My Journey With Britney Spears Part 8: Femme Fatale
In a lot of ways Circus and the Circus tour bookended a specific part of my life. Shortly thereafter I started my own online radio station through Live365 called Douystyle’s Alternative which was all alternative rock from 1989-1999. I started meeting up with the local gay community in Rhode Island and going to P Flag meetings and I signed up for a dating profile on OKCupid. My friend Jen helped me set up my whole profile in one night. I ended up getting hits from a few guys quickly but the one person I hit up was named Cory. He ended up getting back to me quickly and within 48 hours of setting up my OKCupid Profile he had arranged our first date. It quickly became apparent to me that Cory was not like other guys I had dated. I could tell he was someone who was not only open and honest but honestly cared about me as a person in a way no guy I had ever dated did before had. Cory also had a great circle of friends with whom we hung out with all the time and I am still good friends with to this day just like my college friends. All of a sudden I had a group of friends to socialize and hang out with again and it was wonderful.
My future husband and I. This was taken during our first month of dating.
Cory was the first boyfriend to last more than a month and I quickly grew to care about him like he cared about me. He was different from me in a lot of ways too which I think was a good thing as I feel we complimented each other in different ways. Musically though we were very different. Him and I barely agreed on anything at first. Over time that has changed because I have inundated him with so much music I wore him down :P. That said one act we could agree on from the very start was Britney Spears. He loved her as much as I did. He said when Womanzier came out he was so obsessed with the song that he just listened to it on repeat for hours on end. He also loved Blackout too. Along with Muse, Britney was the act we could agree on all the time.
When we first started dating it was around the time Britney dropped 3 and I remember Cory really liked it but I shockingly didn’t! I think my main hurdle was the whole “Peter, Paul and Mary” lyric which felt awkward and very unsexy. I’m sorry old folkies from the 60s (as talented as they may be because I do like 60s folk music) are not what I would relate to a sexy threesome. I’ve come to appreciate it more now but it’s still not one of my favorites by her.
Now let’s flash forward a bit. After a year of dating I moved to D.C. to try and break into radio and it didn’t work out. I had a job that stressed me out and I started having heath problems too. I was living with my brother at the time who was going to school at the University of Maryland. It was a good bonding experience for us as brothers but it was a tough year. Cory and I were also doing long distance and as anyone knows who has been in a long distance relationship it’s not easy. So this is where I was when Femme Fatale dropped.
Like all of her previous releases I was pretty excited for new Britney. I watched the video for Hold it Against Me when it dropped and I liked it though Britney again looked like she didn’t want to be there and now I know why. That video came out shortly after Britney learned she was not getting out of the conservatorship and looking back I can now see where that affected her. That said she looked happier and more engaged in the video for Till the World Ends. While I liked Hold it Against Me, I loved Till the World Ends even more. Like Toxic it was a song that straight guys I knew who were not huge fans of Britney really liked as well. Nonetheless how many times does Britney have to keep dropping amazing pop songs before people will admit she really does have great music?
As had become habit by now I went to Best Buy and bought Femme Fatal the day it came out after I got out of work. I remember listening to it and it not connecting with me like her previous albums had. It wasn’t bad but I was not obsessing over it. I think part of that to was my current situation. I was stressed out due to my job and health and I was listening to much angrier music around that time like Marilyn Manson. Also my brother is no fan of Britney (He pretty much doesn’t do pop music in general) and sometimes when I am around people I conform to their music taste since I listen to so much different music anyway. As a result I don’t think I gave the album the credit it deserved at the time especially since I didn’t have all these great memories attached to it like previous albums. Still over the months as she dropped more singles I began to like it more and more.
I Wanna Go sounded weird, gimmicke and overly produced when I first heard it but once it was a single I actually appreciated the genius of it. It’s a really cleverly produced pop song that uses Britney’s vocals as just another production tool so that her voice and the music blend into one. It’s one of her best and most experimental singles ever and it took me a few months to come to that conclusion. The video was also hilarious and my favorite sight gag was the movie theater marquee that read “Crossroads 2: Cross Harder!” That made me laugh out loud when I first saw the video and shows Britney does have a sense of humor about herself that she doesn’t get enough credit for.
Gasoline also joined the ranks of Breathe On Me, Kill the Lights and Anticipating as one of the best Britney songs to never be released as a single. I strongly believe it should have been released instead of Criminal. The amount of hooks this song has is unreal. It just keeps piling hooks upon hooks upon hooks! The song is catchy as hell while also not doing what you expect and keeping you on your toes. In that way it kind of reminds me of Bad Romance by Lady Gaga.
In a lot of ways Femme Fatal feels like a spiritual successor to Blackout more than Circus while also being Influenced by Lady Gaga. What I mean by that is it’s an album with cutting edge production that while catchy does a lot of unexpected things along the way which makes it not sound like everything else. I think I wasn’t quit appreciating that at first but the longer I have lived with the album the more I’m convinced it’s one of her best. Trip to Your Heart, Inside Out, How I Roll, Seal with a Kiss, and Trouble for Me represent some of the best and most adventurous pop music of that time. It just took me a few years to catch up their genius. In a lot of ways Gaga had upped Britney’s game here but I think Femme Fatal is even more adventurous than Born This Way from the same year (Which I still love btw).
Like Blackout, Femme Fatal felt like the producers and songwriters were also given free reign to do whatever they wanted to the songs. So they took risks and chances while still realizing this was music for a mass audience. The music still had to have pop appeal but it wasn’t going to be cookie cutter either. Britney is the kind of artist who I can see letting these producers have a field day in the studio because she is all about serving the song and not having the song serve her unlike a lot of other pop stars. This is why Britney has so many smash hits to her name. The songs always come first with Britney where melody and hooks are key but they also have a thrill of the new which is what has kept her on top this long. Longer than most of her peers when it comes down to it. Sure other pop stars might have stronger vocals or write more of their own music, but Britney has a catalogued stacked with great pop music that has influenced countless pop stars and no one can take that away from her.
A lot of people think Femme Fatal sounds dated now with all the EDM influence but like her 2001 album Britney I have grown to appreciate it more and more over the years. I don’t have as many memories attached to this album like I do with the previous ones which is why it doesn’t give me that warm nostalgic feeling but it doesn’t need to in order for me to appreciate it. In retrospect Femme Fatal is my favorite pop album of 2011 but probably only Britney’s 5th best album which shows how strong her output really is.
Femme Fatal was also another blockbuster smash, going # 1 and adding more singles to Britney’s ever impressive list of greatest hits. She won the Michael Jackson video vanguard award at the VMAs later that year which cemented her status as the premiere pop star of her time.
Britney also rode out the wave of success from Femme Fatal into a # 1 hit with Will.I.Am on Scream and Shout. Britney really just sing talks a little on the song and then the song samples the opening to Gimme More with “It’s Britney Bitch” and that was enough for it to be a another worldwide smash. Britney was an icon now with few peers from her generation. Britney’s presence on a song like Scream & Shout was enough to send it all the way up to # 1 based solely on her star power and legendary status. Her handlers were about to cash in on her legendary status in a big way soon.
