Blackout

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Agreeing with Alexis Petridis' Britney review is surprise enough - but I'm even more amazed that the Guardian has devoted an ACTUAL LEADER COLUMN to go on about how good Blackout is!

In fact, even speaking as someone who really likes the record - the Guardian is overstating things a lot: this is really good, up-to-date, dance-pop and it'll appeal to Europeans more than Americans I guess because of that, but it's not an outrageous sideways step for pop or anything. It's no MORE fresh sounding than Madonna's Music or the first Girls Aloud album or Rachel Stevens' second one were when they came out - coherent, consistent, filler-free pop albums have been a regular feature of this decade, if anything Britney's catching onto that a bit late.*

(I don't necessarily want this to be a big Blackout thread tho cos lots of people haven't heard it yet)

*this is unfair - her last one was pretty consistently good but less coherent I think. Anyway Blackout is better.

Comments

[koganbot]

Also, though it's not in the same genre, its scratchy murk reminds me of Kelly Clarkson's My December (a mostly excellent album which got relatively savaged from the reviewers, like shouldn't Kelly know better than to challenge her listeners!). I was saying to skyecaptain over on Bedbugs that if Britney'd ended with a coda of her mellower lounge-blues outtakes (which were also quite good) this and the Kelly album'd be a nice match.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Was it Dave who said that analysis of Kelly C on My December depends on which songs the record company wanted her to ditch, and which they wanted her to keep? About half is brilliant, but the other half isn't so much challenging as just...soggy and puddingy.

[koganbot]

Well, challenging doesn't always mean good. But in general I just end up pretending the stuff I don't like doesn't exist. I think the Brit album is more consistent than the Kelly.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

My problem with a lot of the Kelly album wasn't the sound or the grit - some of the riffs she packs in are astounding, tight stuff - but the lyrics; they were occasionally great ('Never Again', 'Hole') but in places, and especially on the tracks which didn't pack so much of a musical punch, they just came off as rather standard therapy-speak. Which is fine when accompanied by a musical punch, but rather shown up when not.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Kelly can fall in for some really awful lyrics -- her "curious cat" line in "How I Feel" drives me NUTS.

[nicolars.livejournal.com]

The lyrics are what let Kelly down the most -- the self-analysis/therapy stuff can really grate.