A Review of Rolling Stone’s Review of the new Britney Spears Album

Do you remember the last time that you saw Rolling Stone magazine give a negative album review to a popular band/artist that was STILL popular at the time the review was written? If you can’t seem remember that’s alright, because in all honesty…neither can I.

Back in 1996, Rolling Stone co-founder/publisher Jann Wenner pulled a lukewarm review of  Hootie and The Blowfish’s (whose previous album Cracked Rear View went to sell 16 million copies) second album Fair Weather Johnson from publication. Mr. Wenner did so in an effort to please Hootie’s label Atlantic who gave Rolling Stone all kinds of advertising money and were hoping for a favorable review. When a reporter from the New York Observer asked the author of the review in question Jim DeRogatis if Mr. Wenner was a fan of Hootie and the Blowfish DeRogatis’ response was: “Jann Wenner is a fan of any band that sells eight million records.” DeRogatis was fired from Rolling Stone the day after the article in question came out. His side of the story can be read at: http://www.furious.com/perfect/hootie.html

Of course this wasn’t always the case with Rolling Stone Magazine. Back in 1969 Rolling Stone gave Led Zeppelin 1 (which is currently ranked 29 on Rolling Stone’s list of its 500 Greatest Albums of All Time) a negative review.  It dismissed their rendition of “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” as being: “very dull in places (especially on the vocal passages), very redundant, and certainly not worth the six-and-a-half minutes the Zeppelin gives it.” http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/led-zeppelin-i-19690315

 

Rolling Stone also did a review trashing Houses of The Holy, an album that was released at the peak of Zeppelin’s 70’s popularity. The reviewer called Houses of the Holy: “one of the dullest and most confusing albums I’ve heard this year.” The author in question even went as far as to call Led Zeppelin “Limp Blimp.” http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/houses-of-the-holy-19730607

 

If you were to go Britney Spears’ page on Rolling Stone online it will claim that no review of Britney Spears’ first album: …Baby One More Time exist in its vault, yet I happen to own an issue of Rolling Stone magazine that has a review of said album. Issue 805 on page 60 to be exact that has Rob Zombie on the cover. The review in question gave the album was written before Spears became a household name. The album was reviewed by Barry Walters who gave the album two stars (in other words: it wasn’t good but it did not completely suck). Mr. Walters seemed more interested in citing facts from Spears’ bio than Ms. Spears’ music. But when Mr. Walters did get around to talking about the actual music he essentially said that the dance songs are o.k. but the slow songs like “Email my Heart” were “pure spam.”

Actually, if you were to MANUALLY look through about 123 pages worth of archived Album Reviews like I have you will see the original review of …Baby One More Time (complete with its original two star rating) right here: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/baby-one-more-time-20030113 Yet, somehow http://www.rollingstone.com/music/artists/britney-spears gives the exact same album a three star rating.  It even goes as far as to say that: “By infinity-tracking Spears’ thin vocals on her debut, Swedish hitmaker Max Martin made her sound like the nubile robot of every boy’s dreams.”

On Ms. Spears page at Rolling Stone you will notice that 7 of her 8 albums (yes she has made THAT MANY RECORDS)  have a three star or higher rating. The only exception to this rule being 2001’s Britney which got 2 and a half stars.  Yet I found a record review that gave the SAME ALBUM 3 stars http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/britney-20011030. It even went as far as to say that “Britney is by far her most personable album, the most consistently playful and the least wince-inducing.”

Keeping in consideration the way Rolling Stone bumped up the rating to “…Baby More Time” I can’t help but wonder if the writers at Rolling Stone truly see artistic merit in Britney Spears’ music or do they simply give her albums high ratings just because she’s popular.  I get the impression that the magazine that wasn’t afraid to be critical of bands at the peak of their success like Zeppelin were in the 70’s now treats pop singers such as Britney Spears and Taylor Swift with kiddie gloves.

The last Britney Spears and Taylor Swift albums each received 4 star ratings (according to Rolling Stones’ ratings charts 4 stars= Excellent). That’s the same rating Rolling Stone initially gave to Prince’s PURPLE RAIN. http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/purple-rain-soundtrack-20000413 I don’t mean to come off like an elitist music snob but I have a REALLY hard time believing that this song:

 

 

Is of the same songwriting caliber as this song:

 

 

Before reading Rolling Stone’s review the only song I had listened of the new Britney album was the single “Hold it Against Me,” a song that I consider to be extremely terrible. My dislike for this song is so extreme that I would personally have a hard time giving the album anything higher than a two star rating based on this song alone.  Naturally, I wanted to find out what compelled a Rolling Stone writer to give Britney’s new album Femme Fatale a 4 star rating. What kind of argument will this person give to make me (or anybody else for that matter) believe that Britney Spears’ new album Femme Fatale is “excellent.”

Whoever wrote this record review seemed too preoccupied with kissing Britney Spears’ ass to be bothered with elaborating on what made Femme Fatale so “excellent.” The head of this writer had to have been so far up Britney’s ass that it most have been extremely difficult to come out for air in order to write the review. This person called Britney “a stealth avant-gardist,” “an adventuress,” and claimed that “Femme Fatale may be Britney’s best album.”

When the author does get around to talking about the MUSIC on Femme Fatale it seems to focus on how the people who wrote the music for Britney provided “big melodies and bigger Eurodisco thumps”  and how some of these producers got all experimental. Calling Femme Fatale “her strangest” album and how some of her “producers go nuts, tossing the kitchen sink at Britney.”

 

What I found most interesting about the entire review was when the author went to talk about Britney Spears voice. “On nearly every track, Britney’s voice is twisted, shredded, processed, roboticized. Maybe this is because she doesn’t have much of a voice.” …Maybe it’s just me, but that read like Freudian slip. The same person who went on and on about how great the album was and how Britney was such a (I repeat) “stealth avant-gardist” turned around and more or less said that Britney was a crappy singer. The author tries to cover up this little slip by saying: “it’s certainly because she, more than almost any other pop diva, is simply game” but that’s a classic case of too little too late. http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/femme-fatale-20110314

 

Maybe the reason why these producers feel the need to “twist, shred, process, roboticize” her voice so much is because these people are, for lack of a better term, trying to “polish a turd.” While working on this review I made a point to hear the songs that reviewer pointed out as well as a few other new songs I could find on You Tube. While I do admit that some of the beats that were used on the songs were kind of neat sounding just about every good idea on the album became null and void the second that Britney opened her mouth. It doesn’t help that her lyrics are about as good as her singing.

 

Regardless of how I feel about Britney Spears’ voice or music, how can the person who wrote this review expect anybody to believe that Femme Fatale is an “excellent” album when they openly question Ms. Spears’ “singing ability? Was this person trying not to hold her bad singing against her?