BRITNEY SPEARS + MARIA TAYLOR

WORLDS APART

Britney Spears and Maria Taylor deal with two very different realities on Britney Jean and Something About Knowing

by Matt Ashare |  
Published December 11, 2013

“I wait for you to call, and I try to act natural,” Britney Spears sings with mock bravado, smiling through the proverbial pain on the romantically frayed, made-for-radio power-ballad “Perfume.” It’s the second single from her new “Britney Jean,” a comeback album by an artist who always seems to be coming back from one thing or another — career missteps, personal misadventures, public humiliations, you name it. And, it also serves as a sly bit of advertising for “Island Fantasy,” the newest in a line of women’s fragrances from Elizabeth Arden that bear Britney’s royal seal. 

         As spare, sympathetic piano notes give way to the looming banks of synths that dominate “Perfume” and most of the rest of “Britney Jean,” Spears does her best to step out from behind the gilded fortress of fame and, if only for a moment, take stock of her own self-doubts. “I hate myself and I feel crazy, such a classic tale,” she admits in the first verse, before wondering aloud, “Am I paranoid?/Am I seeing things?/Am I just insecure?”

         That’s what passes for an unguarded moment in the land of Spears. But Britney’s bittersweet symphony quickly takes a turn toward silly yet sinister desperation, as she contemplates surreptitiously spraying her scent on a cheating boyfriend — marking her territory to ward off potential rivals in romance. If nothing else, that oughta give her competition a whiff of the kind of romantic warrior they’re up against. And, given Spears’ rocky dating history, not to mention her easy access to copious amounts of her very own eau de toilette, it’s probably not such a bad strategy. I’m just not sure it really humanizes her to the extent that she might be hoping.

         Humanizing details, unguarded moments, and just acting naturally aren’t nearly as big a challenge for Maria Taylor, an Alabama-based singer-songwriter who, admittedly, has had a very different career trajectory than the Louisiana-bred Spears. At 37, Taylor is five years older than Spears. But they both emerged somewhat precociously in the late-’90s. Spears, an erstwhile Mouseketeer who’d honed her skills at NYC’s Professional Performing Arts School, found herself at the forefront of a new teen-pop explosion when her blockbuster debut “…Baby One More Time” arrived in 1998. Meanwhile, Taylor had gravitated to the softer, poppier side of alternative-rock: while still a student at the Alabama School of Fine Arts, she and fellow songstress formed the band Little Red Rocket, released two albums on Geffen in 1997 and 2000, and then moved on to become the harmonizing indie duo Azure Ray. While she didn’t release her first solo album until after Azure Ray went on semi-permanent hiatus in ’04, Taylor was also an adjunct member of Conor Obert’s Bright Eyes bands for five years, beginning in 2002.

         Taylor and Spears clearly weren’t cut from the same cloth. While Spears was being dressed up in Swedish hitmaker Max Martin’s platinum studio production, and dressed down in skimpy, belly button-baring stage attire, Taylor busily stitched together a down-to-earth aesthetic that emphasized the subtle beauty of her voice and the sublime allure of everyday emotions. The former, a mainstream sensation and tabloid queen, now appears to be trying to reclaim some semblance of her true self as a performer. The latter, afforded a somewhat more modest degree of underground success, became a self-possessed artist who, on her new “Something About Knowing,” seems just as comfortable in her own skin as anyone who’s temperamentally inclined to think too much about too many things.

         “There’s grace in how you choose, which memories you lose,” Taylor sings softly, buoyed by little more than fingerpicked acoustic guitar figures and a muted beat in “Folk Song Melody,” the ruminative opening track on “Something About Knowing.” Actually, she’s nearly whispering, even as she draws out the last syllable of “lose,” holding onto to the word as if it might have the power to conjure whatever has been forgotten. And then, as her voice grows stronger, she waxes philosophical in homespun fashion, gently but proudly reflecting, ”I got lucky alright/It was never going to be my life/You can’t be free until you’re ready. . .”

         “Something About Knowing” isn’t a comeback album, but it does mark Taylor’s return after the birth of her first child. And, while Taylor’s always been inclined toward the wistful and contemplative, motherhood has crystalized her instinct for wresting beauty from regret, and finding a kind of reserved joy in the vicissitudes of life. “Remember that day we got the news, I was scared as hell and so were you,” she admits at the start of the rockabilly-inflected “Up All Night,” a reservedly upbeat swinger that hinges on the declaration, “I’ve been up all night, but these are the best days of my life.”

         Taylor doesn’t stick to any one script. “Tunnel Vision” employs darker-hued minor chords, a propulsive beat, and plenty of echo to create a grounded dreamscape in which Taylor concedes to a friend or lover, “You were giving it all you got, giving up your whole life, and I was betting on the other side.” A programmed beat anchors the airy guitar arpeggios of “Sum of Our Lives,” a languid reverie about “names carved in the pavement, and all the marks we haven’t made yet.” Pedal steel adds a little country flavor to the lightly galloping “Saturday In June,” and vintage organ tones lend a classic feel to the peaceful, easy groove of the disc’s title track, a ode to appreciating the little things in life, like “A long leaf pine tree,” “a dog named Buddy,” and “A ‘Revolver’ LP.”

         It’s probably not entirely fair to compare a Maria Taylor list of treasures with a catalogue of Britney Spears valuables, but it’s just too hard to resist. In the frantic club workout “Work B**tch,” a rubbery electro bouncer, Spears affects a Lady Gaga-ish Euro accent of unclear origin, as she rhymes Bugatti with Maserati (but, sadly, not vanilla latte), and Lamborghini with sipping martinis and looking hot in a bikini (but, again, sadly, not zucchini linguini), until she sounds practically worn out.

And, when Spears doesn’t sound tired, she just seems lost in the mix, as is too often the case on “Britney Jean.” Tracks like “Perfume,” which was co-written with Australian singer Sia, and the guitar-driven “Passenger,” a strident yet hook-laden rocker written with Katy Perry’s help, are right in Britney’s wheelhouse, but they’re both fairly boilerplate-empowered pop anthems. And Spears just seems absent next to Will.i.am (who produced much of the album) in “It Should Be Easy,” an ode to easy loving that features this sophomoric zinger: “If there was a scale from one to ten, then my love for you is a million billion.” (I’m pretty sure that’s a fairly big number.) And, are we really ready for a fresh look at Britney in “Tik Tik Boom,” a over-produced, sexxxed-up bit of innuendo that’s mostly an excuse to drop in a rapid-fire rap from T.I.

It’s all just a little sad, in part because “Britney Jean” does get off to a promising start with the William Orbit-produced “Alien,” a more restrained, dreamier brand of electronica that finds a full-voiced Spears doing a little soul searching as she drifts through the percolating groove. “There was a time/I was one of a kind,” she recalls, “Lost in the world/Out of me, myself, and I.” And then, she admits, “I tried, but I never figured it out/Why I always felt like a stranger in a crowd.” You can almost hear a real woman in there, a human being who, by almost any standards, has lived quite a life, and has plenty of raw, even painful, experience to draw on, if only she could find the courage to go there. Maybe it would lead to something more rewarding than the cheap thrill of a “Tik Tik Boom.” Or, perhaps not. It’s never really that simple. As Maria Taylor puts it in “Sum of Our Lives,” “I could just let it be/Or I could set us free/But it’s never that easy.”