“Gimme More”
by Britney Spears
(Zomba)
Wait—she makes music? Well whattaya know? Still, if it’s
possible to hear this through the sound of a zillion gossip sites
updating, by the minute, this walking cautionary tale’s newest
shenanigans, I wouldn’t know. All I can hear on this record is
corporate desperation, from the “It’s Britney, bitch” ringtone (my
sister Brittany is so getting one of these for Christmas, the same way
she would have gotten a Pet Rock a generation ago) to the song itself,
which today sounds like second-rate Gwen Stefani the way it would have
sounded like second-rate Britney seven years ago. Or maybe that’s not
corporate desperation—maybe it’s corporate opportunism: When
producer Danjahandz mentions “the legendary Britney Spears” on the way
to “you’re going to have to remove me, ’cause I ain’t going nowhere,”
he sounds eerily like he’s stepping on Britney’s face en route to an
ASCAP ceremony.
“1, 2, 3, 4”
by Feist
(Polydor)
Spotting great moments in Canadian pronunciation has been one of the
lesser pleasures of monitoring the Top 10 this year. Along with most of
Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend” (listen to her bite down on those
Ds and Ts), “1, 2, 3, 4” has a classic: “Those
teen-age hopes,” with the rising note placing the
em-pha-sis just so. Other than that, it’s overarranged dinkiness
that owes its moment to television, not unlike the Britney
record—okay enough at what it does, but what it does isn’t
enough.
“2 Hearts”
by Kylie Minogue
(EMI)
Instead of the buoyant disco of 2001’s Fever and the electro
of 2004’s Body Language, here Kylie goes camp in a different
way: piano-driven glam cabaret, with a heavy medium-tempo stomp and a
great video that’ll have to sate the faithful until the track becomes
officially downloadable in early November. In it, she sports a
white-blond bouffant that makes her look unnervingly like late-’80s
British model Sara Stockbridge, and that isn’t all that looks like an
old Face cover: The band backing her resemble an updated Blitz
Club (the place where the new romantics got their start), particularly
their makeup—my favorite is the black guitarist whose right eye
is covered by a green butterfly. Kylie, meanwhile, sings into an
old-fashioned boxing-ring mic with, I kid you not, a rhinestone-skull
cozy. Been hanging around with the Scissor Sisters much, Kylie?
