In The Zone

Apparently the reason Madonna appears on ‘Me Against The Music’ is because she loved it so much she “just had to be on it”. It seems that senility has finally caught up on Madge, then. No matter which divide of the Poor Ole Britters debate you are on, this album is a highly anticipated offering, and no matter which way the wind blows, is on a fast track to the firing line.
As it goes, there was a certain creative gulf between the Dixieland apple-pie ‘Hit Me Baby One More Time’ and the Mississippi-mud-pie ‘I’m A Slave 4 U’. Granted, ‘Slave’ was a stroke of Prince-inspired genius, and perhaps as an audience we were highly expectant that Britney would be capable of a similar creative leap, or at least able to keep up with her own momentum. Sadly, this is not the case, and not even the involvement of Moby can save the project from sliding into mediocrity.
For some unfathomable reason, the whole thing smacks of inauthenticity. Given the explicit lyrics touching on masturbation (oof) and shagging, and Britney’s sleepyhead pillow talk/panting, the result is a strangely sexless succession of forgettable, faux-urban vignettes. Given the plethora of pop masters involved (Cathy Dennis, Guy Sigsworth and, um, R. Kelly), it’s baffling how the team couldn’t approximate something at least slightly full-blooded or anthemic.
Poor Britney, not a girl, not yet a woman…and it would seem, not yet a genius by any stretch of the imagination.