My Journey With Britney Spears Part 6: Blackout
Britney’s life seemed to be hanging in the balance throughout all of 2007. I was afraid that if things got worse she was gonna die! I couldn’t even comprehend that we were getting a new album from her in light of all this but I was excited. In the fall of 2007 I had entered my senior of college and I was living with my friends in the senior housing apartments and hanging out with friends every night of the week. I didn’t have a steady boyfriend but I didn’t care. I had dated enough at that point to realize being with a boy who was not right for me was worse than being single. It’s a lesson I feel everyone needs to learn at some point. At that time though I didn’t need a boyfriend because I finally had a close circle of friends that I had lacked in high school who made me happy in a way I had not been in a long time.
2007 was also the early days of YouTube and I remember scouring the site for leaks of Britney’s upcoming album which now had the title of Blackout. I remember hearing songs that didn’t end up on the album and earlier demo versions of songs like Heaven on Earth and Break the Ice. I was so psyched for this album I could barely contain myself. I really missed Britney and I was getting all my friends as excited as possible. Some of my friends had given up on Britney and thought of her as a lost cause but my enthusiasm for all things Britney and this new album was so infectious that I got them pumped for new Britney music. Then I found out Britney was opening the 2007 VMAs with a performance of her new song Gimme More. We didn’t have cable in the apartment and live streaming was still not a thing yet. I remember sitting in the living room area of my apartment with my friend Jen and she was going through updated news stories on her laptop trying to find out how the performance went. Eventually she found coverage of the performance and I remember looking at her asking how it went and she just looked back at me and said “Not good!”
Eventually we found video of the performance and yeah it was hard to watch. Now of course it wasn’t a disaster the way people make it out to be and she honestly looked good but that fire in her eyes that we saw in all her previous VMA performances was gone. She looked like she wanted to be anywhere but there throughout the whole performance. It was actually heartbreaking to watch because it felt like Britney was performing against her will. That may or may not have been the case but there was no doubt that Britney was not in a good place. That said, it’s what happened later that made me even more upset. When Sarah Silverman came on stage she started tearing into Britney which was no surprise because everyone back then tore into Britney. Yet, the moment Sarah Silverman said Britney’s two boys were the cutest little mistakes ever pissed me off! How dare she talk about Britney’s children that way! I never really liked Sarah Silverman to be honest, but after that comment I found it her abhorrent and classless. To this day I avoid things she’s in because that comment showed me how mean spirited and tasteless she is. Sarah Silverman is not funny. She is just a bully and I have never liked bullies growing up gay in the closet.
Despite the VMA performance, which the media called a debacle, it ended up becoming iconic anyway because everything Britney did was sensationalized and devoured by a public hungry for more. It didn’t derail her career like everyone including Sarah Silverman thought it would. The performance and it’s backlash also led to the introduction of Chris Crocker. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing I will leave up to you, but his emotionally charged video where he pleaded with everyone to leave Britney alone ended up becoming another iconic moment in Britney lure.
Despite the backlash from her VMA performance I still kept my enthusiasm up for the Blackout. The day it came out I went to Best Buy and bought it on CD. It was a great! Britney had made the album I always knew was in her. In a lot of ways I could see her taking influence from Madonna again. 2 years before Madonna had released Confessions on a Dancefloor, which is easily her best post 90s album. Confessions dominated the globe for almost 2 years. It was a non-stop dance record that reasserted her dominance over the genre. Blackout felt like Britney’s response to that album in that it was another non-stop dance record that was meant for the clubs and both albums even had songs that directly lifted I Feel Love by Donna Summer (Madonna’s was Future Lovers and Britney’s was Heaven on Earth.) Still these were just surface similarities because once you dug a little deeper the 2 albums were pretty different. Madonna’s album was brighter whereas Blackout was darker. Confessions was also more retro with just enough modern touches to bring it up to date. Blackout was much more cutting edge. In fact it’s the album that introduced me and many others to dub step (Freakshow) and Blackout has been influential and copied a millions times over since 2007.
It’s also the album where the critics finally came around to Britney like Pitchfork or Robert Christgau. I also reviewed it for the school newspaper and gave it 3.5 out 4 stars. Part of me wishes I had given it 4 stars, but then I remember that the last song on the album Why Should I Be Sad is always anti-climatic. After an album filled with 11 pop bangers we got this song that couldn’t decide if it was a bop or a ballad and kind of failed at both. It’s really my only criticism of that album. Still it’s at the end so it’s easy to cut off and forget about it which is what I do.
Unfortunately it wasn’t long after the album was released that Britney was hospitalized for exhaustion and it just seemed like things were never going to get better for her. Yet somehow, someway in the midst of all this drama, scandal and depression Britney had released the best album of her career and that’s what lives on. A lot of people from music critics and to friends and family used to say that the only reason anyone liked Britney’s music was because she was hot and that her music was the last reason people liked her. Well Blackout proved that theory wrong. Due to the dire state Britney was in she couldn’t really support Blackout on the talk show circuit and when she did like the VMA performance it didn’t go well. So Blackout had to speak for itself without Britney and at the end of the day that music was among the best of her career. While some came to love the album later than others there was a dawning realization that this was the best album she had ever done.
Me and my girls at Ithaca college!
The album opens with Gimme More, which has right off the bat one of the most iconic Britney moments ever when she says “It’s Britney Bitch!” That line was genius because it was a statement of purpose showing that Britney wasn’t messing around anymore and she was playing for keeps. It also showed her owning her own legend finally and acknowledging that everyone will want to hear it even if they don’t like her because she’s Britney dammit and the whole world is interested in her whether they want to admit it or not. The song was an absolute banger. Easily the best song of 2007 and in Britney’s top 5 honestly. The VMA performance took some luster away at the time, but it still hit #3 on the pop charts anyway because it was that good.
