I have to admit it. I like Britney Spears. No, before
you ask, I am not a teenager. I’m a normal adult guy with, I hope, a wide
range of musical tastes. And while yes, I am conscious of Britney’s
non-musical qualities… and I’m a fan of those, too… I do have to fess up
that I enjoy her music. I have all of her albums, and while none of them
take up constant residence in my CD player, I’ll listen to them once in a
while. And if I’m riding fast in a car and one of her songs comes on the
radio, I’ll crank it.
Which makes it more surprising to me
what I’m about to say.
Britney’s In the Zone album is nearly unlistenable. It is bad. There
are barely any songs on it that register positively at all. On the album,
Spears is trying to be something that she’s not and it shows. It is a
continuation of the work she did with the Neptunes on her last album… but at
least “I’m A Slave 4 U” had a snaky seductiveness and an actual tune. Also,
Britney remembered the importance of a pure pop song like “Not A Girl, Not Yet A
Woman.” On this album, only the piano ballad “Everytime” and “Shadow” come
within a country mile of acknowledging this side of her, but the strangely
techno instrumentation keep “Shadow” out of the ballpark of previous teeny
weepers “Sometimes” and “Don’t Let Me Be the Last To Know.” Oh well, at least
she doesn’t do a bad cover version on this album, like she always has before.
You know you’re in for a bumpy ride with the first song on
the album, which is also the first single. “Me Against the Music” is way too
apt a title for the song, because it is an affront to song craft. A collection
of disjointed beats masquerading as a tune, with an absurd vocal contribution
from pop icon Madonna. I’m sure the two of them intended it as a passing of the
torch, an elder stateswoman of pop (oh, wow, Madonna is going to
be pissed if she
ever sees that) teaching a few tricks to a younger ingenue. Sadly, all Madonna
was able to offer was the ability to write an incoherent series of random throbs
like the kind that caused her American Life album to stiff so
spectacularly. As hard as this is to believe, according to the liner notes, it
took seven people to write “Me Against the Music,” including Brit and Maddy
themselves. Too bad it sounds like each of the seven people was writing
different songs that were somehow mashed together.
That is followed by, if possible, an even worse travesty,
“(I Got That) Boom Boom.” Featuring the Ying Yang Twins, it is a mishmash of
unconnected beats and truly uninspired vocals. Finally on the fourth song of
the album, Britney stumbles onto a new sound that kind of suits her. With
smooth dance beats and a husky alto “Breathe on Me” sounds like a reasonably
assured cop of a Kylie Minogue ballad. And, yes, I mean that as a compliment.
“Everytime” and the symphonic “Touch of My Hand” do have some appealing ideas,
too. "Toxic" has such a seductively catchy tune that it
is somehow able to overcome the fact that the overly busy and sterile production
is constantly trying to sabotage it. Elsewhere we’re stuck with bad cod-reggae (“The Hook Up”), Britney rapping
and doing vocoderized vocals messing up the otherwise rather catchy “Brave New Girl” and
two dreadful mixes of “Me Against the Music.” “Outrageous” has a marginally
interesting Middle Eastern influence, but otherwise is rather unmemorable,
except for the vague discomfort one feels listening to songwriter R. Kelly’s
jailbait catalogue of Britney’s qualities and hobbies.
Almost all the songs sound alike on In the Zone, and
very few of them sounds like something I want to listen to again anytime soon. This
will undoubtedly continue Spears’ trend of downward-spiraling album sales. For
the first time in her career, the album truly deserves it. (11/03)
