The Singles Jukebox

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[6.75]Edward Okulicz: So here’s something we haven’t heard in a while — Britney sounding like she is aware of what she’s doing and what she’s singing, being coherent and putting on a well-emoted performance (though straining the word “natural” to half-rhyme with “call” is weird) and doing so over an actually really good song. Standard-issue electro throb is found everywhere you listen these days, but the piano sounds are raindrops, or teardrops or both and give the song a weird intimacy on the verses and the swirling strings create the appropriate drama over the chorus. This is a finely crafted song, rather than the germ of an idea of one like “Work Bitch!”
[8]

Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: Listening to “Perfume” brought two waves of surprise: Is that Britney Spears’s voice? Wait, what is Britney Spears’s voice? Long before her penchant for accent pageantry kicked in, she seemed like a quasi-roboticised presence. She could appear on a track and legitimise its existence, good or bad, without ever leaving a trace of who Spears is. There are hints of who she might be: someone who yells “stop!”, an occasional quiver in her jutted delivery, someone who finds joy in her own “bitch” catchphrase. She seems an enigmatic performer; perhaps she’s merely a mechanical one who gained a hazy allure with the passage of time. “Perfume” is a good-enough second-single promo run, and Spears legitimises the song’s existence simply by being there. It’s a song that revolves around making your mark, which is plenty ironic: where is the imprint that makes this a distinctly Spears record? Forget the imprint, at this point we should know: where and what is the voice?
[6]

Katherine St Asaph: Britney gets a man, gets insecure, sprays perfume everywhere like holy water for her demons. It’s a soap opera, in that its dramatics exist to sell beauty products; but hey, at least perfume-as-storyboard-prop makes for a semi-believable story. (What’s even left? “I hope she uses my app?”) If Britney wants to strew Britney Jean with self-references (this go-round: “3”), she’s at the point in her career for that and I’m fine with it. If will.i.am wants to compose her homecoming-show piano cues, I am also fine with that. And I’m definitely fine with a Britney song about having to be the cool girlfriend, where “cool” means “completely nonchalant, outwardly and in, about the prospect of her boyfriend holding a torch for and/or affair with his ex.” Those aren’t the problem. The problem is Sia. Everyone follows guide vocals and Britney follows everyone’s guide vocals, but Sia’s codified vocal quirks and sincerity do not mix. If “I try to ACT! NATCH! RULL!” is a joke, it’s not a very good one, and when Britney gets to “about muheeee” it’s so exactly like “Diamonds” that all immersion is off. If anything, the metaphor doesn’t go far enough — a good scent doesn’t introduce bum notes.
[3]

Isabel Cole: I was curious about where Sia’s Twitter hype about Britney’s vocal on their collaboration would lead, and I’ll admit what we got — a return to the huskiness of her early days — was a fantasy of mine I hadn’t expected to see fulfilled. If she’s not totally in control of those long notes, that’s okay: this song takes place in a spiritual midnight (I can hardly believe the personal gift of getting to sing along with Britney about how I hate myself and I feel crazy), her heart peeking out from where it’s been hidden behind the hazy glitz of a circus. There’s a radiance, familiar but real, in the swoony strings, and a cosmic sparkle to those piano high notes. I’ve seen tut-tutting about the definite Sia-ness running through each twist of the vocal line, but I’ve never minded the creative bleed-through that sometimes accompanies collaboration — after all, no woman is an island.
[8]

Jonathan Bradley: My initial responses to this: 1) Oh no, Britney’s fallen into the K(aty Perry)-hole; and 2) Could “Perfume” be the 2013 “Everytime”? Neither heuristic is really accurate, but I’m happy to be increasingly feeling that the latter impulse gestures better at this song’s strengths. Despite the Perryian blandishment that is the introductory pulse, the chorus ushers Spears into places much weirder and more emotionally precarious. She suspects her man has been cheating, and her response is both animalistic and helpless: “I’m going to mark my territory … I hope she smells my perfume.” Even while it’s emotionally devastating, it’s capitalistically assured: we who sing along can imagine being cuckolded, but even if we have a scent we habitually use, few of us have our name on the product. There are some lines that turn subtext too clearly into text (“I wanna fill the room when she’s in it with you”), but pop hasn’t captured the sound of someone dying inside quite so sharply in a long while.
[8]

