Review of Britney Spears' "BLACKOUT"

The best review of Britney Spears' "BLACKOUT" I've read yet:

"Most of the time, however, Britney is a ghost in her own pop machine, a distant voice chopped into the mix, at the mercy of a fate of her own design. Which seems dangerously close to her real life persona circa whenever the next tabloid hits the stands. When she sings about losing control, which she's done her whole career, one can't think this is what she had in mind. " [Austin American-Statesman]

Here's my review of Britney Spears' "BLACKOUT," based on the one song that I've heard:

Generally speaking, Britney Spears needs to spend less time taking diet pills and more time reading to her kids. Doing the maze on the back of the 'Froot Loops' box while your kid claws at the cereal because you forgot to feed him yesterday does not count as "quality time."

Are you allowed to be upset about your performance at the VMAs? No, because when you don't write your own songs, don't choreograph your own dance moves, don't dance those choreographed dance moves well, and lip-synch out of sync with your tracks, P. Diddy and the rest of your 'peers' aren't going to kiss your ass. I mean, in her hay-day, BS could take a crap in tin-foil, put two fish hooks in it, and sell it to the Queen of England as earrings! But now, what can you give us, a remix of "Popozao?" Well, that actually might be kind of banana muffins.

The point is: what have you done for us lately, person who is not a girl, but not yet a woman? I have a mousepad with your face on it for God's sake! You used to mean something, a shining star in a sea of terrible rap/rock (remember how Korn and Limp Bizkit were really popular when Britney Spears first came out?). We enjoyed the attention to production value, that wholesome, non-threatening tinge of hip-hop, and the sneaky way your publicist made us care whether or not you were still a virgin.

Maybe that's the problem. Maybe the mystery hit extremes, bounced the other way, and completely defeated itself? The production values now are completely over-the-top, to the point where we have to wonder if Britney was even in the studio when 99.6% of the tracks were created. And then there was K-Fed. A lot of people blame K-Fed, but if anything, he gave Britney someone to bounce crazy off of for a while, which helped postpone the her eventual meltdown. Perhaps this can all be traced back to her sleeping with Fred Durst, lead "singer" of Limp Bizkit. When she ostensibly joined forces with Fred Durst and become a hybrid of mediocrity and self-loathing.

And that's the problem with "BLACKOUT." You like it, because it's well produced. And you like it because you can dance to it. And you like it because the fact that this hot mess came out with something more than mildly suggestive drunken slurs is kind of astounding. But ultimately, it's kind of mediocre. However, it's reassuring to consider that If she can create an album in the midst of all her whack-job-ness than maybe we can also do noteworthy things. I'll tell you what, if I wanted to be a singer/dancer, I'd quit my job right now, sleep with a bunch of producers, and get an album out there based solely on the confidence provided to me by Britney's inability to: sing, dance, perform consistently, and not be a trainwreck.

That said, you have to admit... it's kind of catchy.