taken from
http://www.ciao.co.uk/In_The_Zone_S..._Review_5383112


Why, why, why is Britney Spears still releasing records? Why does she choose to plague the music industry with her increasingly worthless output? Gone is the tolerable, innocent schoolyard-virgin Britney of ‘Hit Me Baby One More Time’, also disappeared in the writhing, faux-seductive, ‘let’s-get-credible’ of ‘Slave 4 U’. No, this is Britney of 2003/2004, the newest, most updated model, the new creation of an increasingly stale factory production line. This time Britney has gone for maximum credibility, bringing the increasingly embarrassing and hopeless Madonna on board and (gosh!) writing songs herself in the hope that she can finally be taken seriously as a recording artist. Somebody clearly forgot to tell poor old Britney that in order to be taken seriously she needs to have at least a modicum of talent. Ambition alone is simply not good enough, especially when that ambition takes you into all sorts of uncharted territories where a squeaky, rubbery voice and a bad attitude is not enough to survive. Like a small goldfish who has leapt out of the fishtank and into the Pacific, Britney wants to be considered as a serious recording artist and hence she shall be judged as one.

Let’s get one thing straight before we go any further. This album is absolutely terrible. I really could end the review there because there are parts of the album which really do not warrant discussion. If you have already bought this then I can only safely presume that a) you are blind and were directed to the Britney Spears section by some cruel, acne-ridden HMV employee who thought it would be funny, b) deaf and like the pretty pictures of Britney or c) buying the album as a gift (or as a cruel prank) for a loved one.

Britney is a robot, folks. Ignore all the crap about her breaking free and being herself. Ignore the multiple uses of the f-word in numerous magazine interviews (‘If I swear, they’re bound to think I’m cool’). Ignore the interviews where Britney tells us that this record is her most personal. It really is a load of marketing nonsense. If anything, this is Britney at her most mass-marketed, her every move planned and executed with robotic precision to the delight of the besuited minority behind her, giggling with glee as they manipulate this clearly stupid airhead (let’s be honest, if you’ve seen any interview with poor old Britney you’ll see she’s as dull as a breadboard) into doing as they choose, earning them maximum rewards for her labour. It’s all so staged, so false and so heavily considered and planned down to the last inch that any hint of realism is long gone. Britney is now ironically claiming to be totally herself when any hint of the real self has disappeared and has been replaced by a machine, a factory tool for money.

The album opens with the empty, vacuous ‘Me Against The Music’, which is surely one of the worst singles of all time, narrowly edging it over any of the output of Placebo, Toploader and Avril Lavigne, which really does take a lot of doing, folks. In recent history I cannot think of a worse single and that is no gross exaggeration! It is empty, there is nothing there, it’s the kind of song for people with no souls. The songs grinds and groans without going anywhere, there is no sense of purpose or direction and Madonna’s appearance only serves to beef up the cringe-factor. Further proving the fact that she is increasingly irrelevant, Madonna serves up the most embarrassing, hide-behind-the-sofa-cos-your-cheeks-are-blushing-too-much moments in pop history which her helium induced nonsensical ramblings which probably took twenty seconds to write. It’s become something of a running joke among my friends and I how terrible this is. Is Madonna passing on the torch of Queen of Pop to Britney? I for one hope not. With any luck this’ll be Britney’s last album, though its success will probably dash my hopes. Madonna should stick to writing children’s books, her contributions to the music industry are getting increasingly valueless and totally stamp over any of the glories of her time at the top of the pop family tree.