Brad Shoup: There’s the staccato sweep of recent Katy Perry, but in the service of this story it nags, no pejorative. We all know Spears’ pipes won’t blow your house down. But she’s catching all over the track, insta-shifting between monologue and conversation, doubling back on accusations, refusing to place an ultimatum. (Plus I admire her guts in syncing a fragrance launch with the release of a single that treats the use of perfume as a passive-aggressive power play.) The problem is the fiberglass track: insectoid acoustic upstrokes, chintzy crashes on every beat in the chorus. I’m making the unsafe assumption that those are the handiwork of will.i.am and Keith Harris, and that the midpoint string flourish — somewhere between filmi and Shania’s blue Up! disc — comes from Chris Braide. Regardless, it’s Britney’s tremendous performance that puts this over.
[7]

Anthony Easton: I was worried Britney wouldn’t be able to perform such acts of tender heartbreak. This gets really close to the heights of “Lucky.” It’s also delightfully narcissistic — not only the lyrics, which on the surface would seem spoiled and bitchy, but for the spun-sugar fragility of the production. Something so light carrying something so heavy — there is something hyper self-aware of her own skills there.
[8]

Alfred Soto: Lower register! Alluding to a No Doubt song from 2000! Introspective Britney is most convincing in dance tracks, but she forces the pathos with that odd refrain and the enjambment “Sometimes it feels like/three.”
[7]

Juana Giaimo: Although I’m glad Britney took a different direction for the second single from Britney Jean and, trying to be honest and sentimental, approached a jealousy drama. In this song she can’t be both. Maybe if the lyrics didn’t sound like a parody (“I hope she smells my perfume,” “I gotta mark my territory”) I would be able to believe her.
[5]

Scott Mildenhall: So far away but still so near, Britney is swept off by each chorus’ wave of crystalline electro, just about steadfast atop a sea of misery. It’s the sort of sound that tends to lend itself better to a female vocal — Robyn! — than male — Adam Levine! — and from the opening verse — “such a classic tale” — it’s clear she knows it’s a cliché. If there’s one thing worse than straightforward self-flagellation, it’s chiding yourself for being so obvious. Truth is, as much as it sounds like it here, no-one’s life is a movie. The strings’ uplift towards the end offers hope of a resolution, but by the time it’s over it’s clear that it’s going to take repeated listens.
[9]

Will Adams: The perfume’s journey in the chorus is a sight to behold. First, it’s used by Britney for self-pity as she sits and waits for her love. Then, it becomes a marker for her property. But by the end of the chorus, perfume is something Britney wants the other woman to smell (either to know that Britney knows, or to buy for herself; hard to tell). This overstuffed symbolism would make “Perfume” fun, were the song not weighted down by a clunky tempo and languid songwriting. (It takes four minutes to get across two verse-choruses!) I don’t know what strategy Britney and her team are going for here; playing it safe is never a good look.
[4]

Patrick St. Michel: About a decade ago, Britney Spears released “I’m Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman,” a clumsily titled ballad tied to a mostly forgettable film vehicle. It’s easily one of Spears’s worst songs, about as clear an example of a bad ballad possible – sluggish, over the top, the whole thing coming off like a by-committee number polished to an emotionless sheen. It’s everything “Perfume” isn’t. It is imperfect: at times Spears voice sounding just off and the music more on the glitchy side of things. It’s the perfect sonic match for a song where Spears is questioning a relationship, whether she’s just insecure about rekindled connections or in danger of losing something. It’s a nervous song, one that finds our central character trying to reassure her mind that everything’s OK by bathing her man in her preferred fragrance (and, if we believe that this new Spears album is truly her most personal yet, pretty funny to picture her showering the dude in her own branded perfume). Like “I’m Not A Girl,” it revolves around a universal human feeling. Unlike it, “Perfume” actually sounds human.
[8]