The Singles Collection By Britney Spears

Britney, oh Britney. Aren’t you just a gift for music critics everywhere?

The fact that Spears has called her latest release The Singles Collection, and not ‘Greatest Hits Part Two’ or some other such follow on to her first Greatest Hits CD, opens her up to a world of jibes that the songs on this CD are neither great, nor hits. But since twenty-five of her twenty-nine singles have successfully charted, and all of her studio albums have gone to number one, all nay-sayers should safely be put to rest.

Holding it up to Greatest Hits: My Prerogative, Britney’s best of release from 2004, only seven out of the seventeen tracks are new to The Singles Collection. But if you’re a fan of her recent, excessively overlaid and synthesized electro-pop phase, evident on songs like “Womanizer” and “If You Seek Amy,” then this new CD will be the one for you.

The album starts out with “3,” Britney’s current number one single, and the song that has everyone talking about her at the moment. It’s standard Britney fare: sexy, sultry, and electronic.

This then shifts to her older hits, which are; “Baby One More Time,” “Crazy,” “Born To Make You Happy,” “Oops…I Did It Again,” and “Stronger.” It’s just large enough a selection to remind us of the Britney we first knew, but small enough so that the sweetly sung pop tunes don’t annoy the new, edgier fans.

From here, listeners will enter Britney’s ‘controversial’ phase – “I’m A Slave For You,” her collaboration with Madonna on “Me Against The Music,” and the self-deprecating “Piece Of Me.” But the trump card(s) on the album are the tunes off her ridiculously successful 2008 album, Circus. “Womanizer,” title track “Circus,” “If You Seek Amy,” and “Radar” celebrate a pop princess who has become very good at what she does.

In her own words, “Oh my God, that Britney’s shameless” to think that she merits a second greatest hits release after such a relatively short career, but luckily The Singles Collection holds up as solid and seductive pop listening.