The Singles Jukebox

I can’t be the only person who thought she sang “Can’t control the bleed,” can I?

[Video][Website]
[6.71]

Matthew Harris: I have Femme Fatale, but the forty times I heard this song out of the album’s context in bars and clubs, I thought it was a remix of “Till the World Ends.” Like the rest of our beloved Fembot’s latest album, it’s pretty much just digitally chipped vocals and pulsing static, as if we were trying to listen to a skipping …Baby One More Time CD through a futuristic headache.
[7]

Chuck Eddy: Femme Fatale has grown on me, but I still appreciate it more than I actually want to listen to it. Not sure why that is. Just about every track, hits included, has something going for it — bits and pieces here and there — but I’ve yet to find a single track that I’m obsessed with, that I want to regularly play from start to finish. As with a bunch, I like how this one makes uncontrollable libido cute, silly, maybe even funny (the part where Brit can’t keep hands above the blanket). And I enjoy the whistling and stuttering and self-scolding. So I absolutely approve of it. Just don’t really need to hear it.
[7]

Anthony Easton: I am on the fence about this: it’s forced, confused, and rote, but on the edge of breaking out into something quite difficult and quite haunting — in fact, in the Derridan sense of hauntology, this has ghosts of actual texts (esp. “Lucky”) and of para-texts but they are separated and smoothed over. “Toxic” was on the edge of a break down; has she written anything about the effects post-breakdown?
[7]

Edward Okulicz: One of Femme Fatale‘s most instant earworms, the robot frog voice accompanied by bassy pulses, hooky whistling and skittish four to the floor beats. Really, it’s a generic club number, but elevated to the level of a good one by Brit’s lustful reading and the stuttered hook of the chorus, which might be the most catchy creation in a Britney single since “Toxic.” 
[8]

Zach Lyon: I was never one for “Young Folks,” so this is maybe the first song since, er, Juelz Santana, that’s really been made for me by a whistle. The pittering snares that follow it bother the hell out of me, though. And this all but guarantees that the similar and much better “How I Roll” will never be released for radio play.
[7]

Michaela Drapes: Now, this is a whistled hook — which, for the record, reminds me of Twisted Nerve and Air’s “Alpha Beta Gaga” more than anything else — a little creepy, I admit. And this is also the Britney (I think) we all want to see: gleefully naughty and insouciant (she does it so well!), which is downright quaint. Turns out this one’s a rather necessary antidote to all the overwrought, unfun bombast littering the charts of late.
[9]

Katherine St Asaph: I can’t help hearing “I Wanna Go” as a mirror of “Runaway” by Ladytron, whose synth hook Max and Co. rip off. (They also rip off two separate Ace of Base songs, but there’s no story in that.) One song’s the same chirp-tease Britney’s been singing since “Oops! I Did It Again”; one’s a heavy sigh by someone who’s shuttled or shuttles herself — it’s never clear — between days and beds, someone who thinks everyone wants to kill the unicorn (symbolism!); one’s a dream and a retcon; one’s a nightmare and inescapable. Complete coincidence, of course, but it fits 2011 Britney’s life as eerily as Sucker Punch.
[6]

Alfred Soto: Shame on her for baiting us with the catchiest whistle in years attached to one of her catchiest bridges ever. The dull computerized thud matches Britney’s affectless compu-groan.
[7]

Al Shipley: The goofy little pre-chorus with the high note hiccups and whistling, more than the forced comedy of the video, almost makes this stab through the hazy fog that increasingly surrounds every Britney song. But that digital duck voice and thousand yard stare delivery make it just as impenetrable and mind-numbing as the rest.
[4]

Pete Baran: It’s interesting that the video for “I Wanna Go” has had such an impact, because it seems to be visually saying much of the stuff that Blackout said musically. The idea of a strong but v. clean Britney saying “Fuck you” to the media is clearly a construct, but one which, here, posits a Britney in control of her career. Musically, it’s a different story: she has never sounded less Britney. Or at least she sounds unlike Blackout Britney, whose distortions and darkness were a perfect exploration of her state of mind (by others), and you can’t help but think that this is one of the first times Britney seems to be making a song which sounds exactly like a newer, younger artist. She makes a good, if better, fist at Ke$ha, but it’s a bit like the Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles of pop.
[7]

Hazel Robinson: Oh, you know what, I had mistaken this for another masturbation anthem (which the lyrics half support and half don’t, admittedly) but that is one of the best goddamned videos I’ve seen in years and this is the Singles Jukebox, not the “thinking of it in the context of the album” playthrough. If you haven’t worked out that Britney’s doing big Eurodance tracks that mostly should’ve been handed to Rihanna post-“Only Girl” (switching ’round the majority of the tracks on Loud and Femme Fatale would’ve done wonders for both) then well, there’s your heads up; but she’s elevated this one to a complete and total stormer, and fair play to her.
[8]

Ian Mathers: I just want to get through the song quickly (pretty good, nice use of digital voice processing as hook, not as great as “Till the World Ends”), because Jesus, that video. Sure, I laughed at Crossroads 2: Cross Harder, but, in general, the thing swerves from being ingratiatingly self-aware to annoyingly self-aware and back so many times that I can’t decide whether I love it or hate it. The opening press conference! The milk! The robot paparazzi! Flashing a kid! Britney’s relaxed and surprisingly funny performance throughout! Did I mention Crossroads 2: Cross Harder? I think it’s the ending homage to “Thriller” that decided me; the video here is like the opposite to “Howlin’ for You,” turning an okay song into genius. The mark’s for the song, though.
[7]

Jer Fairall: Not quite the sanctimonious piece of shit the video is, taking aim at the very paparazzi that Britney would likely no longer exist at this point without, but a self-pitying defence of the bad behaviour that has kept getting her ink while her records become increasingly eclipsed by Gaga, et al. Otherwise, what is there really left to say about this? A competent yet indistinct dance track which its singer’s weak little voice fails to raise to the boiling point a more skilled vocalist may have and lyrics crafted to feed her aching need to elicit look-at-me provocation. Oh, there’s also some whistling. 
[3]

Jonathan Bradley: The whistled hook provides the levity Britney will — can? — not. For a song that expresses intention and direction in its title, there’s a cold dearth of either in its streamlined thump. “Shame on me,” Spears whines, “to need release,” but the mortification doesn’t sound as if it springs from tamped down desire or that it might signal imminent catharsis. It’s a nagging worry, a sense that something, somewhere is out of whack, and will not be put right. The gapped hook is a Ke$ha swipe, but where Ke$ha would blow the chorus into a glittery resolution — and as Spears did on the Ke$ha-assisted “Till the World Ends” — “I Wanna Go” never crests. The tune’s static pulse never allows it to, bullying Britney through the song. She wants to go, but she never gets there.
[7]