro system, I was overjoyed. The best bits of “Baby, One More Time…” stretched across 15 songs, courtesy of Max and co. It takes 9 songs to hit a bump in the road (“Where Are You Now”)…Before then the listener is treated to all the singles, including “Lucky” and “Don’t Let Me Be The Last To Know”, plus a cover of the Stones’ “Satisfaction” and Britney speaking to her friends on the phone in somewhat unnecessarily forced segues into the next songs.
In hindsight, having Britney change tact for the 3rd album was probably the best career move. I don’t know that a 3rd collection of bubblegum gems would have worked in the long run, especially knowing how fickle us pop fans can be in our formative years.
8/10
So my Holy Trinity of Godney goes like this:
Blackout, Femme Fatale, In The Zone. But, in which order?
So, let’s start with the common favourite…
3 Blackout (2007)
I’ll be honest, the music is probably ever-so slightly better on this album than my #2. However, sentimentality has come into play with this one.
What a perfect urban/pop crossover album. Saying that, when the album was released, I connected to it about as much as Britney seems to have done with “Britney Jean”. I was much more invested in Girls Aloud and my first boyfriend.
As I mentioned in my recent post on the 8th anniversary of the leak of “Femme Fatale”, it’s only been recently I’ve appreciated just how shit a time Britney must have been having during the post-Kevin, pre-Vegas years. So, the trips to the hairdressers, the hospital and the umbrella shop all now shape the way I listen to “Blackout”. The song that always makes me the most emotive, is “Break The Ice”. This was released as a single not long after Britney looked like she was going to do something catastrophic to herself, not helped by the fact the promo video was an animé film, which ends halfway through the song. I always now think about the what ifs, get quite sad but, this feeling helps me really feel the song more as it plays.
Other highlights are “Gimme More”, “Piece Of Me”, “Radar”…actually it might be easier to mention the lowlight, “Ooh Ooh Baby”, which ironically seems to have been the inspiration for the perfect “Womanizer”.
I get why this album is adored by the gays fans so much. If it weren’t for sentiment, I’d put it at the top of my list too.
9.5/10
2 In The Zone (2003)
This was a massive surprise. After still not being enamoured by the whole not-a-girl phase, all I could go on, in a time before I had a computer to listen to any leaks, was the first single, “Me Against The Music”. The single was picked up during my lunch break when I was a trainee accountant, from Woolworths if my memory serves me correctly. The Rishi Rich remix was also perfection.
But, even-so, could one single really be enough for me to be ready for what I was about to experience?
2004 would become the year I saw Britney live for the first time, she’d become a bad bitch in the news and, I’d batter my copy of “In The Zone” through constant plays. I think the only other albums that would get a look in that year would be Scissor Sisters’ debut and Anastacia’s “sprock” album.
“Toxic” was perfect, obviously. Bloodshy & Avant were the producers of the moment (and would become Galantis years later) and Cathy Dennis was the songwriter of the time, responsible for “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head” for the real Kylie, “Don’t Stop Movin'” for S Club 7 and “Anything Is Possible” for Will Young. The combination of this songwriter with these producers also created Rachel Stevens’ debut solo smash “Sweet Dreams My LA Ex”. We’re all glad the other singers rejected “Toxic” though.
This album was so good because it, like its predecessor, “Blackout” felt a bit darker than what had come from Britney previously. The vocals on “In The Zone” were less processed, the tracks were mainly co-written by Britney for the first and (to date) the last time. It has her apology to Justin, “Everytime”, which she managed to mime on piano during the Onyx Hotel Tour. Queen of Faking It! ❤
It also helped that this was the year I went from a Britney fan to a Britney stan. The press started going to town on her but, at this time time she seemed to relish in it. I remember shortly after her quickie wedding to Jason Alexander, she was in a newspaper stating she was planning to get one up on Justin Timberlake, after he’d managed to forge a solo career with significant help from the diss track “Cry Me A River”, and beat the levels of success he’d managed the previous 12 months.
Oh and she sang about her hand as well.
9.5/10
1 Femme Fatale (2011)
I’m not going to say much about this album here as there’s plenty of detail in my post, celebrating the 8th anniversary of its leak here.
However, this is my favourite Britney album, because it’s just got the best writing and production team (personal lives aside) in Max Martin and ** ****. It had just enough will.i.am, Ina Wroldsen and Darkchild thrown in for good measure. I’m a stereotypical gay to a certain degree, therefore I love the album for its saturation in autotune. The vocal effects are part of Britney’s legacy after all.
It has “I Wanna Go”.
Enough said.
10/10. I’d give it 11 if that wasn’t stupid.
So, it’s over to you now. In which order would you rank Britney’s 9 albums? Let me know in the comments below.
DJTim:E's Pop Music Journal 