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Celeb News: Britney Jean: 50 @ Metacritic
Member Since: 4/1/2011
Posts: 6,382
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How does our culture still consider the opinions of 40+ year old misogynists to be worth anything, especially when reviewing pop music? Positive reviews are nice, but both they and negative reviews are completely pointless. They don't review music anymore, they just comment on an artist's personal life and history while vaguely describing the content of the song.
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Member Since: 10/14/2011
Posts: 15,451
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Quote:
Originally posted by DG1
I don't think that MSN review will count, it has to be from MSN (Expert Witness) - http://social.entertainment.msn.com/...ness-blog.aspx
Apparently, that wasn't LA Times review of the album. This is their review (1.5/4):
LA Times: Britney Spears' 'autobiographical' album on auto-pilot
Album review: Shimmering promise of 'Britney Jean' falls flat amid cliche lyrics, digital manipulation.
Like Wile E. Coyote realizing too late that he's walked off a cliff and is standing on thin air, "Britney Jean," the new studio album from Britney Spears, is marked with so many sleights of hand, dubious lyrics and bombastic but boringly simple melodies that the too-rare levitation of its better moments seems an animation trick.
Item one: "It Should Be Easy," a song that practically wallows in its own failure. Featuring a cameo by the album's executive producer, will.i.am, the track casts doubt on his utility, as evidenced by these lazy lines: "Love, it should be easy / It shouldn't be complicated / It should be easy." Deep insight, indeed, augmented with the rocky syllabic mess in the chorus' kicker: "I don't know how or where else to say it." Here's an idea: Rather than surrender and admit you don't know how to say it, follow the advice in "Work Bitch" and "work hard, like it's your profession."
Such potholes dot "Britney Jean," which the 32-year-old Spears has described as her most personal and open album yet. The singer co-wrote many of the songs, which traces the ups and downs of a life spent in and out of love.
But if this is Britney in revelation mode, there's very little beneath the album's many cliches to suggest insight, let alone the unfiltered honesty of autobiography. Much of "Britney Jean" devolves into an abyss of electro-neutral bangers produced by the reigning kings of danceable obviousness, Will.i.am and David Guetta.
"Passenger" features Spears' voice so digitally overworked that she doesn't sound like herself, her recognizable tone infused with some weird nasality that unintentionally suggests an android Betty Boop. Elsewhere, in "Perfume," her perfectly manipulated pitch sings, "I'm going to mark my territory," an unfortunate choice of words given the metaphor's less flattering origins in the animal world.
"Body Ache" lazily pairs sex and sweaty dancing with fifth-grader rhymes: "I know you feel my fire/Draw you into my flame/Tonight we take it higher/What I got ain't no game." "Til It's Gone" is so unspecific as to be laughable. "I'm blind from the tears that fall like rain," she sings, unconcerned or unaware that this leaden simile contradicts the notion that real emotional energy was expelled in writing words so seemingly "personal."
It all adds up to a drag, considering the shimmering promise of the first track, "Alien." Filled with cool UFO sounds and vast-as-the-cosmos echo, the song introduces our heroine by acknowledging self-obsession in her past through a voice so coated in electronic effects that it's rendered nearly pixilated.
Produced by the effervescent electronic stylist William Orbit, best known for his work with Madonna (most notably on "Ray of Light"), that first song bumps with catchy rhythm. The only track on the album to feature Orbit's production, it introduces a confident Spears doing what she does best: inhabiting a seductive, if shallow, space within perfectly imagined, seamlessly constructed electronic pop songs.
Unfortunately, "Alien" is the outlier on "Britney Jean." The bedroom-personal "Tik Tik Boom," an otherwise killer instrumental track that features rapper T.I., frantic snares and a crawling dubby rhythm, is mired in silly lyrics about dynamite and exploding sex. That leaves us with a lot of bloat, programmed with half-hearted tropes of the dance floor, pumped out as a sonic commodity.
"You'll never know what you've got 'til it's gone," she repeats on "'Til It's Gone," which finds the singer seemingly running on fumes lyrically with few interesting ideas to communicate. Whatever unique skills Spears once had — what were they again, anyway? — "Britney Jean" suggests she better prepare herself for the reality that she's losing them fast.
