Britney Spears' new album 'Britney Jean' bashed by critics
This is just brutal. While the album is objectively terrible, Britney Spears' latest album Britney Jean is getting ravenously torn apart by critics. It's as if... I was right all along.
I've compiled some highlights below:
SPIN (who gave it their "Worst New Music" tag)
"...exemplifies the absence at the heart of Spears' career than even the prickly Blackout did at the peak of her personal troubles.Britney Jean may chart respectably because it leads the most musically uneventful December in years, but it will soon fade like "Perfume," because there's zilch in the way of humanity here."
"It was touted as Britney Spears' most personal album yet, but if that's the case, maybe the world was better off not knowing Britney very well at all. The pop siren's eighth studio album, Britney Jean (out today, December 3 on RCA Records), is her least substantial yet - another disappointment in a year where most of the major pop divas underwhelmed with much-anticipated LPs. At turns flimsy and undercooked, elsewhere smothered in heavy-handed production gimmicks, it's - in my estimation, at least - the first time in fifteen years that Spears has ever released something truly lackluster. Accordingly, listening to it is kind of a bummer. "
"We had been hoping for a moody Britney, a maturing Britney, a Ray of Light Britney, and instead we got served an album that feels like it was dashed off thoughtlessly in time for the holidays so everyone could go home early and cash their checks. Since this might be Brit's last album on contract, it's possible we won't get a new album from Ms. Spears for a while. She's barely promoted Britney Jean, and her Vegas residency seems like someone else's idea she got forced into. If Britney wants to retire, we would like her to retire at the top of her game. We'd like a whole Britney album organized by Orbit, Diplo, or Danja (whose absence is really glaring on Britney Jean). Instead we got an array of half-baked sides with only a few slices of juicy ham, leaving you starved for more. It's not Britney's fault you showed up so hungry after Artpop, Prism, and Bangerz failed to leave you full. So if you still need more to eat after Britney Jean fails to satisfy? You better cook, bitch."
"Her choruses to "Body Ache" and "Work Bitch," meanwhile, sound like holding-pattern preludes to the club riffs that follow, rather than vice versa, leaving the impression that she's merely guesting on her own material. And when Spears brings the tempo down on "Perfume," she sounds like Gwen Stefani singing Justin Timberlake's "Mirrors." Nowhere does "Britney Jean" sound like Britney Spears."
"When Britney Spears sings, she practically coos. Airy in texture and pliant in tone, her voice is the classic sound of a coquette - perfect for a pop singer of about 17 beginning a run as the Lolita of her generation.
But as she struggles to use that voice and squeeze herself back into a teen persona on her new CD, the now-32-year-old woman just ends up sounding like she's living her own private "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" hell."
What do you think? Is the critical consensus wrong about Britney Jean?
Sound off in the comments.