[ This is a review on Britney Spears’ latest album In the Zone and not on the previous one. I wrote it here as the category for this album is faulty and won’t accept the review. ]
Almost 6 years from today, a blond teenage girl in pigtails and a Catholic school uniform was taking the world by storm with the innocently mind-blowing words of “… hit me baby one more time!”; and somewhere across the globe, lying in a little bedroom with a walkman glued to her ears, a starry-eyed 10-year-old was trying to imagine the face of the fairy she saw in her dreams. It looked exactly like that blond schoolgirl.
6 years down the lane, that once-starry-eyed kid has suddenly got this golden opportunity to share her views with a lot of worthy people about the girl she once dreamed of. And guess what she has to say?
NO guys, I’m not yet the serious Britney hater. Were you disappointed? But seriously, I don’t see what’s so offensive in Britney Spears that she deserves more negative criticism than the definitely-more-obscene Christina Aguilera? Admitted that Britney Spears is one of those lightweight, cheeky, overconfident-yet-overconfused pretty girls (a perfect example of beauty-without-brains) whose lives revolve around boys, sex, looking good and gossip – but then, aren’t there hundreds of them all around us (and more often than not, they get to be called the cool chicks!!!)? And these girls are certainly irritating (sorry to the boys who love to ogle them or flash them as the much-needed accessory called girlfriend), but not malicious, are they? They’re just having their own outlook towards life, just like we all do.
And as for such a lightweight girl selling so many records, hey that’s her credit not her fault! Criticizing on that part looks so much like the proverbial ‘grapes are sour’ …
These were my views on Britney Spears, well….. till yesterday. I didn’t hate her, but I didn’t love her either. I thought of her (and the girls like her) as creatures belonging to a different world, who have nothing to do with me, good or bad, and nothing common either. As for the little girl who adored Britney, she had well realized long ago (actually on the day she heard her third CD, eponymously named Britney) that her icon was growing up at a rate much faster than her to catch up – that was the end of that adoration. Yesterday, once again, I had to change my opinion on Britney … as I listened to her fourth and latest CD, In The Zone.
The album contains 12 songs, along with one remix. The UK version of the album contains 3 bonus tracks (one of the reasons I thank god I wasn’t living in UK, another being the severe winter of course!). The albums of Britney get from vain to vainer and shallow to shallower with each new helping, so no wonder this one is worse than her last album Britney. In fact this is Britney at her worst, and I’m ready to say this at my own risk. Britney’s lyrics have always been little more than mindless ramblings about boys, sex, looking good and of course, confusion, but this time around it is ”….flirting with the verge of obscene”, as the singer herself puts in one of the songs. Britney’s voice sounds as if she’s been singing through a severe cold, and even the digital modification (which can be detected at most parts) fail to save her this time round. Britney has experimented with a couple of new sounds in this album but cannot say if they’ve worked any magic. According to me, they only bring out her now-almost-ridiculous vocals. To call those sounds anything remotely Oriental you need to be as big an expert on Orient as our revered Ms Spears is – in a recent Newsweek interview she has been quoted as “been into a lot of Indian spiritual religions”; on being asked next if Hinduism is one of them, here comes her reply, “What’s that? Is it like Kabbalah?” Now that’s what you call being in the zone!
The first single of the album Me Against The Music has already been enjoying airplay till death in the various music channels for over a month. A duet with Madonna, it is certainly the best song on the CD. Most of the other songs, with toxically outrageous names like Toxic, Outrageous, The Hook Up, Shadow etc. aren’t even worth mention (actually I wanted to give some specimen of the lyrics out here just to show how disgusting they are, but that’ll mark my review with a Parental Advisory warning, just like the album is) while the nasal seduction cry of “Boy, you look so sexy!” of I Got That Boom Boom (featuring the Ying Yang Twins, whoever they are) makes me feel seriously nauseatic. The twelfth track Everytime, which sounds like a ballad, is a tad better than the rest, while still boasting of those worthless https://lyrics. I think Everytime and Touch Of My Hand are already being aired in the US.
The once-innocent-Catholic-schoolgirl who strained her vocal chords over being Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman in her last album has tried all means to convey a grown-up image through this album, but it falls apart pathetically. In her attempt to create a couldn’t-be-further-from-real picture of life where growing up means independence to let her sex drive run wild, she has alienated the children (who made up most of her former huge fan base and created multi-platinums out of her nonsense albums – admitted that I was once one of them too!) and failed to win over the adults as well. No singular category of fans can identify with the Britney of In The Zone as she sings as if she’s out on a mindless careless sex romp, except maybe the ones who’ll look in for some cheap titillation. In short, in spite of her hype I don’t think Britney can make a hit out of this album.
It’s simply not worth it.