By Paul Holtz<\/p>\n
Ten years ago, Britney Spears was going through a rough time. With her head shaven, marriage broken, and her children out of her custody – she had nothing. But from that nothingness, she was able to create her most fully formed and acclaimed album <\/span>Blackout.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n To understand the album, the context of Spears\u2019 life must be understood first. Spears had just <\/span><\/p>\n gone through a messy divorce with the father to her children, Kevin Federline. This led to an intense custody battle between Federline and Spears. During this time, the paparazzi and tabloid media organizations publicly scrutinized every aspect of Spears\u2019 life. This caused for high security and shortened album development meetings while recording her album.<\/span><\/p>\n Blackout<\/span><\/i> is, to this day, Britney Spears\u2019 magnum opus. With singles like \u201cGimme More\u201d and \u201cBreak the Ice,\u201d Spears created a modern sound for pop music. No one as well-known as her has created a dark, moody, and enclosed club sound in the mainstream radio. <\/span>Blackout<\/span><\/i> was the trailblazer for today\u2019s new sound of radio music with urban influences and rap elements.<\/span><\/p>\n The album was produced mainly by Danja, the leading man to create this fresh, modernized pop sound. \u201cI didn\u2019t think about \u2018pop music\u2019 while creating <\/span>Blackout<\/span><\/i>,\u201d says Danja, \u201cI was into dance music and EDM at the time, but it wasn\u2019t mainstream yet.\u201d The top of the charts in 2007 consisted of pop music such as Nelly Furtado and had no essence of electronic music in it.<\/span><\/p>\n Danja continues, \u201cI was just going to a club in Miami a couple of times to see the atmosphere, everyone was bouncing around in a trance. I was like, that\u2019s it. If my music doesn\u2019t make you feel like that, what are we doing? I didn\u2019t think about anything other than bringing that essence to popular culture.\u201d This idea is held heavily throughout the album, with all of the album\u2019s songs having a pulsating club beat and low pitched synths in the background. <\/span><\/p>\n The main appeal of <\/span>Blackout<\/span><\/i> is the ease and fluidity of the songs. The tracklist consists of songs to dance to with no subliminal message or sincerity. As Spears once said in an interview, \u201cIt just wasn\u2019t so thought out. I just did what I felt and it worked. Sometimes less is more.\u201d This idea follows through to today\u2019s music, focusing less on sappy love ballads and more on a trivial, vapid upbeat song.<\/span><\/p>\n The songs could be played on the radio to this day. In 2007, the songs were just as fresh as they are today. Spears inadvertently was at the forefront of the evolving world of pop music for mainstream radio. The album, although overshadowed by Spears\u2019 publicized personal struggles, is the outlier in Spears\u2019 sticky sweet pop music. It showed that Spears was adapting to the new music world rather than resting on her laurels. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Paul Holtz Ten years ago, Britney Spears was going through a rough time. 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