(Hills, Washington, Hilson, Araica) Album: Gimme More – Single / Blackout
I defy you to find a more iconic opening line in pop music history. In late August 2007, with three words and a thumping bass, Britney was announcing her official return to the music charts, having not released a formal album since 2003’s In the Zone. It was the lead single to what many consider to be Spears’s magnum opus, which ushered in a darker, grungier era of dance-pop, laying the foundation for many pop divas to come. Blackout is to date the only record that Spears executive produced herself, and its fingerprints can be found across the pop landscape throughout the 2010s and into the 20s. It all started with “Gimme More,” a sleekly produced track by Timbaland protégé Danja, which reimagines disco as a hip-hop infused stomper. Her own celebrity is the focal point of the album, and Britney seems to taunt a voracious public in the lead track: “They want more? We’ll give ‘em more.” While the song and track itself are now considered classics (in fact, Blackout was added to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's musical library and archive in June of 2012), the album rollout did not get of to an auspicious start. Spears made a much maligned appearance at the 2007 Video Music Awards, opening the show with a now notorious performance of “Gimme More.” Her glassy-eyed gaze and slight teeter between dance steps were unexpected for a pop legend who had set the bar so high for award show performances, particularly at the VMAs. The criticism was immediate and greatly overblown, but regardless, the performance did accurately represent the tone of the album. Similarly, a scrapped video concept proported to include Spears attending her own funeral left director Jake Sarfaty to assemble a final product from seemingly B-roll footage of her dancing on a poll. It’s far from the greatest in her videography, yet seemed fitting for the album. Spears’s critics who have often call for her to show a more personal side in her art seem to forget that her most highly acclaimed work is extremely emotionally distant, perhaps a survival instinct of the most highly sought after woman in the world. No other artist in the world could have created Blackout except Britney Spears at that moment in time. And just as the song says, we just want more.
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