Britney Spears
"Britney Jean"
(RCA Records)
One and a half stars out of four
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment...#ixzz2mQXYwQkG |
Uh oh.
38 from the LA Times and 50 from the AV Club. What's the metascore with these in the equation? Below 50?
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Member Since: 4/3/2012
Posts: 16,501
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53 is quite high for this album. 
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Member Since: 10/29/2010
Posts: 29,249
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SPIN ALBUM REVIEW: Britney Spears Goes Blanker Than Usual on the Nightmarish 'Britney Jean'
Early on, I discovered that an inordinate number of fantastic '90s singles by Army of Lovers, E-Type, Ace of Base, Robyn, Backstreet Boys, and 'N Sync all involved this Swedish guy, Max Martin. So when his greatest hit of them all — Britney Spears' "…Baby One More Time" — arrived in 1998, I was more than ready. Primed by the Catholic schoolgirl/minx character that Spears flaunted in the video, I expected the soon-to-be-megastar who’d just turned 17 to explode off the stage when she opened up for 'N Sync right before the release of her first album.
Instead, a lost little waif in a baggy orange jumpsuit resembling an inmate's uniform dutifully stumbled through the motions with a face that flashed between utter blankness and barely repressed trauma, foreshadowing her post-fame 2007-2008 meltdown. Since then, Spears typically has reverted to the blankness that allows fans and haters alike to project anything they wish onto her. She's dance-pop's tabula rasa.
Whereas most entertainers take on greater stylistic diversity and more challenging material as they mature, Spears has constricted. She's been singing fewer notes and undergoing more studio processing with every release, to the point that 2011's Femme Fatale was essentially 12 variations on one Europop-'til-you-drop Dr. Luke jam. It's the sole album since her first that's completely devoid of Spears songwriting credits, and it's arguably her most consistently pleasurable, thanks to its nonstop hooks and sci-fi sound effects. It's Gravity without the corny backstory.
And now, Britney Jean moves away from that formula and wipes out. Inspired by Spears' broken engagement with her former agent, the star's eighth album trades Martin protégé Dr. Luke for will.i.am, with Spears herself earning writing credits on nine of its ten cuts. She's calling it her most personal album, which is a strange thing to attempt with the guy behind “Boom Boom Pow,” and aside from lead single "Work Bitch," which recreates the vogueing vibe of gay/trans bitch tracks like Go Bitch Go's "(Work This) *****," it simply pillages the late-'90s sounds popular when she first skyrocketed — the same stuff that will.i.am's been reviving since his Black Eyed Peas abandoned backpack hip-hop.
This means that the balladry Femme Fatale suppressed comes roaring back on a disc that most closely recalls a wan version of Madonna's William Orbit-helmed Ray of Light. Appropriately, we kick off with "Alien," an Orbit production that, like a lot of this album, begins promisingly, as loopy-Britney yodels mingle with chillwave synths. But her singsong cry can't support the foggy mood's weight, and where she should be belting out a killer chorus, she merely chants, "Not alone," like a needle stuck in a groove. Spears, much like Ray-era Madonna, is mourning how fame alienated her, but unlike her evident role model, she fails to supply any evidence that she's learned from her estrangement.
Time and time again, Britney has proven that she’s at her most present when she plays hard and dirty: the unapologetic sleaze of "I'm a Slave 4 U," the spaghetti-Western weirdness of "Toxic," the resentment of "Piece of Me." But when she stops tugging at the constraints of teen-pop's safety net, she simply falls into it. How else can we explain why in "Perfume" she agreed to the ridiculous lyric, "I gotta mark my territory," particularly when it so badly clashes with the ballad’s soul-searching orchestrations? "Don't Cry" features her most full-bodied delivery, but the marginal tune doesn't deliver on the Morricone-esque intro's promise. "Passenger," a Diplo-produced outtake from Katy Perry's Prism, features Perry's straightforward vocal style (and writing credit) while delivering the album's only meaty melody, but its lyrics about living without a map aren't believable coming from Brit's lips. Unlike Madonna or Janet Jackson (or KP), Spears never seems in control. She wears clothes well, hooks up with the right choreographers, and boasts a singles discography to rival Pink's and Gaga's. But through it all, she remains a passenger.
