November 15, 2007
the five paragraph essay: "it's britney bitch"
It's Britney bitch: so begins the new Britney Spears album, before moving swiftly into that most vacuous of subgenres, songs about the perils of fame. It's not that such songs risk hypocrisy or narcissism (really, so what?), but that, since pop songs are defined by their own popularity, the active choice to make a song about nothing else is an entirely hermetic act. Such songs are pure, and empty. They practically guarantee a failed artist, and/or bad faith, and/or some atrociously awful shit. This is stuff people believe about Britney anyway, so it is perhaps even more curious that she reaffirms such ideas by pursuing this course — never more than with the second song, "Piece of Me." One would be forgiven for assuming it was awful. It's probably the song of the year.
The song rolls along on a sick dollop of bassy synthesizer, superfake handclaps, and the occasional loop of an uncertain, yelping voice. Much of the credit surely belongs to the production/writing team of Bloodshy & Avant, and the track deserves to be listened to at full aural resolution, really fucking loud. The lead vocals are processed into orbit through a dozen shifting filter arrays. Backup vocals, meanwhile, are handled by Robyn — no small irony, as she a) is historically great in her own right, and b) was the obvious genius Swedish teenpop market test for Britney herself. But Ms. Spears's performance is brilliant, and it would be a shame to miss the exact form of its brilliance.
We are aware that aesthetes who generally don't concern themselves with the Top 10 universally prefer, among all Britney songs,"Toxic"; this fact is indeed a verdict on that song, though an ambivalent one. "Piece of Me" shares certain qualities with "Toxic" (also a Bloodshy & Avant production, along with Cathy Dennis) such as a somewhat narrowed melodic range that gains its momentum from the bass rather than the chord changes. Nonetheless it is a better song than "Toxic," less artsy, more banging, less for listening to and more for giving in to. That's not to say it's her best song; it's perhaps Number Three after "...Baby One More Time" and "Oops...I Did It Again."
"Hit Me" (as we prefer to call it) and "Oops" are united by something more then ellipses: a fact so obvious that it has scarcely been remarked. The former, lead single to her debut, is entirely masochistic; the latter, lead single to her sophomore disc, is entirely sadistic. We trust a rehearsal of the lyrics is not required here. This striking — and finally peculiar — fact has been easily forgotten within the seemingly ceaseless tempests of the Britney datastorm. But "Piece of Me" reactivates the charged oddity with gusto. Her lyrics, of course, concern themselves with the media's concern with her. The verses seem to involve self-description. "I’m Miss Bad Media Karma, another day, another drama" begins one, a nice rhyme that turns out to be two halves of furthers rhymes, the less-compelling "Guess I can’t see the harm in working and being a mama." But without much pomp, this narration slips into a subtle inversion. By the chorus the phrases, still in the first person, now simply accept the tabloid hysterias as her real names: "I’m Mrs. Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, I’m Mrs. Oh my God that Britney’s Shameless" (even nicer rhyming, at the level of the concept). And here in the chorus, these ventriloquized phrases, mocking but irrevocably self-loathing, are now punctuated by the punchline, like so: "I’m Mrs. Extra! Extra! this just in (You want a piece of me), I’m Mrs. she’s too big now she’s too thin (You want a piece of me)."
And that's the genius part. With each repetition of the punch line, she shifts the inflection such that it takes on both its meanings in alternation: first as assertion about her opposite number's desire (you want a piece of me), and then the colloquial threat about her own urge, one we all know from barfights on television (you want a piece of me?). In her own song — entirely designed to confuse the question of who is speaking — she manages to appear, via a single phrase, as the subject and source of violence, abused and abuser, in a way that makes the distinction itself seem to shimmer and shift. It's a song in which she gets to be masochistic and sadistic both at once, her whole history in 210 seconds, Hit Me Baby Oops. And in turn she offers this condensation and confusion as a verdict on the media and, finally, herself. Freakishly smart, with a bounce a mile high.
Posted by jane at November 15, 2007 03:19 PM | TrackBack