Femme Fatale by Britney Spears

No matter how badly the entertainment press wants the quality of Britney Spears' music to parallel that of her publicity and mental health, she continually lets them down: around the same time of a widely publicized meltdown which landed her in a conservatorship under her father and lawyer, she released the smash hit "Womanizer": only her second number one single after "…Baby One More Time"; the following year, even more misfortune befell her in the form of a former manager, along with an ex-boyfriend and the same lawyer conspiring to muscle her father out of that conservatorship and gain complete control of her affairs—but a few months later she would release her third number one, coincidentally titled "3." Furthermore, none of her perhaps more talented late '90s contemporaries have maintained as obtrusive a chart presence in the past decade as she, and while Spears herself cannot take full credit for her enduring success–having from the outset of her career worked closely with arguably the greatest pop songwriter of the past 20 years in Max Martin—it could be argued that, because reedy-voiced pop stars are essentially "symbols," the test of a great one is whether it continues to symbolize anything, be it good or bad. Unfortunately, her latest album, Femme Fatale represents a significant drop in the quality of her recorded output, even if it will succeed on the strength of her revivified image and reputation.

The album opens with another sturdy, dependable pop construction from "3" Martin, Dr. Luke and Billboard: "Till the World Ends," a song firmly rooted in a trendy-ten-years-ago Americanized Europop aesthetic, with lyrics that make me wish I didn't speak English, and an instantly memorable–forgive the oxymoron–vocal hook. "Hold It Against Me" picks up where the last track left off: a weak verse melody, a strong chorus that sounds a little bit like "Viva la Vida" and some fairly lazy house-inflected production. "Inside Out" finds Martin, Luke and Billboard doffing their caps to chiptune and Timbaland's FutureSex/LoveSounds/Loose aesthetic with mixed results; "I Wanna Go" is punctuated by what could be considered, by the standard of a mainstream dance-pop record, "interesting" rhythm patterns played out with quaintly retro drum samples; though it is disappointing that its chorus resembles that of "Till the World Ends"—surely by now a standard—both melodically and for its use of clipped Spears vocal samples. "How I Roll" is one of the most bizarre songs to ever appear on a Britney Spears album, featuring liberal use of delay and pitch processing effects; sans the vocals it might have fit in on a Carl Craig album and is definitely one of the strongest tracks of the lot.

It's surprising that "(Drop Dead) Beautiful" has five writers because not only is it utterly boring but reuses the "Till the World Ends" chorus for the second time on the album's first half alone. This is another of the many drawbacks of "too many cooks": instead of spoiling the broth, four or five of them team up in separate kitchens and end up producing the same dishes. "Seal It With a Kiss" wins points for its dense, tactile synth textures and not-half-bad melody, though the overall effect is slight; will.i.am's contribution, "Big Fat Bass," sounds like an E.N.D. or Beginning outtake but, since those were both stupid great albums, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. "Trouble for Me" and "Gasoline" have also been penned by prominent megahitmakers Fraser T. Smith and Claude Kelley respectively: unfortunately, both are unspeakable garbage. "Trip to Your Heart" is a decent formulaic pop song, but it's a mercilessly trebly and abrasive one. The flute and acoustic guitar-driven closing number, "Criminal," is too absurdly ridiculous to be taken seriously, and since it wants to be taken seriously it has no value.