After a quiet 2010 consisting of an appearance in a Glee episode dedicated to her, Britney Spears is wasting no time getting back in the spotlight in 2011. And her first release/leak of this year is a jambalaya of dated electronic sounds hidden behind a chipmunk/Cajun Britney Spears.
The song's called "Hold It Against Me." And, yes, we plan on holding it against Britney.
The track includes trance beats and a "grimey" bass line, followed by a
subdued trance chorus. It even manages to get some buzz-step in
the breakdown.
Lyrically, the track follows a demure-seduction trope that Britney has done before.
For
its timeliness, it's a female equivalent of Enrique's "Tonight, I'm
Fucking You." And I'd be surprised if anyone still falls for this tactic
after these two tracks.
It might just be me, but as Spears gets
older and attempts to assert herself, her native Louisiana accent seems to be getting more pronounced. Her words sound more contracted, and the
"-y" sound has a more "-eh" quality to it, like the "gimmeh" in "Gimme
More." These days, I kind of imagine Britney
walking around with a huge diamond-lined New Orleans Saints symbol
around her neck and throwing gator kabobs at bystanders. She oughta ice
the cake by making a cameo in Treme.
Anyway, the accent's the only way I can get behind her pronunciation of "hazy."
Ever
since her 2007 album, Blackout, Britney's stayed relevant by
appropriating the sounds of the day. On this point, she's out-playing
Madonna. It's not much of an accomplishment, though -- most of Britney's
output since 2007 has been hit-or-miss. I'd say this track is a
Britney version of Madonna's "Ray of
Light." In other words, it's a
miss.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I hear Chris
Crocker screaming from a few
hundred miles away.