That's most apparent when will.i.am takes the wheel. Dr. Luke may be single-minded, but at least his sonic palate for Femme Fatale was substantial and fresh. Whereas will.i.am replaces melody with repetition and familiarity: Nearly every uptempo Jean cut could segue into Eiffel 65's "Blue (Da Ba Dee)," but unlike his previous monster productions, there's nothing memorable here. Reheated Peas leftovers like "Body Ache" will never command your brain, whether you like them or not, the way that "I Gotta Feeling" did.
Only one dance jam besides "Work Bitch" makes an impression, and it's not a good one. Equating female pleasure with an exploding bomb, "Tick Tick Boom" depicts Brit's private parts as an errant pet that needs obedience training. "Can you tame these goodies?" she inquires. Not to be outdone, guest-rapper T.I. responds:
While you're lying on your bed with your feet up
Right there in my wife-beater
She like the way I eat her, beat her, beat her
Treat her like an animal, somebody call PETA
Ponder everyone in the room who lacked the foresight to nix that: will.i.am, his co-producer Anthony Preston, Britney, RCA. That failure better exemplifies the absence at the heart of Spears' career than even the prickly Blackout did at the peak of her personal troubles. Britney Jean may chart respectably because it leads the most musically uneventful December in years, but it will soon fade like "Perfume," because there's zilch in the way of humanity here.
In fact, the record probably will be completely eclipsed by the year's one masterful Brit moment: the "Everytime" sequence in Spring Breakers, wherein Harmony Korine outfits his female leads with rifles and pink ski masks to gather around James Franco as he croaks out a self-accompanied rendition of Spears' last hit ballad. Her original then accompanies a slo-mo montage of Franco and the girls mugging and bashing anyone unlucky enough to have stumbled into their blunt-fueled path. As casually violent as the song is melodramatically haunted, that sequence emphasized how malleable Spears can be, and how easily the American teenage dream she's never stopped embodying can morph into a nightmare.
RATING: 3/10 ("WORST NEW MUSIC")
http://www.spin.com/reviews/britney-...rst-new-music/
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Member Since: 8/29/2011
Posts: 9,504
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Member Since: 10/14/2011
Posts: 15,451
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83
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Yeah, I just did the maths w/ Spin Magazine included.
The average is.... 49.8.
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Member Since: 8/18/2013
Posts: 12,457
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Quote:
Originally posted by getback
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ATRL Contributor
Member Since: 8/8/2006
Posts: 42,086
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Member Since: 12/27/2011
Posts: 20,704
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If this album gets a red score..
It's not even that bad.
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Member Since: 5/18/2012
Posts: 20,576
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Damn, if this does worse than Britney
Low album sales, and low metacritic score. What else can go wrong?
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Banned
Member Since: 11/24/2009
Posts: 61,404
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DG1 
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ATRL Contributor
Member Since: 11/5/2011
Posts: 100,491
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Wow.
Coming for One of the Boys' wig
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Banned
Member Since: 8/18/2013
Posts: 564
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Who cares about metascore when Oops and Femme fatale are her highest metascore
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Member Since: 8/28/2012
Posts: 34,863
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Quote:
Originally posted by getback
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Impressive 
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Member Since: 12/29/2006
Posts: 12,001
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Quote:
Originally posted by jinzo
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Yeah, I just did the maths w/ Spin Magazine included.
The average is.... 49.8.
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Member Since: 4/9/2012
Posts: 4,149
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Quote:
Originally posted by CoolestPerson12
Damn, if this does worse than Britney
Low album sales, and low metacritic score. What else can go wrong? |
the vegas show 
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Member Since: 3/14/2013
Posts: 19,449
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Member Since: 4/21/2011
Posts: 19,331
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49?
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Member Since: 12/27/2011
Posts: 20,704
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Britney's real Metacritic injustice is Backout having a 61.
Britney Jean's score is at least somewhat fitting.
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Member Since: 10/29/2011
Posts: 2,087
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This is just so wrong its a solid album
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