Music Review: 'Glory'

2016 is a strange time to be Ms. Britney Jean Spears. It’s the seventeenth year of a storied career, the turbulent likes of which haven’t yet been replicated in the twenty-first century. In today’s pop landscape, the 34 year-old Spears is an elder stateswoman, and her songs and moves have been scrutinized and studied by the new guard of singers as pop gospel. The industry’s reverence makes it easy to overlook that Spears herself hasn’t had a bona fide hit in almost four years and hasn’t put out a halfway decent album since 2011’s inconsistently classicist “Femme Fatale.” The less said about 2013’s will.i.am-produced snore “Britney Jean” the better, and advanced singles like “Private Show,” “Make Me…,” and “Clumsy” haven’t reached the commercial peaks of her heyday; all the while, Spears has stuck to her Vegas residency and laid low in the public eye. Overall, the past few years have been a relative fallow period, which begs the question: is Britney Spears even relevant anymore? The answer: yes. Her ninth studio album “Glory” is a resoundingly successful artistic statement that stands out as an exceptional pop album in a year full of them.

“Glory” is, in many ways, the mature album that “Britney Jean” so desperately wanted to be, though it still maintains its levity throughout. It’s both sillier than and analogous to Beyoncé’s “4,” full of musings on the pure bliss that comes with family, love, and solitude. However, “Glory” retains the essential camp and fun that belies all of Spears’ material, and there are more good hooks in individual songs on the album than there are on the entirety of “Britney Jean.” In hindsight, it’s almost baffling that her label chose “Make Me…” as the first single compared to other, brighter gems deeper in the album’s tracklisting. “Make Me…” is a pleasant, demure pop song. It’s catchy, and it’s fine. But what it empirically isn’t is quintessential, full-blown, “It’s Britney, b****” pop grandeur. The chorus, built on Spears’ soft coos and shimmering production courtesy of Burns, is beautiful in a tasteful way (though G-Eazy’s horrible guest verse threatens to derail the whole thing) but we as an audience do not go to Britney Spears for taste.

Luckily, the rest of “Glory” takes fun risks that are entertaining and interesting even when they don’t pay off. Spears’ vocal producer Mischke is credited on the majority of the album’s tracks, and his work stands out the most. Barring some sort of divine intervention, Britney Spears will never be a technically accomplished vocalist, but Mischke has highlighted and used her singular instrument in the most ebullient way of her whole career. The last time a Spears album sounded this vocally good was her 2007 electroclash opus “Blackout,” where her voice was chopped, screwed, and synthesized into the production. On “Glory,” she sounds naturally excellent. Belting highlights like “What You Need” and “Man On the Moon” make the case that she indeed has the range, and she showcases a sultry lower register on the ska-inflected “Love Me Down” and the downright avant-garde album opener “Invitation.”

There are two songs here that are all-time Britney Spears songs and deserve to be displayed prominently on her next greatest hits collection. The Mattman & Robin-produced and Tranter & Michaels-written “Do You Want to Come Over” is the definitive anthem for the Netflix-and-chill generation, a whirling symphony of jagged acoustic guitars, pinging sonars, and a catchy call-and-response chorus that contrarily puts Spears’ come-ons in the background while a crowd of men beg for her attention. The whole enterprise is utter pop perfection. Deluxe cut “If I’m Dancing” is a Jock Jamz-meets-PC Music banger, and Spears delivers simultaneously her best and most robotic vocal performance of the entire album. Her dexterous, clipped flow is mesmerizing, and laid against Ian Kirkpatrick and Mischke’s production, you won’t want to resist dancing. Whether any of these songs become hits remains to be seen, but “Glory” itself lives up its title. In the immortal, bizarrely-accented words of Britney Spears, “Go call the police! Go call the guvnah!”—Spears is back, and she’s ready to show the new pop generation how to do it right.