Still as good as the intro to Gimme More is she tops it with Break the Ice: “It’s been a while and I Know I shouldn’t have kept you waiting but I’m here now!” This was such a great meta moment where Britney announces she knows you the listener have missed her and then letting the listener know she is back to save pop music once again.
I couldn’t stop playing the album and it was my enthusiasm for it that got all my friends to love it just as much as I did. Through Blackout my college friends Jen, Alana, Amanda and Casey all fell in love again with Britney. We would play the album whenever we drove around for errands, when we were hanging out, throwing parties in our apartment, went on road trips, etc. We played it together so much that we all started having our own moments within each song. Freakshow was Jen and Alana’s favorite and every time it started Alana would mimic the dub step beat and say “womp womp womp womp” and then both her and Jen would sing “10pm to 4 I came to hit the floor.” Later in the song they would both almost have a rap duel during the bridge where Britney sings “Me and my girls like to get it on grab us a couple boys to go.”
I never sang during that section because it was not section to sing. I always sang Break the Ice and did all the heavy panting. Then during the middle talk set for Break the Ice Alana and I always did this:
Britney (Me): I Like This Part…
Alana: Oh Yeah! Why is that Britney?
Britney: (Me) It Feels kind of good…
Alana: Oh really?
Britney: (Me) Yay!
Alana: OK then!
Then on Perfect Lover I would sing in my manly voice “Uh-huh” over and over until Alana would jump in for the moment Britney sings in her sexiest come hither voice “Un-HUH!”
In Toy Soldier when Britney does this really Betty Boop type style singing in the lead up to the chorus Jen in her best Betty Bop voice would make up nonsense lyrics to sing over it “Hicup Bo ba di bo!” To this day I still don’t know the real lyrics to that portion of the song are and I don’t want to!
During the intro to Heaven in Earth when Britney lists off different body parts we’d sing along until we starting listing off body parts much racier to sing over the actual lyrics. No I will not list off our racier lyrics here 😉. Then later Alana and I would both whisper together in unison “The edge of my mind.” I also remember going to the gay bar throughout senior year with my girls and gays and requesting Blackout all night along with Feedback by Janet Jackson and Dance Like There’s No Tomorrow by Paula Abdul.
My friends and I all watched South Park and were big fans so when they announced an episode about Britney we were all definitely intrigued. That episode, which was called Britney’s New Look, is a stone cold classic in my book. It may be Trey and Matt’s most biting commentary ever and in the top 5 episodes they have ever produced in my opinion. What I loved about it was how it never makes fun of Britney Spears herself like everyone else always did. Instead it made fun of the people who always made fun of Britney and the handlers who just saw her as a cash cow. It showed how people made fun of Britney so they could feel better about themselves. How no one really cared about her as long as she kept making them money. How we as a culture build celebrities up just to tear them down for own amusement. And it showed us how we think of celebrities as commodities that we can throw away once we are done with them and never think about the actual human being we are tossing aside. It’s a brilliant if somewhat depressing episode that placed the blame for Britney’s predicament on the viewers themselves and the media who will stop at nothing to get a piece of Britney. It was also funny as hell too. In the episode TV shows would get interrupted by something called “Britney Watch!” which is all about reporting on Britney even when there is nothing to report on. Every time “Britney Watch!” comes on Trey Parker keeps making his voice more and more exaggerated until the end where he basically screams “IT”S BRITNEY WAAAAAAATCHHHH!!!!!!” Every time I hear that I laugh my ass off and so did my friends. All year we would randomly yell at each other “IT’S BRITNEY WAAAAATCH!!!!!”
The Senior dance during our last week of college!
We had a senior dance at the end of the year and just like Toxic was the sole highlight of my senior Prom, the DJ playing Break the Ice was the highlight of that dance. The difference this time was unlike my prom, where I was in the closet and had no friends besides my date, I was out and proud surrounded by a circle of friends who loved the real me and whose friendship made me a better person. Oh I also won an “honorary” award from my school paper for being the pop diva reviewer since that year I had reviewed the new albums by Britney, Janet and Madonna plus Paula Abdul’s single from 2008. It was a cute gesture.
I think at the end of the day that’s what I love most about Blackout. It may have come out during Britney’s darkest days, but the music soundtracked one of the best years of my life. It brings me back to those times I had with my friends who I am still close with but only see rarely in person because we now live all over the country. Blackout reminds me of when I saw my friends every day, when I had independence from my parents, but still didn’t have a lot of adult responsibilities yet, where I could stay up to 3 in the morning with my friends drinking Smirnoff Ice, playing Sonic 2, talking about life and playing Blackout in the background. Everything I had day dreamed about when I was in the closet had finally come true. I was out and living my truth, I had done well in college and I now had a circle of friends that I had always wanted.
I really let my hair grow out too long at the end of senior year! I honestly didn’t get a hair cut for the first half of 2008!
Jen, Alana and I made a pact that if Britney ever toured again we would all get together to see her live which is exactly what happened. But before I get to that we have another album to talk about which soundtracked a very different time in my life. A time where after I graduated from college I was back home again with no friends to hang out with and I didn’t know what I was doing with my life so I became obsessed with collecting Batman comics! Plus Britney gets a song on the radio that says Fuck Me! All that and more next time.
