Britney Spears Blackout CD

Personnel: T-Pain (vocals); Bloodshy, Avant (guitar, keyboards, bass guitar, programming); Fred Wreck (guitar, keyboards); Eric Coomes (guitar, bass guitar); Klas Åhlund (bass guitar); Mango (programming); Robyn Carlsson, Corte "The Author" Ellis, Nicole Morier, Robyn Carlsson, Windy Wagner (background vocals); Jim Beanz (vocals, background vocals); Henrik Jonback (guitar); Marcella "Ms. Lago" Araica (programming); Candice Nelson, Ezekiel Lewis, Kara DioGuardi, Pharrell Williams, Sean Garrett, Keri Hilson (background vocals).
Audio Mixers: Chad Hugo; Marcella "Ms. Lago" Araica; Niklas Flyckt; Tony Maserati.
Recording information: Bloodshy & Avant Studios, Stockholm, Sweden; Chalice Recording Studios, Los Angeles, CA; Conway Recording Studios, Los Angeles, CA; Record Plant, Los Angeles, CA; Silent Sound Studios, Atlanta, GA; Sony Music Studios, New York, NY; South Beach Studios, Miami, FL; Studio At The Palms, Las Vegas, NV; The Hit Factory, Miami, FL.
Editor: Ron Taylor .
Photographer: Ellen Von Unwerth.
Issued in late 2007, BLACKOUT is the much-touted comeback album that was designed to pull Britney Spears out from under the considerably large personal and professional shadows that had crept into her life. From Spears's bizarre head-shaving incident to her parental custody struggles to her critically reviled MTV Video Music Awards performance, most of the year was an exceedingly long train wreck for the pop superstar, and those events, to some degree, inform BLACKOUT, which stands out as a defiantly bold dance-pop offering.
Buoyed by the massive club-oriented hit "Gimme More," the record sports a slick, nearly armor-like techno veneer that extends to every track, from the pulsing above-mentioned single to the tinny "Toy Soldier" to the R&B-tinged "Why Should I Be Sad." While Spears takes on media criticism most directly on the Vocoder-laced "Piece of Me," she also offers up some giddy escapism, most notably on the floating synth-pop of "Heaven on Earth," a strong contender for BLACKOUT's finest moment. Although the album doesn't erase many of Britney's woes, it arguably serves as her best record since OOPS!... I DID IT AGAIN, and that alone should make it a delight for many fans.
Public image is vital to pop stars, but few stars have been so inextricably tied to their image as Britney Spears. Think back to "...Baby One More Time" -- it has an indelible hook but what leaps to mind is not the sound of the single, but how Britney looked in the video as she pouted and preened in a schoolgirls' uniform, an image as iconic as Madonna's exposed navel. Every one of Britney's hits had an accompanying image, as she relied on her carefully sculpted sexpot-next-door persona as much as she did on her records, but what happens when the image turns sour, as it certainly did for Britney in the years following the release of In the Zone? When that album hit the stores in 2003, Britney had yet to marry, had yet to give birth, had yet to even meet professional layabout Kevin Federline -- she had yet to trash her girl-next-door fantasy by turning into white trash. Some blamed Federline for her rapid downward spiral, but she continued to descend after splitting with K-Fed in the fall of 2006, as each month brought a new tabloid sensation from Britney, a situation that became all the more alarming when contrasted to how tightly controlled her public image used to be. The shift in her persona came into sharp relief at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards, as she sleepwalked through a disastrous lip-synch of her comeback single "Gimme More," a disaster by any measure, but when it was compared to such previous meticulously staged VMA appearances as her make-out with Madonna in 2003, it made Britney seem like a lost cause and fallen star.
All this toil and turmoil set the stage for her 2007 comeback Blackout to be a flat-out train wreck, which it decidedly is not -- but that doesn't mean it's a triumph, either. Blackout is an easy aRolling Stone (p.194) - 3.5 stars out of 5 -- "BLACKOUT is the first time in her career that she's voiced any real thoughts about her life..."
Rolling Stone (p.116) - Included in Rolling Stone's "50 Top Albums of the Year 2007".
Entertainment Weekly (p.62) - "BLACKOUT -- a collection of well-produced, thoroughly enjoyable dance songs -- may just put this once-celebrated pop star back on top." -- Grade: B+
Blender (Magazine) (p.149) - 3.5 stars out of 5 -- "[A] seamlessly entertaining collection of bright, brash electropop....Spears sounds both more knowing and more sympathetic than she ever has."