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Vulture: How Britney Spears and Carly Rae Jepsen Stay Relevant

Maryy

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Maryy

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Britney's parts:

New releases yesterday from Britney Spears and Carly Rae Jepsen illustrate ways to hold court outside of the pomp and circumstance that pop regency demands.

 

Britney Spears is not spoken of with the hushed respect reserved for pop royalty, but she’s had a No. 1 single in the ’90s, ’00s, and ’10s, giving the lie to the notion of a short shelf life for stars of late ’90s bubblegum pop. Her only peers in that respect are Justin Timberlake and Christina Aguilera, fellow Mickey Mouse Club alumni whose singing careers outlived the death of TRL and the birth of digital piracy.

 

Now, Spears lacks both Timberlake’s rep as a capable songwriter and a powerhouse voice like Aguilera’s. What keeps her afloat is tenacity, a network of diehards, and a keen sense of what’s new and hot. Her albums don’t always hit the mark, but they always notch a hit. But even amid the success of 2013’s goofy, charming “Work *****,” Spears’s last album, Britney Jean, garnered negative reviews and floundering sales. A two-year Vegas residency following its release gave rise to suspicion that the Louisiana singer was ready to embrace a future as a nostalgia revue.

 

This summer, Spears’s return was hinted at over a tantalizing network of teaser trailers and surprise late-night appearances. In July, she sneakily used an ad for a new Kohl’s exclusive fragrance as a ruse to release the new single “Private Show.” Weeks later, she snuck into Jimmy Kimmel’s bedroom with a troupe of male dancers to wake him up by performing the woozy new G-Eazy duet “Make Me…” for a prank segment on his show. The hijinx helped: The song peaked at No. 17. Her new album, Glory, is out now, and its team of collaborators is savvy: Lady Gaga’s Artpop cohort Nick Monson, Norwegian electronic beatsmith Cashmere Cat, rising Swedish writer-producer duo Mattman & Robin, and T-Pain associate Young Fyre all provide sounds that match the triumph of the album title. “Just Luv Me” is a tropical house bop that’ll crush at radio when it’s ready. Spears tiptoes around her upper register for “Private Show” and comes away with a confident, soulful performance. The reward for the singer’s care in slipping out of her comfort zone while keeping her sights trained on radio is that Glory is one of her best outings in nearly a decade.

 

(...)

 

Britney Spears’s gravity-defying hit parade and Carly Rae Jepsen’s refusal to go out as a one-hit wonder are anomalies unique to the current state of the music industry. Glory made clever use of viral marketing to rekindle excitement in and outside of Spears’s fan base in the wake of worries she’d run out of steam. Emotion: Side B maintains Carly Rae Jepsen’s excellent batting average while zeroing in on an aesthetic that endears her to an audience that, yes, is smaller than the one she played to in her commercial peak but which seems interested in Jepsen the artist, not Jepsen the person who sang “Call Me Maybe.”

 

full article here -> http://www.vulture.com/2016/08/how-spears-and-jepsen-stay-relevant.html

 

i don't really get the comparison, tho... i've never heard about Jepsen since Call Me Maybe. :jackk:

DEAD @ them saying that X-Tina Aguilera is in the same line w/ Britney, when it comes to hits and success :gloria:

but sle :explainlol:

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laurelhenessy Apprentice

laurelhenessy

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You'll be surprised that in some circles, Carly Rae Jepsen is considered a pop genius, the last vanguard of 'real pop music' that has been lacking in recent releases.

A lot of artists have already moved away from pop, going for a more electronic, EDM-infused urban-pop sound. In the 2000s, it was all about R&B hiphop-infused pop music (thanks to Britney's ITZ and Blackout.) No one talks about JT in those terms even though he and Britney did the same thing almost at the same time. It was Britney's music that influenced fellow pop artists, specifically female artists, to pursue a more urban sound while most male artists are already doing the same thing even before JT came into the picture.

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