Music Monday #20 The Greatest Hits My Prerogative by Britney Spears

I mentioned Britney Spears in the previous post in this series so it seems like a fitting moment to include the only Britney album that will appear on this list because once more if I included every album of hers that I would like then this list would have to be much longer than 52 entries.  I've gone for yet another greatest hits album, this time 'The Greatest Hits: My Prerogative' because it covers pretty much everything I want to include from her career up until that point.

My Prerogative was released in 2004, a year I have already covered in depth to this point so I'll focus more on the music as you already have the context.  For those of you lucky enough to know my personal email address it might not come as much surprise that one of my favourite tracks on the album is 'Toxic' a song I love if not for anything more than the lyrics, in particular "The taste of your lips, I'm on a ride, You're toxic I'm slippin' under, With a taste of a poison paradise" - this should make sense to you by now if you've been reading these posts in series, it refers to the toxic relationships and the fact that we know certain people and situations are bad for us and still we indulge because the rush of the ride and the promise is enough even though we know the promise is never kept.

'Me Against The Music' saw Britney collaborate with Madonna which brought two idols for me together and produced a track that exemplifies my relationship with Music and the desire to get lost in it and forget the rest of the world.  By now I've probably exhausted the assertion that I turn to Music in life so much, my taste can seem sporadic and lacking structure but when you understand the underlying narrative and begin to make the connections that exist between artists you start to see where the sense lies and things don't look that sporadic upon closer inspection; that theme of organised chaos is something that has remained almost constant in my life for as long as I can remember, to me perfect order is perfect chaos, and conversely perfect chaos is perfect order.  Life is the balancing act between the two, some people try to organise the world and stabilise it, whilst others try to disorganise it and destabilise it.

I own a limited edition of the album which includes a bonus disc that was initially only released in Japan, this edition includes the Valentin remix of 'Everytime' which was released in the US on the 'B In The Mix' remixes album, this track in particular is the most EDM heavy remix of Everytime that I have found and I love it.  The original track in itself is also a favourite but this remix in particular holds a special place because it brings together so much of what I like in one track.  I still listen to it at full volume when I want to drowned out the world. 

What might be sacrilege to some people to say, I regard Britney Spears as a recording artist and a dance, in that she does one or the other, I don't expect a live vocal performance from her.  I know the criticism people have of her and her performances where she has lip-synced, I honestly don't care.  When I listen to her music I am listening to a recording, as is the case with every artist on this list.  There are only a handful of artists in my music library that I would expect to perform in person just as good if not better than they did when they recorded the albums but that's just opinion I know people have different motivations and will disagree with it.  Britney remains one of the most successful pop artists of my generation and no amount of criticism is going to change that fact.

This touches on another side of the music industry though which I have somewhat of an aversion to, and that is the idea of musical politics.  There are fans of some artists that are so devoted to them it could be construed as a cult.  Britney is one of those artists, in fact there are those who refer to her tongue in cheek as "Godney" or "The Holy Spearit" - that's devotion.  Personally there's never been an artist I was that devoted to and I hope there never will be.  Each to their own, but this tribalism does lead to some pretty vicious fighting between fandoms which I've written about in the past in one of the regular posts on this blog, my view remains the same, any belief that cannot be questioned isn't a belief it's dogma, and any individual who is held as someone who can do no wrong no matter what they do is inspiring a cult of personality.  I know for commercial success this is something most artists turn a blind eye to and others encourage because it drives consumption and leads to free advertising and promotion in the end, none of which I agree with.

I avoid politics in the music industry largely by choosing not to follow individual artists or groups too closely, there are only a handful of creators whose creations I genuinely enjoy who I actually follow on social media and take an active interest in their lives, for the rest for the most part I am quite happy to live in ignorance, I'd rather separate the art from the artist because I have been burned a few too many times when I have enjoyed and artist and their work only to find out they're actually quite a cunt in person which completely ruins the connection and the enjoyment that I got from what they created.  There are few exceptions to this rule, cases where I don't want to indirectly fund certain organisations - which is why for instance I will never buy a Movie with Tom Cruise in it, but if I tried to maintain a list of every person who ever espoused a view that pissed me off and boycotted them and everything associated with them I wouldn't have much left in this life to find enjoyment from.  The reality is through the idea that you can connect yourself to any other living human through 6 degrees of separation or less, if you were to remove certain people from your world and those associated with them, you'd knock out quite a sizeable chunk of the population in the process and depending on how deep you go you might knock out the whole world.

This post took a turn.