not letting the bastards grind you down: a pop album study
how Blackout taught us to perform girlhood under surveillance
Fellow Substackians, let’s sit back and relax while I, Ariana Rose Fountain, take you back in time to the year 2007.
Britney Spears has just had a very public meltdown. She shaved her head. She smashed a car window with an umbrella. And everyone, everywhere, is asking: What the fuck is going on with Britney Spears?
From 2006 through 2007, Britney and Kevin Federline are deep in a custody battle. She’s in and out of treatment centers. She’s partying. She’s spiraling. And somehow—somehow—she’s also recording her fifth studio album: Blackout.
Like a phoenix, she rises from the ashes and gives us the grandmother of all pop albums. It can be argued (by me and my brother, specifically) that Blackout changed the landscape of pop music. Any song that got radio play from 2008 to 2012? Blackout reject.
The way producers speak about Britney’s work ethic is proof that she was hungry. She was eight months pregnant when recording Blackout. She resumed recording three weeks after giving birth. In OK! Magazine, Keri Hilson (writer of Gimme More) states:
“She was so focused. She gave 150 percent. She had already been recording throughout her pregnancy. We started in Vegas and continued in L.A. and worked at her house. When we worked at her house, she gave birth to Jayden and it was only three weeks after the baby was born. I mean, focused? I don’t know any other mother that would do that.”
I think the most heartbreaking thing is that her true love was obviously her career—and even that was stripped from her.
People don’t understand how vicious paparazzi were in the early 2000s. They would hide in your bushes to get a photo of you staring out your window. They would harass Britney, follow her around, and flash cameras in her face. Imagine: you have two kids by 26, you’ve filed for divorce, and now your bum of an ex-husband demands full custody to further add to your humiliation.
I think it takes an inner strength to have your life falling apart around you and still decide to keep going—to at least continue your career.
Truly, I wasn’t able to appreciate the genius of Blackout until I was a woman. As a girl, my first experience with Britney was watching Womanizer on VH1’s Top 20 Video Countdown. My second experience was my mother yelling at me for singing, “All the boys and all the girls are begging to If You Seek Amy” at the top of my lungs.
Blackout was the first album that made me feel like pop could be dark, messy, sexy, and genius—all at once. Britney was spiraling, and somehow, she made art out of it. Not polished, post-rehab, red-carpet art. Real art. Club music for girls who cry in the Uber home.
To conclude my tribute to the Queen of Pop, here’s my Blackout top 5 ranking:
Get Naked (I Got a Plan)
Why Should I Be Sad
Perfect Lover
Get Back
Radar
The rest of this album is classics, but if you tell me Gimme More is your favorite? That’s how I know you’re not really hearing her.
On Why Should I Be Sad, she literally opens with:
They couldn’t believe I did it
But I was so committed
And as the grandmother of all pop music from 2008 to the present day, here’s my list of albums HEAVILY inspired by Blackout:
The Fame by Lady Gaga (debate someone who cares)
Brat by Charli XCX (again, debate someone who cares)
Animal by Kesha
the artist DEV’s entire discography
the concept of The Cataracs
She didn’t just survive the breakdown. She turned it into a blueprint. Pop princesses don’t just recover—they remix.
If this made you feel something (or made you argue with your phone),
share it with a friend who watches award shows like it’s the Super Bowl.
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