After two years of recording, Britney's Femme Fatale is finally complete. Following the trend of her last two albums, it features a string of producers, all treating Britney's voice as just another instrument, manipulating it to great effect.
Inevitably, Femme Fatale is going to be compared to Blackout. As a whole, Femme Fatale feels like the yin to Blackout's yang. Where Blackout was dark and grimy, Femme Fatale is filled with light, an airy sense prevalent throughout. In both cases it works perfectly.
Some of the highlights include second single Till The World Ends, which opens the album. From the first synths, the song slinks along to its euphoric chorus. It may seem a bit repetitive at first, but the sheer football chant feeling is impossible to resist. Trouble For Me starts with a Wiley-like intro, and shows a confidence often missing from Britney in recent years. Criminal is the song most reminiscent of of "classic Britney", and features the lyrics "Mama I'm in love with a criminal", and a flute. It may not sound appealing, but it works perfectly, and provides a strong closer to the album.
One of the surprises of the album comes from long-time collaborators Bloodshy & Avant. Having previously delivered big singles in Toxic and Piece of Me, along with popular album tracks Phonography, Toy Soldier and Unusual You, their work on Femme Fetale in comparison doesn't match up.
Both How I Roll and Trip To Your Heart are perfectly serviceable pop songs, but neither really adds that much. Considering how effective the pairing of Britney and B&A has been before, it's a shame that's there's not much of a pay off this time around.
In all truth, the only misfire on the album is the aurally offensive Big Fat Bass. Both produced by and featuring Will.I.Am, the vocals from both are quite croaky, with an overly repetitive "The bass is getting bigger" present throughout the song. Not one of Will.I.Am's finest efforts, to put it mildly.
Femme Fetale is by no means a game changer, but this doesn't stop it being a very strong album. The best example of this is lead single Hold It Against Me. Much vaulted for its innovative use of a "dub-step breakdown", in truth Britney's flirted with the genre before (more successfully) with Blackout's Freakshow. However, this doesn't stop Hold It Against Me being a very enjoyable pop song. Likewise, she may have done this all before, but she's still doing it pretty well.
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