Nine Lives Like A Kitty Cat

Britney Spears “How I Roll”

A lot of Britney Spears’ seventh album Femme Fatale sounds like a bunch of talented writers and producers going wild and pushing the limits of what can fly on a mainstream pop album, with Spears mainly acting as muse, mouthpiece and benefactor all at once. Her presence isn’t required, but she can’t be ignored. The best songs take the idea of Britney Spears — or maybe just the representation of her sexuality? — and digitally manipulate it into some kind of abstraction. “How I Roll,” a track by “Toxic” producers Bloodshy & Avant, is especially strange merger of bubblegum pop and electronic tinkering. It’s mad science pop, bursting with energy and unconventional ideas about sound and structure tossed at the audience in a playful but also sort of confrontational manner. Spears isn’t always totally recognizable throughout Femme Fatale, but on this track she sounds exactly like herself, particularly the youthful teen version that everyone remembers and laments in one way or another. Even still, she takes a backseat to the production and the hooks. She’s there to be “Britney Spears,” the zombie celebrity. She’s there to be the eccentric rich person who bankrolls this sort of experiment and puts it out into the world.

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