BRITNEY CHANNELS HER TEEN POP PAST ON ‘3’

A platinum-blond Britney in her "3" music video

Britney Spears’ “3” is a feverish piece of electro-pop that is reminiscent of Britney’s virginal pop glory days despite its sexual innuendos. It’s the perfect pop song that sounds more in line with the Britney of ten years ago.

Swedish producer Max Martin provides “3” with a midtempo beat full of skittering synths that’s indistinguishable from any of the electro-pop songs on the radio ranging from Ke$ha to Adam Lambert, but the songwriting is “3”’s saving grace. Swedish songwriter/instrumentalist Shellback (man responsible for those catchy hooks on Britney’s “If U Seek Amy” and Pink’s “So What”) makes lyrical and melodic magic for Britney. Despite not having a muscular chorus that is usually synonymous with Max Martin and Shellback, “3” makes up for it by having a muscular melody.

Since its radio release in September “3” has been marketed as a controversial song about having threesomes and living sinfully, but ultimately “3” is a playful piece of glossy pop that possesses an effervescence closer to Britney’s teen pop past. She may sing rebellious lyrics like, “are you in, living in sin is the new thing,” but her vocal delivery of those lyrics is so peppy and cheerleader-like that the risqué lyrics have no weight. Sure, Britney used to be a Mouseketeer and she’s always sounded a bit Disney, but her last two albums, Circus and Blackout were surprisingly dark and mysterious. The albums sounded like a woman who’s had her share of partying hard and smoking cigarettes, but on “3” Britney sounds chirpy again. On the b-section (which really is a chorus/hook masquerading as a b-section) Britney moves in out of her head, middle and chest voices while singing “are you in, living in sin is the new thing” with a hopefulness on the words “new thing.” Britney even uses 1960s folk groups as sexual euphemisms citing “Peter, Paul & Mary” as a creative way of saying “a threesome.”

Despite its slightly pedestrian beat “3” has a starry-eyed bridge that serves as a period for people to slow their pace of rapid-fire dancing and catch their breath. The twinkling synths and fist-pumping bass are rave-like inspiring a vision of people waving glow sticks in the shadows of a club, and a DJ working the ones and twos. The marching bass winds “3” back up to its elementary chorus full of counting. There’s a sense of power-pop urgency about Britney’s pitched vocal delivery and as is “What we do is innocent” lyric, which sounds like a mantra for a generation or an era; maybe an era past like Britney’s glorious teen pop past back when the Backstreet Boys and ‘N Sync ruled the planet.

Maybe “3” is a sign that Britney’s music will take a brighter, more “innocent” direction. A change of pace might be just what Britney’s music needs.

RIHANNA TEMPERS HER ANGER WITH A MILITANT THEME ON ‘RATED R’

After singer Chris Brown reenacted scenes from the film, Fight Club on his former girlfriend singer Rihanna’s pretty face earlier this year, it’s no surprise that Rihanna is no longer in the mood to sing trancey dance songs with Michael Jackson chanting in the background. Instead of trying to make people dance, with her new album Rated R Rihanna has recorded cold, metallic songs full of military references and quiet anger.

Most of Rated R’s songs bring to mind images of Rihanna singing the songs while riding in an army tank. The industrial production inspires this image of Rihanna as a soldier of war. The album’s most militant songs are its best songs because they suggest an evolution for Rihanna’s music, while the remaining songs are from her poppy past and sound as if they were left over from 2007’s Good Girl Gone Bad.

On Rated R’s best songs Rihanna establishes her new hardened musical persona sounding something like a gangster. She is at her most thuggish on “Hard,” in which she inspires listeners to simultaneously think of apocalyptic warfare and fashion runway shows. With lines like “they think they test me now/run through your town, I shut it down” and “and my runway never looked so clear/got the hottest bitch in heels right here,” it’s easy to see that Rihanna still has an ego after admitting in a Diane Sawyer interview that she was “embarrassed” to have fallen for a guy like Chris Brown. “Hard’s” scowling bass line, which guides the main hook “so hard, so hard” sounds like the victorious bass line from The Jackson’s 1984 hit, “Can You Feel It.” That bass line and the Thriller homage, the introductory “Mad House” are the extent of The Gloved One’s influence on Rated R. On “Wait Your Turn” Rihanna wastes no time sparking the wartime imagery stating in the first two lines, “I pitch with a grenade/swing away if you’re feelin’ brave.” It’s one of Rated R’s angrier songs where Rihanna’s rage boils a bit over the surface and the listener can hear the clenched teeth in her voice. Musically, “Wait Your Turn” sounds like a Star Wars theme anchored by videogame synths. And last and least is the anemic first single, “Russian Roulette” that sounds like music fit for a funeral. Ne-Yo wrote the song, but he writes his best material for Rihanna when Danish production duo Stargate is at the helm, which they are not on "Roulette." The beat of “Roulette” matches the warfare motif of “Wait Your Turn” and “Hard” to a lesser degree, but it’s still one of Rated R’s weakest songs even next to the pop-lite songs like “Rude Boy.”

Rated R’s worth rests on two statuesque songs written by talented songwriter James Fauntleroy (the man who wrote Jordin Sparks’ airborne hit, “No Air”). The songs are “G4L” (Gangsta 4 Life) and “Fire Bomb.” Both are songs that broadly address Rihanna’s incident with Chris Brown by way of her muted anger to the point that you can picture Rihanna’s heavily eye-lined eyes glaring. She spits with venom on “G4L” “I lick the gun/when I’m done/’cuz revenge is sweet” and you sense that Rihanna is definitely capable of going all Red Sonja on someone’s butt. She tries a couple flows and cadences Bone Thugs-N-Harmony-style across a sinister synth beat reminiscent of a track by electro-thrash duo Crystal Castles. “Fire Bomb” is Rihanna’s own swelling rock opera that is a ball of tempered anger. The song’s main bass line is a guitar loop that resembles a steady-flowing machine gun. The guitar chords have a crashing pace that add sound to Rihanna’s lyrics, “Where I’m going I don’t need my brakes/Can’t wait to see your face/when your front windows break/and I come crashing through” during the b-section that’s sandwiched between the verses. The b-section is the car set in motion and the chorus is the crash, the explosion. The static of Rihanna’s voice is ghostly and the buildup is ethereal. The references to needing masks to breath relate back to Rated R’s military theme.

Rated R is an album that is not Rihanna’s best ever album because none of her albums are her best, but it is certainly her most vocally strong. Her anger finally seems like it has depth. Her past albums have the dance-pop songs that made Rihanna a superstar, so they will always have their value, but Rated R represents something new for Rihanna artistically though it may not be commercially successful.