Tuesday, September 14, 2004
Talkin' Bout My Prerogative
Despite being one of the biggest solo female artists in the world, Britney Spears isn't actually that good, is she? Fair enough, as a pop star she's excellent, and the showbiz pages would be a far less interesting place without her regular appearances, but musically she's a bit pointless. She's only really released a handful of songs that are worthy of being considered pop gems. Perhaps it's because she peaked too early by having the genius that was and, indeed, still is, ...Baby One More Time as her very first single - when you're at the top of Mount Fab there's nowhere else to go other than down. It wasn't until the release of Toxic this year that she finally managed to equal, if not better it and, at last, seemed to live up to our expectations of what she should be capable of.
Of course, our opinion is entirely irrelevant given that people have quite happily rushed out and bought her records in their millions, which is why Jive are going for the quick and easy Christmas cash in option and will shortly be releasing her Greatest Hits. As is now obligatory for these things, she's recorded a new track for it in a bid to encourage people to shell out good money on what they already own and it's a cover of Bobby Brown's My Prerogative. We've acquired an entirely legal and definitely not in any way dodgy copy of the song (although it's not, apparently, the final mix), so is it actually any good? Has she carried on surfing the wave of quality that she rode for Toxic, or has she, once again, crashed on the beach of mediocrity? Well. To keep things entirely fair and balanced, let's first of all list all the things that are excellent and brilliant about the track:-
We understand that the bonus tracks on greatest hits are, by their very definition, filler tracks and that doing a cover version is the laziest possible way of fulfilling your contractual obligations, but there could at least be some hint of even a vague grunt of effort being involved. This smacks of something knocked off by Britney in the last half hour of her working day. Yeah, it's alright, but for someone of her status shouldn't we be asking for more?
Of course, our opinion is entirely irrelevant given that people have quite happily rushed out and bought her records in their millions, which is why Jive are going for the quick and easy Christmas cash in option and will shortly be releasing her Greatest Hits. As is now obligatory for these things, she's recorded a new track for it in a bid to encourage people to shell out good money on what they already own and it's a cover of Bobby Brown's My Prerogative. We've acquired an entirely legal and definitely not in any way dodgy copy of the song (although it's not, apparently, the final mix), so is it actually any good? Has she carried on surfing the wave of quality that she rode for Toxic, or has she, once again, crashed on the beach of mediocrity? Well. To keep things entirely fair and balanced, let's first of all list all the things that are excellent and brilliant about the track:-
- People will now know how to spell 'Prerogative' correctly.
We understand that the bonus tracks on greatest hits are, by their very definition, filler tracks and that doing a cover version is the laziest possible way of fulfilling your contractual obligations, but there could at least be some hint of even a vague grunt of effort being involved. This smacks of something knocked off by Britney in the last half hour of her working day. Yeah, it's alright, but for someone of her status shouldn't we be asking for more?
