Britney Spears - Hold It Against Me

Fairly important: the formatting on this post goes to hell in most feeds, and it will be best read at ericonthecharts.blogspot.com

Britney's next single: "Did It Hurt (When You Fell from Heaven)?"

Britney Spears
Hold it Against Me
Club Anthem
#11 (High)
Feb 24, 2011
Max Martin
Lukasz Gottwald
Bonnie McKee
Mathieu Jomphe
Dr. Luke
Max Martin
Billoard

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I suppose it was inevitable. I didn't know it when I started this, but Britney Spears has yet to go away... so, of course, she still shows up on the charts. I consider her the archetypal Pop Tart: the Prime Pop Tart from which all the teen girl pop stars have been generated for over ten years now. I'm not entirely sure why, but Brittney's a legend, in her own way: not even my media blackout could miss her legacy. She's been more headline than music for a long, long time, but with Lindsey Lohan (and more recently, Charlie Sheen) occupying the Celebrity Flame Out division of watercooler gossip, I'd foolishly assumed there was no more Britney Spears.

Seeing as this is coming after the gratingly talentless Taio Cruz, it actually sounds pretty good-- the complaints I have against Cruz's generic, limp backing tracks are thrown into sharp contrast by a grinding, propulsive rhythm and a lot of energy... which makes plenty of sense: the Spears product has always been backed by world-class pop producers and writers. It'd be more surprising if the song didn't sound pretty good. Pop stars of this pedigree usually have their singles arrive platinum dipped and diamond sparkling, and “Hold It Against Me” is custom tooled for maximum wow factor.

Until the chorus.

Oh... that chorus. Let's sidestep the obvious for a second and concentrate on the music: after building a driving track that demands attention, the chorus makes all of that interest disappear in a puff of smoke... energyless, bland smoke. In club music, this kind of sound (washes of spacey synths, pulling back the beat) is done for a short breath before the rhythm hits again-- it's usually dramatic and makes a dancefloor explode. Here, it stays too quiet too long; the whole chorus is a really ho-hum affair, which is even worse in a pop song where this part was supposed to be the hook.

If I said my heart was beating loud
If we could escape the crowd somehow
If I said I want your body now
Would you hold it against me

Cause you feel like paradise
And I need a vacation tonight
So if I said I want your body now
Would you hold it against me

The chorus, unfortunately is “If I said you had a beautiful body, would you hold it against me?” No, really. That is the song, essentially-- she has to make a rhyme of it, so the actual chorus is “If I said I want your body now, would you hold it against me,” but she actually recites the joke, direct from 101 Cheesy Pick-Up Lines, in the middle break, doing her best breathy sex-kitten voice.

Besides being one of the stupidest lyrics ever written, it's just... so... childish. There's nothing actually sexy about the stock pop “I want your body.” Britney's image has become more than a little trashy: now that the tabloids and the internet have made headlines of her being a dirty, dirty girl, her lyrics (no matter how hard they try not to be) sound like awkward come-ons from the fumbling and inexperienced. The irony here is that she was catapulted to stardom as a virginal Disney princess, preaching purity while wearing an outfit that had more in common with  an adult costume store than a Catholic school.

The whole thing just sort of crumbles under its own weight: the music shoots itself in the foot every time the chorus comes up, and the lyrics achieve a level of stupidity few bad songs ever approach. And, seriously, after so many years, who would have thought Britney Spears, the Prime Pop Tart, would be so bad at being sexy?

RUN!

Stay with the song, walk away, or run like hell: