Songs you may have missed

Back once again like a renegade master. Here are 12 songs you might have missed if this blog is your only source of new music in the universe.

1) Father John Misty - Real Love Baby
Harmonies abound on this one-off single from Father John Misty, which includes the unforgettable couplet: "I've got real love baby / Wait until you taste me."




2) Major Lazer - Cold Water (feat. Justin Bieber & MØ)
Apparently this will be number one on Friday, making Justin Bieber the Whigfield to Drake's Wet Wet Wet.




3) Blossoms - Charlemagne
The best indie-pop single of 2016 is actually a re-release, but that's the sorry state of guitar music in the second decade of the 21st Century.





4) Regina Spektor - Bleeding Heart
After a few years off to start a family, Regina Spektor is back... and it was worth the wait. Bleeding Heart reflects on an awkward childhood, sitting at the back of the bus and avoiding the school dance - and how, even as a confident, successful adult, those feelings are never far from the surface.

By turns a bubbly pop song, a raucous rock banger and a plaintive piano ballad, it's an expectedly unexpected pleasure.




5) Britney Spears - Make Me (feat. G-Eazy)
Pedestrian verses, beatific choruses. Not too shabby.




6) Katy Perry - Rise
Pedestrian verses, pedestrian choruses. Pretty shabby. (Although the "oh ye of little faith" line is a masterstroke).




7) SG Lewis - Holding Back (feat. Gallant)
Smooth, funky house from Liverpool's SG Lewis - endorsed by Pharrell as a "white boy with soul". The vocals from R&B wunderkind Gallant are the icing on this particularly sticky cake. Yum.





8) The Divine Comedy - Catherine The Great
Any song that includes the lyric "she looked so bloody good on a horse" is alright with me.





9) Glass Animals - Youth
A quietly political song, about a family torn apart by war - sung from the perspective of a mother who sent her child away in the hope of a happier life.

Frontman Dave Bayley says the track was inspired by a conversation with a stranger. "It was one of the saddest things I'd ever heard, and she was on the verge of crying," he told NPR, "but she also had a sense of optimism and calm. Something in her face said she'd found a way to be happy again."





10) Opia - Shadow Dances
Staccato guitar lines and shimmering harmonies propel this smart, summery pop song from Yale University students Jacob and Cole, aka Opia. Reminds me of Friendly Fires and Passion Pit, back from the golden era of music blogs.




11) Jagwar Ma - OB1
A swirling, psychedelic masterpiece - which the band describe as being "designed for nocturnal road trips and foraging through forests for morning fresh champignons." Er, ok then.




12) Enrique Iglesias - Duele El Corazon (feat. Tinashe, Javada)
Every so often, Enrique Iglesias appears out of nowhere with an above-average pop smash (I'm not talking about Hero). This is one of those occasions. Just try to ignore the lecherous lyrical content.

That's your lot. I didn't include the new 5SOS single. Apols.

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The Billboard Music Awards were very good

Clothing averse pop star Britney Spears opened last night's Billboard Awards with an eight-minute medley of hits (not including her biggest hits, but she did Toxic so that's ok).

As always, Spears is teetering on a tightrope - will she pull it off or collapse like a souffle in a vacuum? - and the tension is delicious.

When she did a backflip during Touch Of My Hand I felt inexplicably proud of her.



Adele premiered her new video, Send My Love (To Your New Lover) at the ceremony. If you've ever wanted to see 10 Adele's super-imposed over each other with the opacity set to 40%, then this is the video for you.



Bieber, DNCE, Demi Lovato, The Go-Go's, Ke$ha and Tove Lo (ft Nick Jonas) also played - the latter being a short, but sexually-charged blast of power pop.


Bbut my favourite performance of the night was the simplest. With no flam or fanfare, Rihanna delivered a vocally-flawless, impassioned rendition of Love On The Brain, bathed solely in a feather boa and a green spotlight.

Breath-taking.


You can watch the whole thing on 4 Music later tonight.

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Like bees to the hon-ay

Over the years, Britney has released some excellent, world-beating pop songs. But she hasn't looked like she's having fun since Toxic, over a decade ago.

That all changes today, with the breezy video for Pretty Girls, her collaboration with Iggy "inexplicably the biggest female rap artist in the world" Azalea.

So, Iggy is an alien who crash lands in Britney's swimming pool and leafs her down a path of bubblegum debauchery. Or something. There's a lot of vamping, a demented display of Iggy's "alien powers" and the best dancing Britney's pulled off since her well-publicised meltdown.

It seems the song has brought back Britney's balls - which is a phrase I instantly regret typing. But the video is as much of a blast to watch as it clearly was to make. Well done, everyone.

Britney Spears & Iggy Azalea - Pretty Girls

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Britney and Iggy: Haunted by the ghost of Charli XCX?

Iggy Azalea ditched Charli XCX for the follow-up to Fancy, but the British star casts a shadow all over the track.

Pretty Girls – leaked at the weekend, and officially released yesterday – rides the same rhythmic pulse as Fancy, and co-vocalist Britney Spears’ bratty sing-speak is a pure lift from XCX’s pop-punk stockpile.

It’s also Spears’ most engaged vocal for years – as she delivers a sassy lecture on her enduring allure: "Every time I walk out of my house it's like, 'Hey baby!'” she deadpans. “They don't see me rolling my eyes".

Produced, like Fancy, by the Invisible Men, the track was co-written by Little Mix. Yes, that Little Mix. Who’d have thunk?

Iggy Azalea and Britney Spears - Pretty Girls

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Britney's version of Tom's Diner is surprisingly good

To help us mark the time before Pretty Girls - Britney Spears' forthcoming collaboration with Iggy Azalea - hits the internet, here's a little cover version she's done with Giorgio "quite literally the king of electronic music" Moroder.

Tom's Diner was originally an a capella album track by Suzanne Vega, before dance act DNA turned it into a club smash in the 90s. The lyrics are a vignette, with Vega sitting in a cafe reading a newspaper and observing the people around her.

The mundane subject matter seems like an odd fir for the singer who brought us "Work Bitch" and "Slave 4U" - but it turns out that Britney's limited, husky voice is a good match for Suzanne Vega's deadpan delivery. Although you have to suspend disbelief when she sings "I pour the milk". Britney has a team of people to do that for her.

I'm not so sold on the backing track, mind you. Maybe we can go back to the a capella?

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Songs you may have missed: A Beyonce goes "boo" special

Damn you, Beyonce, for leaping out from behind a curtain and putting a new album on iTunes while I was on the bus to work. I can't download 17 videos on a 3G connection, you know. What sort of price plan do you think I'm on over here?

So now I'm stuck in the office watching 30-second YouTube clips of your presumed masterpiece, while everyone else is saying "I like the one where she flips her hair". I want to see the hair flipping, too. What a disaster.

Anyway, here is a playlist of those clips for the similarly iTunes-deprived, and some other songs you may have missed over the last seven days.

1) Beyonce - Beyonce video collection
See above. She's so pretty.



2) Lorde - No Better
Remember when Lorde sang "I can be your Queen Bee" and everyone thought it was a sly dig at Beyonce? Well, what are they going to say now she's released a surprise new single, hours after Beyonce's album dropped? Naughty Girl [wait - isn't that the name of a Beyonce track too? Damn!]

No Better appeared on iTunes this morning and, to be honest, is better than some of the stuff on Lorde's debut album. As woozy and drowsy as it was unexpected.




3) Tinie Tempah - Lover Not A Fighter
The best song by far on Tinie's second album, Demonstration, the cracking Lover Not A Fighter sounds exactly like Discovery-era Daft Punk (in particular, the breakdown from Digital Love).

Lyrically, it finds Mr Okogwu on top comedy form, rapping about how he went from sitting "on the settee eating a tin of spaghetti" to sleeping with his old teacher, the perv.




4) Daft Punk - Instant Crush
This is the Daft Punk one where Julian Casablancas from The Strokes does his best Metal Mickey impression.

One of my favourite songs on Random Access Memories, the video is a rather underwhelming riff on Night At The Museum, with Julian not really sure how to reconcile his rock star moves with the fragile melancholy robot larynx.





5) Britney Spears - Perfume
Basically, the only track worth downloading from the new Britney Spears smash album (in with a bullet at number 34).

Fun fact: Perfume is written by Sia.





6) Lea Michelle - Cannonball
Damien Rice floated like a cannonball. Now Lea Michelle (out of Glee) flies like a cannonball. I don't think they're that familiar with cannonballs.

Fun fact: Cannonball is written by Sia.




7) Ella Eyre - Love Me Like You
Another track from Ella's forthcoming Deeper EP, this one is produced by smoking-hot London producers Two Inch Punch. Like the title track, Love Me Like You is a subdued smoky take on the sound she perfected with Rudimental. Or, as The Fader put it, like Cee-Lo got Lauryn Hill to sing on a garage track.

Right, that's your lot. I'm off to see if I can find a forgiving wifi connection.

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A few good remixes

Apropos of nothing, here's a quintet of songs from the world of popular music in brand new remix fashion.

They may prove useful for your next work out / soul-crushing commute.

1) Britney Spears - Work Bitch (Monsieur Adi Remix)
Falling just on the right side of ludicrous, this reimagines Work Bitch as the score to a Michael Bay film. Must have cost a fortune.




2) Haim - Forever (Patrick Hagenaar Remix)
One of Haim's best singles, Forever is getting a re-release to give their album a Christmas push. That means a new set of emixes, of which this is the most suitable for a "crazy party" montage in Hollyoaks.




3) Destiny's Chils - Bills Bills Bills (James Blake / Harmonix mix)
This isn't so much a remix as an act of vandalism - but "the internet" seems to like it, so what do I know?




4) Kanye West - Bound 2 (Solidisco Remix)
With shades of Daft Punk, New York's Solidisco turn Bound 2 into a sparkling house track. Bravely, they completely erase Kanye from the mix, leaving only Charlie Wilson's amazing hook and the "uh-huh honey" sample from Brenda Lee's country classic Sweet Nothings.




5) Chvrches - Lies (Tourist Remix)
This is fascinating, if only to hear what Chvrches sound like when you lock up their synthesizers. The answer? Still magnificent.

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Britney Spears is "like an alien"

"There was a time I was one of a kind... I was lonely then, like an alien."

These are the opening lines of the opening track of Britney Spears' "most personal record yet" Britney Jean Is Not My Lover.

Alien is written by Charli XCX (hooray!) and produced by William Orbit (double hooray!). It's a more sedate, thoughtful track than you'd expect - and one that reinforces her manager's assertion that Britney Jean has "a Ray of Light Madonna vibe". Although it's nowhere near as good as Drowned World, it is nonetheless a welcome step towards maturity from the woman who brought us If You Seek Amy.

The thing is: How does Britney know aliens are lonely? Has she asked any aliens? Has she consulted with Robbie Williams or Shaun Ryder? Because I'm not sure she's got it right.

Aren't aliens supposed to be sociable - always beaming people up and investigating their bottoms? It's no wonder these dudes are so chipper.

And this one seems more angry than lonely. He's quite literally the James Arthur of aliens - bewildered by a world of terrifyingly unfamiliar sensory bombardment, and prone to biting things he doesn't understand.

Admittedly, ET was lonely and frightened after his unplanned vacation in an eight-year-old's cupboard. But look how badly things turned out when he finally did make a friend.

And there's no way this cute little alien guy could ever be alone. Just look at his cute little face. A-woof-woof-woof-woof-woof. A-woof-woof-woof. Woof. [Er, are you ok - Ed?]

So there you have it. Britney Spears: Good at songs, bad at metaphors.



Britney Jean is out on 29 November or 2 December, depending on your "territory".

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Britney's Perfume: Not a stinker

I'll be honest, the generic robo-pop of Work Bitch didn't fill me with hope for Britney Spears' new album, Britney Jean. She'd told various people it was her "most personal album ever", and roped in William "I did Ray Of Light" Orbit to help her find a more mature sound.

Instead, we got a shambolic collection of will.i.am's half-finished melodies shackled to the sort of clunky "aspirational" phrases you'd hear at a middle managers' away day. The video was nice, mind you.


The second single, on the other hand, is everything Britney promised. Half tear-jerker, half revenge fantasy, Perfume finds Britney daydreaming that her cheating boyfriend will be found out: "I wanna fill the room, when she's in it with you... I hope she smells my perfume".

Co-written by Sia, this features Britney's best vocal performance since Everytime. Gone are the squeaky babydoll voice and the rampant auto tune. Instead, she drops half an octave and sounds sensitive, fragile and (finally!) human.

The chorus doesn't quite live up to the promise of the verse - but this is a major step in the right direction. Well done, everyone.

Post by Britney Spears.

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I'm at work, bitch

Listen, I'm too busy trying to attain a Lamborghini and look hot in a bikini to waste 10 minutes writing an "amusing" account of Britney Spears' video for Work Bitch.

However, I have watched it all the way through once and will immediately commence whipping any junior colleagues who step out of formation during our 11am dance routine (I'll buy them a pack of jaffa cakes afterwards, I'm not a monster).

Here's something that'll make you feel old: The video premiere came 15-years-and-one-day after the release of "...Baby One More Time".

Britney Spears - Work Bitch

PS Have you heard the radio edit of this single? It's awful - as pointless as the Rita Ora "we want to party, and party, and party, and party..." abomination. By the time the three minutes are over, you will never want to hear the phrase "You'd better work, work" ever again.

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Work Bitch: Five things Britney's doing on her comeback single

1) Saying, "I'm back"
Work Bitch is an event single. A scene-setter. An ice-breaker. A fanfare. A statement of intent. It is not designed to be an airplay hit (the constant repetition of the word "bitch" should be your first clue there) or a vital component of Britney's impressive back catalogue. No matter whether you love it or hate it, you've noticed it, and that's the whole point.


2) Showing everyone who's boss
The lyrics aren't going to win anyone a Pulitzer Prize but Britney's message is pretty clear: "I worked hard to get where I am, and I'm not about to relinquish my crown". You want what she's got? Well, you'd better put in the hours. What's more, she's older and wiser than the girl who sang Piece Of Me six years ago. Back then, it was all defiant resilience; now she concedes that the suffering was partially self-inflicted. Basically, it's the 2013 update of this speech:


3) Not really singing that much
To be fair, there's less autotune than you'd expect, and Britney covers an entire octave over the course of the song. But the main motif is a repetitive leap between two notes (E4 and B4, music nerds) and there's a lot of talky bits. Speaking of which...

4) Doing her comedy British accent
Chim-chimeree baby one more time. Lorks-a-lummee!

5) Working with will.i.am
make.it.stop

At heart, Work Bitch is a great throwaway dance single. Much, much better than you'd expect from that production credit, and the "call the guv-ah-nah" line is demented genius. It'll be as hard to escape as Scream and Shout was earlier this year - but easy to walk away from once all the fuss dies down.

More importantly, Work Bitch heralds a Britney Spears album that features collaborations with William Orbit, Naughty Boy, Sia and Charli XCX. As abrasive and attention-seeking as the single may be / definitely is, there are some solid gold pop nuggets heading your way.

6/10

Britney Spears - Work Bitch

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Britney Spears is surprised by a smurf and other songs you may havemissed

It's time for the semi-regular round-up of songs that appeared on the internet this week, but didn't warrant a blog post of their own because I am lazy.

1) Britney Spears - Ooh La La
A not-particularly-good video for a not-particularly-good song from the Smurfs 2 Soundtrack. Britney's kids are cute, though, and her "surprised face" is priceless.



2) Justin Timberlake - Take Back The Night
Earlier this week, Justin's 20/20 Experience broke 2m sales in the US - so now it's time to launch phase II.  Take Back The Night is the first single from 20/20 Volume 2, which is due in September. Sounding like an Off The Wall bonus track, it's light on it's feet and heavy on the brass. 



3) Miguel ft Jessie Ware - Adorn (Remix)
Miguel's Adorn is the slow jam of the year. And now it has added Jessie Ware. What's not to love?

It was a total pleasure working with @MiguelUnlimited on his already perfect 'Adorn'. Feel like the luckiest girl in the world x

— Jessie Ware (@Jessie_Ware) July 10, 2013

4) The xx - Sunset (Jamie xx edit)
Jamie xx's remix of his own single is a masterpiece in (you guessed it) pared-down sadtronica. The video's cheap but lovely, syncing the song to an old French TV show. Anyone know who the artist in the original video is?


5) Regina Spektor - You've Got Time
Regina has recorded the theme song for the TV show Orange Is The New Black, which is the latest series from the team behind Weeds. Based on Piper Kerman's prison memoirs, the first 13-episode season was dumped onto Netflix yesterday. Creator Jenji Kohan says she "listened to Regina's albums obsessively while writing the series" and asked her to compose the theme tune. She did, and here it is.



6) Mr Hudson - Fred Astaire
After his Big Kids project failed to take off, Mr Hudson is back as a solo act, and his voice is as captivating as ever. Fred Astaire is a classic, stylish soul groove but, irritatingly, video director Rankin keeps interrupting it for snatches of dialogue. NB: Contains bottoms.


7) Rhye - The Fall (live on Jimmy Kimmel)
This is simply beautiful.

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Songs you may have missed: Glastonbury edition

So, a few new tunes cropped up during Glastonbury - which means that at least two music industry PRs weren't in Somerset over the weekend. Or maybe that the interns got left in charge of the YouTube password for a couple of days. Either way, here's what we missed.

1) Franz Ferdinand - Right Action
Franz Ferdinand are a band who seem chronically incapable of finding a new sound. Right Action has the same scratchy riffs and laconic lyrics of Holiday from the band's first album. But, after four years away, it sounds fresh again. Expect to see them relegated from Radio 1 to 6 Music, though.




2) Robin Thicke - Give It 2 U
Hey, ladies, here's the follow-up to the sex pest anthem of the summer. Robin is no more enlightened than last time round. "Girl, I got a big dick for you," he sings. What a charmer.




3) AlunaGeorge - Bad Idea
At the end of this radio rip, Lauren Laverne says of AlunaGeorge: "I remember we had them in for a session after just releasing one single. I was like, 'how hard can it be? Just do that 10 times and then you've got your album'. I said it ironically, but they sort of have just done that".

Well, that's massively uncharitable, given how adventurous the band have been with their R&B template. This song, a b-side to the re-released I Know You Like It, ups the tempo and goes for a more frothy vibe than the band have pursued in the past. I really like it.




4) Britney Spears - Ooh La La
A song from the Smurfs 2 soundtrack. Every bit as terrible as you'd imagine.




5) The Staves - Icarus
Look, I'm not going to stop droning on about how brilliant The Staves are until you all agree with me. So why not just submit to their charms now and get it over with? Icarus is taken from the special edition of their album Dead And Born And Grown, which comes out on 15th July. And this video finds the Stavely-Taylor sisters traipsing around the world with an acoustic guitar and a lot of hair, doing singing and stuff. Gorgeous.




6) Duke Dumont ft MNEK - Hold On
The follow-up to chart-bothering club classic 100% is an altogether darker affair. Guest vocalist MNEK drowns in echo as he pleads "don't let go of what we had" over a late-night house groove with spooky "WooOOOooOOooh it's a ghost" backing vocals. It's absolutely gorgeous.





7) Gallant - If It Hurts
NYC Newcomer Gallant has the sugar-sweet vocals of D'Angelo, but backs them up with muted indie guitars and scrunched up drum loops. He's been working with William Orbit and Felix Snow - who handles production duties on his new single, If It Hurts. If you like this, you should also check out his magnificent cover of Ke$ha's Die Young on Youtube.

Phew! That's quite the run-down. Stay tuned for more.

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Seven awful screenshots from will.i.am's awful new single with Britney Spears

The song is awful. The lyrics are awful. Britney's fake British accent is awful. The video is awful. There is nothing about this song that isn't 100% rancid.

Let's take a look at some stills from the video, which really drive home the aggressive awfulness of the entire enterprise.

Oh look everyone, will.i.am is the King. The King of crap.

If the pop career ever goes down the dumper, at least Britney is guaranteed work as a magician's assistant.

Someone went to all the trouble of hooking a typewriter up to an iPad and this is the first thing they wrote? I'd have expected "tits" at the very least.

The back of Will’s skull is a glitter ball. The glitter ball is on fire. Frankly, I’m not drunk enough to decipher this complex visual imagery.

This is the bit where Will takes one of Britney's most iconic, defiant lyrics and smashes its kneecaps in with a hammer.

Did you know that will.i.am has a range of iPhone accessories? Well, you do now.

Oh, I give up.

Here is the song. Don't say you haven't been warned.

Will.i.am ft Britney Spears - Scream and Shout

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Discopop Directory top 10 singles of 2011

It's that time of year again... As usual, the top 10 is dictated by my iTunes play count so I can't pretend I was cool and listening to Gil Scott-Heron all year, because I wasn't. It was this instead.

10)Nicola Roberts - Beat Of My Drum

One thing we learned this year is that, if you want the lead single from your album to be a gargantuan chart hit, you shouldn't get Diplo to produce it. Beyoncé flopped with Run The World (Girls), but turned things around with her mega-spectacular Glastonbury performance. Nicola Roberts had to make do with T4 On The Beach - where someone hit her on the head with a beach ball. Poor Nicola





9) Britney Spears - 'Til The World Ends

In which the lyrics of an REM song were set to the refrain of Baltimore's Tarzan Boy. Apocalypse Wow.





8) Adele - Someone Like You

A lady, a piano, a broken heart, a televised tear, a sales phenomenon, a modern classic. Of all the songs in the top 10, Someone Like You has the most passionate, believable vocal. Why isn't it higher? Because I can't shake the feeling that the key line: "I had hoped you'd see my face and that you'd be reminded that for me it isn't over" simply doesn't scan.





7) Chase & Status ft Liam Bailey - Blind Faith

You simply can't go wrong by sampling Loleatta Holloway's Love Sensation and, in the year that she died, Chase And Status brought her disco classic bang up to date. Liam Bailey must have two-ton balls of steel, though. A total newcomer, he does all the vocal heavy lifting, ramping up the tension in the bridge so that Holloway's lines work as a pressure-release, arms-in-the-sky, hugging-complete-strangers moment. An absolute corker.





6)The Pierces - Glorious

I'm a sucker for a sun-kissed harmony, and this song is buckling under the weight of them. The middle 8 section - "I felt his hand today / Across my shoulder, I kneeled down to pray" - where the Pierce sisters go all coquettish and ethereal makes my spine tingle. A vain attempt to work out the intricacies of their pitching is what propelled this song into the top 10.

But I hadn't realised until recently that Glorious is a cover of an obscure 2007 single by US band The Levy. The original is a bit mopey, this is almost perfect.





5)SBTRKT ft Little Dragon - Wildfire

If Wildfire doesn't make your bottom move, then your bottom is malfunctioning.





4) Metronomy - The Bay

I swear that The Bay's synth riff intro is a tribute to Abba's Money Money Money (distressingly, if you type Money Money Money into YouTube, the second result is Jessie J's Price Tag, a song that wasn't even within sniffing distance of this list).

The track is probably the most explicit of the "I LOVE TORQUAY" songs on Metronomy's album about how much they love Torquay, which is really quite a lot. Crammed full of hooks and a strutting, sinewy bassline, it was also the best single they released in 2011. Even the remixes were superb: In particular Erol Alkan's extended version and the Cloud Control reworking, which took Joseph Mount's London-Paris-Tokyo lyrics and turned them into an existential techno travel advert.

The video, the band admitted, was a parody of Will Smith's Miami, filmed in England's sunny Torbay. Is there anything about this song that isn't incredible?





3) Lana Del Rey - Video Games

Gloomy and sexy like a David Lynch film, this song is simply beautiful.





2) Lykke Li - Sadness Is A Blessing

Gloomy and sexy like a David Lynch film, this song is simply beautiful.





1) Adele - Rolling In The Deep

Adele's producer Paul Epworth was interviewed on posh-nobs radio show Front Row last week, and talked about the making of Rolling In The Deep... Adele came to him with the opening line "There's a fire, starting in my heart" and they knocked out the song in an afternoon. It's an amazing piece of work - at once elemental, powerful and vulnerable.

Epworth deserves as much credit as Adele. There's a breath-stopping moment in the interview where he picks up the guitar he used on the track and chops out those muted opening chords. Even on a tinny broadcast microphone, it sounds almost like the recorded version, which goes to show how simple and clean his recordings are. Adele's writing and singing on 21 is fantastic, but its the production makes them leap out of your speakers like a panther. A big ginger panther with a filthy laugh. Song of the year.



