It can be hard to live up to a legacy. If you have a famous parent, people expect you to achieve the same level of fame. It's even harder to live up to a legacy if that legacy is your own.
Britney Spears didn't have famous parents. Her mom taught and her dad cooked. She forged her own legacy through hard work and determination. Her debut album and single both went #1. Her followup sold 1.3 million copies in its first week of release, a record that still stands. There's only one problem with being that good: you can only be that good for so long.
Every album after her second was successful. All but one reached #1. But because she couldn't top her second album, people wondered if she was finished. In fact, since her second album came out in 2000, people have been wondering if she was finished for 13 years.
No matter how many albums she sold, and she sold plenty given the nature of the music business, critics couldn't help but point out how each album after her second sold less and less. Even though one million here and a couple million there is pretty impressive, it wasn't 10 and 20 million like her first two albums. Therefore, something had to give. Either Britney really was finished or people would just have to accept that she'd never be able to top her first two albums.
If you accept the music for what it is, and not worry about how much it sells, you can really enjoy it. Britney knows that. If Britney wanted to sell millions of records, if that was her only goal, she would have simply copied the popular trends. Instead, she stayed ahead of the game: on Blackout she introduced EDM and dubstep-style music to the masses. When that sound got played out, she went in a different direction for Circus. A couple years later, Britney brought that sound back, even harder, with Femme Fatale.
It's hard to constantly stay ahead of the trends, though. You can only push music so far before you push it off the cliff. At some point Britney realized that fact. Therefore, she had to find another way to stay creative and ahead of her peers. What did she do? She created Britney Jean.
The mash-up has become very popular over the past decade. Taking two styles and combining them has worked for Jay Z and Linkin Park. It also works for Britney. While Britney Jean doesn't mash-up two different music styles, it mashes up two ideas: dance songs and personal songs.
Every pop artist has in their back pocket the treacly ballad designed to make you weep or to make you feel. They also have uptempo tracks designed to get you moving. Britney Jean gives you both, minus the treacly part. There are no tender weepy ballads here. No Everytime. What Britney has given us are thoughtful, even poignant songs about love and heartache that just happen to be set to a beat you can dance to.
She could have mailed this effort in. She didn't have to co-write every track on the album. But she realized something: if she wanted to continue to have success, she had to evolve. The dance-floor diva had to let people see behind the curtain. She may not reveal everything - a good magician never does - but she's pulled back the curtain to give us lessors a sneak peak.
Perfume is the story of a woman who's afraid her boyfriend still has feelings for an ex. She may not name names, but this is personal. Alien let's us know that Britney wants to go home. She's never belonged in Hollywood, and now she's finally telling us. In Passenger, Britney reveals that she's finally ready to let someone else take the wheel. Maybe it's Jesus, maybe it's not, but it's from her heart.
Britney gets so personal on this record that she even duets with her sister. They sing about drinking wine and chilling out. I know, Britney doesn't drink. But don't look at the wine as anything other than a metaphor. Perhaps Britney is now finally ready to relax. I don't know if she'll ever get to go "home" - she is a celebrity, after all, and the camera never disappears - but if she's comfortable enough to work with her sister, maybe she can turn Hollywood into home.
Britney's been a loner. Britney Jean reflects that fact. She has love now, though, thanks to her boyfriend and her children. Maybe on a future record, she could include this lyric:
I was happy being alone until I got lonely/Now I just wanna spend my life with you
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