For someone who appears so perpetually vacant, Britney Spears is covering a lot of ground right now. Femme Fatale, the title of her seventh studio album, has been trending on Twitter for nigh-on two months, and you can’t walk the streets without the dubstep hustle of ‘Hold It Against Me’ blaring out at you from some flyboy’s car stereo. Sure, she’s absolutely everywhere, but the big question is: will Femme Fatale live up to the titanic hype? Of course it won’t, silly! Nothing could live up to Britney levels of hype, but that doesn’t stop this being a damn fine record.
I can say this honestly because I spent my entire first listen of Femme Fatale with my fingers poised at my ears, waiting for the dreaded self-obsessed ballad to kick in. But – hurrah! – there’s no ‘Sometimes’, no ’Born To Make You Happy’, no ‘Everytime’ on Femme Fatale, just 45 minutes of dirty electro-pop, during which an out-of breath Britney rages a full-on assault on our dancing muscles. Here be 12 hot and heavy floor-filling tracks, without a single nod to the pressures of fame, the scorn of the paparazzi or how hard it is to find good help these days. Instead, Spears sticks to the infinitely more digestible topics of hooking up with guys and getting rotten stinking drunk (not usually in that order).
Britney doesn’t mince words on Femme Fatale (at one point she sweetly croons “you can be my fuck tonight”), so I’m not going to either. To listen to this record is to have crazed, fumbling intercourse with Britney on a Champagne-soaked dancefloor, surrounded by oblivious gyrating strangers. You’ve got no idea what you’re doing, it’s over in a flash, and ultimately, you’re left confused, damp and frustrated (Britney always finishes first).
Production on the album comes mostly from longtime collaborators Max Martin and Dr. Luke, who’ve whipped up some truly brilliant David Guetta-style stompers, many of which are graced with a sneaky second chorus. Kicking off with an almighty Eurodisco thump, the whoa-oh-ohs on ‘Till The World Ends’ are test tube formulated for stadium singsongs.
will.i.am turns up (doesn’t he always?) on ‘Big Fat Bass’, a song that manages to be as disturbing as it is sexy, in the vein of freaky noughties anthem ‘Sandwiches’ by Detroit Grand Pubahs. Still, Britney’s triumphant repetition of “I can be the treble, baby/You can be the bass” is probably the hook of her career.
Elsewhere, lyrics can be pretty laughable (“Your body looks so sick I think I caught the flu”), but there’s nothing nearly as vacuous as the truly terrible ‘If You Seek Amy’. Spears’ voice is diced and distorted more than ever before, which I don’t expect anyone to kick up a fuss about, but our brazen ringmistress still manages to echo ‘Nasty’-era Janet Jackson.
‘Trouble For Me’ is as filthy as anything you’ll hear in an underground club, and if ‘Gasoline’ doesn’t make you want to do the Sprinkler, send for help, because you might just be a member of Dáil Éireann. There are a few genuinely ambitious moments further on: the menacing ‘How I Roll’ sounds like a Guetta-fabulous ‘Old Man River’, and odder still, ‘Criminal’ is based around a medieval-sounding flute, making it the party animal’s ‘Greensleeves’.
Despite a pulsating disco beat, ‘Trip To Your Heart’ is a totally generic love song, but like much of Femme Fatale, it’s just frivolous enough to be likeable. Britney is still talking about love, but this is empty, fleeting, tequila-doused love. The sooner you accept that it’s not going to change the face of popular music, the sooner you can get back to your Peter Gabriel box-set and the rest of us can get back to the dancefloor.
So, bravo, Ms Spears-Alexander-Federline. Or, should that be “Bravo, Dr Luke and Max Martin?” Or perhaps “Bravo, highly-paid lackey who spoonfeeds Britney her 2.3 meals a day and sees that she gets to her custody hearing on time”? Whoever the mastermind behind Femme Fatale is, I applaud them. Oh and Britney, I’ll be the bass to your treble anytime.