Honourable mentions (aka "why didn't I listen to this as much as I thought I did?"): Robyn - Call Your Girlfriend / Florence & The Machine - Shake It Out / Lykke Li - I Follow Rivers / Michael Kiwanuka - Tell Me A Tale / Ronika - Forget Yourself / Kanye West - All The Lights / Emeli Sandé - Heaven / Beyoncé - 1+1 / Aloe Blacc - I Need A Dollar / Sleigh Bells - Rill Rill / Rizzle Kicks - Down With The Trumpets / Foster The People - Call It What You Want / Bombay Bicycle Club - Shuffle

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That Britney video in full

Just a quick update from yesterday's post... Here is the official video for Britney Spears' Criminal in its entirety.

Utterly bonkers.

Britney Spears - Criminal

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Britney's Criminal video

The video for Britney Spears' new single Criminal is brilliantly ludicrous. Here is a brief synopsis of the plot:

1) Britney's comedy English boyfriend slaps her at a party.

2) Another English man, but this time with tattoos and a motorbike (oooh, dangerous), comes to Britney's rescue.

3) Britney kicks her boyfriend's nadgers right up into his mouth and makes off on the motorbike.

4) Britney has steamy sex with tattoo man.

5) Oh no! There is a gun in his apartment.

6) A theft is committed with the gun.

7) The police track down Britney and her lover and, without provocation, shoot them dead for over a minute.

8) Or do they?



Despite a reliance on filmic cliché and the fact that it is dangerously unthethered from reality, this video has a credits sequence that proudly boasts: "Story by Britney Spears and Chris Marrs Piliero".

Sadly, the video is going up and down from YouTube like a yo-yo, so we have created our own behind-the-scenes "documentary" of how the finer points of the storyline were thrashed out on set.



None of the characters or situations depicted in this video are based on real events or people. Obviously.

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Britney's new video: Pros and cons

Britney Spears has a chequered history when it comes to videos. For every technicolor dance spectacular (Toxic), there's a drab, soul-less dirge (Gimme More). The worst ones always seem to feature Britney "cutting loose" and "being herself" in "the club" - cf the forced jollity of Do Somethin'.

Her latest single is I Wanna Go and it falls directly between these two stools, causing some nasty bruising to the cocyx. Here's a breakdown:

FOR	AGAINST
Totally unnecessary swearing	Britney "acting"
Thriller reference	Terminator reference
The bit with the milk	The bit with the paparazzi
Britney pretending to whistle	Tedious "sexy" lyrics
Nice bikini	It was all a dream

Basically, it's 50% brilliant and 50% "eh?". Watch below...

Britney Spears - I Wanna Go

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A song and dance from Britney Spears

Britney has finally remembered to release the "dance edit" of her new video, Til The World Ends.

It has been clear for a while now that Ms Spears isn't the dancer she once was, and this video was presumably supposed to combat such claims. It doesn't quite succeed (the lacklustre handclaps around the 1'50" mark are especially dire). But I think we're all forgetting one important thing here: Britney Spears has two children, and is merely fulfilling her genetic destiny by dancing like your mum.

Although if my mum went out dressed like this, I might pretend to have been orphaned in a terrible accident.


Britney Spears - Til The World Ends (Dance Edit)

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Britney Spears' totally finished videogram

That didn't take long, did it? 24 hours after the trailer, Britney's released the full video for Til The World Ends. Here's a still.

"Important" observations about this image

1) Britney has employed an old Hollywood trick called forcing focus. Just before the camera rolled, she pointed at the ceiling and said "look everyone, a spider". Result: Everyone except Britney is staring out of frame, and she becomes the main subject of the shot. Genius.

2) Britney has been forced to wear gay Spider-Man's cast-offs.

Here is the video "in full".

Britney Spears - Til The World Ends


According to choreographer Brian Friedman says another edit, which he calls "a full dance version" will be out soon. That should be interesting, given Popjustice's accurate observation that the director has been forced to cut around Britney's ropey dancing in the original.

(NB: Just noticed that Popjustice took a screengrab of the same part of the video as I did. How strange is that?)

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