The sense that Britney craves credibility is evident from the opening track right through to the closing moments of ‘Everytime’. The desire to be urban and ‘street’, to be relevant to the modern day masses who effectively create superstars like Britney, pervades the album and ruins any sense of reality. It’s all front, all show and zero substance. Adult themes, such as masturbation, are tackled on the ever-so-controversial ‘Touch Of My Hand’. Stop for a moment and consider how so little talent has taken somebody so far. The girl just cannot sing! ‘Touch Of My Hand’, among others, proves that Britney really is lacking when it comes to the vocal department, where she is easily outclassed by her contemporaries such as Christina Aguilera, Pink, Jessica Simpson ad infinitum. Her vocals throughout the album are false and mechanical, like a younger Cher when she went all clubbed up with that awful ‘Believe’ rubbish. The difference between Cher and Britney is that if you strip away the machines and the vocoder Cher could probably still belt out a tune. Britney sadly does not have this saving grace. Britney’s voice is nasal, grating and makes you want to dig a hole in the ground and not emerge until she has stopped.

The flirtation with rap/r’n’b is evident on the second track, the execrable ‘I Got That Boom Boom’, which features the Ying Yang Twins, who will undoubtedly disappear back into obscurity (if you know who the Ying Yang Twins are, answers on a postcard…) and on ‘Brave New Girl’, which makes Madonna’s hilarious attempt at rapping on ‘American Life’ sound cutting edge. But Britney isn’t rap or urban. She’s pop and should stick to pop. She bashes out another ballad on the chronic ‘Everytime’, but Britney’s ballads are always awful – this is no exception. She just doesn’t have the lungs for ballads. And the lyrics are truly terrible, appalling sixth form poetry at its worst. It’s an attempt to address her break-up with Justin Timberlake, who has moved on to bigger and better things and has grasped the credibility that Britney is desperately reaching, always reaching for…

While on the topic of vocals, why oh why do the producers of this album allow Britney to pass off giggling, whispering, moaning and groaning as singing? It isn’t, it is childish and immature and proof positive that this woman cannot sing and is using her sexuality as her main tool when ideally it should be her voice. Any old idiot can groan their way through a song. Christina Aguilera set the standard for tawdry, crude vulgarity with her admittedly catchy ‘Dirrty’ so Britney, being the product of design that she is, is now forced into catch-up. Indeed, the whole album seems like a catch-up. Songs like ‘Breathe On Me’, ‘Showdown’ and ‘Brave New Girl’ sound too similar to other artists, in the sense that we are hit with the feeling that there’s nothing substantial there, nothing original. There is nothing here which would mark this album out as Britney (other than the nasal voice).

‘Toxic’ is over-produced with no sense of life in it. It is so treated, so manufactured, so intentional, that it totally kills the song. I watched an amusing programme on VH1 last night which said that ‘Toxic’ was an ‘earworm’ song. An earworm song is an annoying song which gets into your brain and you just cannot get rid of it. Sadly they are true. You feel like your brain is about to explode thirty seconds into the song, so annoying is its surgically-crafted stylings, Britney banging on about nothing in particular (though she’d claim it’s something deep, personal and relevant to her, no doubt). ‘Outrageous’ is everything Britney wants to be and something she will never be.

It is really unfortunate that in order to get the credibility that she craves Britney has been steered in the direction of sex, smut and filth. In the desire to be provocative, edgy and relevant, Britney has gone in the direction of all the wrong things and come out with a tarnished image as a result. Having decided that her once ‘saintly’ (as they have been described by several talentless tabloid hacks) ways are no longer cool, Britney now sexes everything up to the point where it becomes a farce. It’s become all presentation, all surface and no depth. The girl’s life has become a publicity stunt (hence her recent one-night marriage). I read a review of this album somewhere which described poor Britney as nothing but ‘a stripper with a record contract’. It is best for her reputation if she were to leave the music biz altogether, or get a new agent…

It’s all really sad. Britney can no longer be said to be a role model to young girls when she presents herself in such a manner. For Britney to claim to be a good, positive role model when she is also clearly courting the attention of the dirty old men who read the Daily Sport is irresponsible and a dangerous contradiction. But in terms of the affect this has on her work, the result is a complete mess of an album which lacks any kind of value other than a testament to the way artists can be steered in directions they cannot comprehend or adjust to and the way the music industry, with Britney and her ilk leading the way, is increasingly getting absorbed in smut and sex. And unfortunately, sex sells.