This Week On Billboard: Britney Spears – Hold It Against Me

This Week On Billboard is where I unabashedly critique the current no. 1 hit on Billboard.com, the major yardstick for what's "hot" in music today. In order to simplify the review for those who don't want to read the whole article, each song is given a "!" rating, in which the finest grabs five of them. It's been gone for a while, now it's back after a 22-month hiatus.

A review of this week's number one single right after you pop it like a hood and show Britney Spears how you work it out







Because of her disappointing personal life and because she’s heading into her eleventh year of pop existence, Britney Spears is now astonishingly considered an underdog. I’m assuming that because she debuted on top of the Billboard charts this week with “Hold It Against Me” after a year and two month hiatus, I’m not the only one who enjoy rooting for her intermittent ascension. Keep in mind that this also isn’t the first time Britney debuted on top of Billboard’s Hot 100; her last single “3” also debuted on top of the charts in 2009. Britney may disappear for long periods of time, but she has proven that when she does hold it together long enough to record a single, every living creature in our infinite galaxy is going to want to hear it. Granted, half of the people who tune in are just there hoping to hear a train wreck, their votes still count. It also helps that Britney’s people do a good ass job at extinguishing free ways to listen to her product—exterminating Youtube uploads and snuffing out free downloads on blogs—so the only way to hear her new stuff is to basically pay for it in iTunes or to request it on the radio.

It’s really easy to forget now that she was a walking goddess back then, a formidable contender in this game of chart pop. Remember the Rolling Stones cover? The “I’m A Slave 4 U” video? The 2000 VMA performance? Those iconic images and moments stole my innocence when I was younger. Which is why when I found out what the song was called, I thought I should make a very hilarious joke about how when I was a teenager, the only thing I wanted in the world was to hold Britney Spears’ body against me. What I didn’t know was that the song itself was going to make the joke for me since the single pretty much revolved around that played out pick-up line. Although I am sort of disappointed that it deprived me of a chance to display my comedic prowess and my ingenious attempts at double entendres; I am very happy that even after all these years, she’s still churning out sleazy and sweaty dance floor bangers, and Britney has always been at her best when she’s singing about lust and seduction.

The sexy “Hold It Against Me” wouldn’t have been an exception to that axiom if it weren’t for the fact that it sounds like a Tiesto remix of a regular Britney song from ten years ago. Tiesto, or more broadly trance, sounds like something I should like in theory—deeply melodic, pseudo-orchestral, stirringly energetic. But everything about it is so painfully obvious that it annoys me, from the elementary chord progressions to foreseeable “euphoric” swells to the repetitive throbbing thump. All of the ingredients that Dr. Luke and Max Martin arranged in “Hold It Against Me” sounds like Roland JP-8000 presets, which doesn’t automatically translate into something terrible, but it’s not wowing anyone either.

But holy mother, no one expected the dubstep breakdown though! If Britney was accompanied by the half-rhythm and spastic vocal phrases throughout the single’s completion, “Hold It Against Me” would’ve been some next-level shit. While dubstep has been pervading UK charts recently (Katy B’s “Katy On A Mission” immediately comes to mind, which had a peak position of #5), there has never been a US pop star who released a song that directly emulates a dubstep archetype. Of course, there’s the argument that Timbaland beats and Southern rap influenced the genre in the first place, but I don't want to dive into a much deeper examination of dubstep in the US. Nonetheless, dubstep as we see now has massive crossover potential and it is fated to redefine mainstream pop in the next few years.

And it would’ve been amazing to see Britney spearhead that movement in 2011. Throughout her career, she has always been more adventurous when it came to cutting-edge sonics, and that always separated her from everyone else: she was one of the first songbirds for The Neptunes’ foray into radio pop; “Toxic” was the result of someone trying to smuggle Basement Jaxx’s maximalist mutation of dance styles into the US; and her Blackout stuff may sound ordinary now, but back when no one was doing electrostomp, the singles she was putting out sounded fresh. By hesitating on making “Hold It Against Me” entirely dubstep, Britney missed a chance to extend her career for a few more years.


(t5!) score: !!!!