Switched on Pop - Listening 2 Britney: I'm a Slave 4 U

Episode Date: March 15, 2022

In the first three years of Britney Spears’ pop music career, she released annual, consecutive albums. In 1999 we got Baby One More Time – its lead single was #5 on the Billboard year-end Hot 100 chart. In 2000, Oops… I Did It Again generated multiple hits. It’s eponymous single reached the #1 spot on Top 40 radio but only ascended to #55 on the year-end chart — the single was only released on vinyl, not CD, to boost album sales. Destiny's Child, Aaliyah and Janet all outperformed “Oops” on the year end chart. CD era marketing tactics aside, these artists were harbingers of what’s to come. The sound of pop music was changing and Britney needed to change with it. So in 2001, she released her self-titled album Britney. When we hit play on our metaphorical discman, the skittering beats of “I’m A Slave 4 U” suggests a significant musical transformation. Enter Spears’ Virginia Beach era.   Britney signaled that she’s moved beyond the Swedish-produced pop polish for an entirely new sonic identity just as she left behind the ingenue character for the first two albums. Working with the Virginia Beach-based duo The Neptunes (Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo), on “I’m A Slave 4 U” Spears evolved her sound to sit aside the the R&B sounds of her chart peers. Now with a soundtrack of off-kilter beats and harmonic dissonance, Spears needed a new vocal approach.  We hear this transformation in the opening line: “I know I may be young.” She begins with a breath and a half-whispered vocal. As she propels into the verse, we hear some of Britney's unforgettable tone: controlled vocal fry and rhythmic percussiveness. But there's no sign of the ballad-style singing from her earlier hits. Instead, she sing-speaks through the song. The melody is loose because as she says, “dancing’s what I love - now watch me.” This is not a sing-a-long, this is a dance song and the introduction of a whole new musical era for Spears.  Songs Discussed Britney Spears – I’m A Slave 4 U, Overprotected, Don’t Go Knockin’ on My Door, Overprotected (Darkchild Remix), Boys Destiny’s Child - Say My Name; Bills, Bills, Bills Aaliyah - Try Again Janet Jackson - Doesn’t Really Matter, Son Of A Fun Mase, Diddy - Lookin’ at Me Mystikal - Shake Ya Ass JAY-Z I Just Wanna Love U Nelly - Hot In Herre Selena Gomez, A$AP Rocky - Good For You Lorde - Ribs Kesha - Die Young FKA Twigs - Lights On Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. This is episode two of listening to Brittany. where we strip away everything you think you know about Britney Spears and instead focus on her music. In the first three years of Britney Spears' pop music career, she released annual consecutive albums. 99. We got maybe one more time.

2000. Oops, I did it again. We talked about both those records on our last episode. Indeed. And then in 2001, she puts out her self-titled album, Britney. And when we hit play on our metaphorical disc man, we hear a significant musical transformation from the get-go. Charlie, I have a feeling we're not in Stockholm anymore.

Definitely not. Brittany is leaving behind that iconic Swedish new jack swing mashup sound for an entirely new sonic identity. Just as she's leaving behind that ingenue character from her first two records, she is communicating something new here. Let's listen in close, starting with her voice, to understand what's evolved. Word. I know I may be young.

The very first thing we get is a breath. Yeah. I know I may be young. This sort of spoken, half-whispered vocal. ASMR before it's time. Yeah. And she continues that sound in the verse. This is curious.

Some of those sonic identifiers from our first episode are there. A little bit of vocal fry. A little vocal fry, a syllabic level attention to detail, rhythmic percussiveness. But it's almost a melodic. It's somewhere between sun and spoken. Indeed. This doesn't contain any of the diva vocal. This is something new.

Spreck Gezhang, as they would say in the Deutsch. What does that mean? Speech singing. Speech song. Huh. You can hear it in Arnold Schernberg's Piro Luner from 1911. Wait for real? Yeah.

Okay. Brittany is not as a melodic as the Schenberg, but yeah, when we listen to Britney's vocal isolated, we hear some of the Britney character. characteristics that we named in the first episode, The Fry, the rhythmic percussiveness. But there's no sign of that big ballad sun vocal. Instead, it definitely has a more spoken, a melodic quality. And the lyric actually reveals why she's performing this way. Always saying, little girl, don't step into the club.

I'm just trying to find out why, because dancing's what I love, yeah. Right? the melody is really loose, really just sort of saying it. And why? Because it's dancing that she loves. This is a song that is meant to be danced to. And in fact, singing to it doesn't even really matter. You can just speak it.

Yeah, I feel like there's an intimacy here that we haven't heard on the first two albums. Yeah, it's definitely intimate because there is this contrast between the heavy beat club-oriented dance song and the way that she delivers the vocal, which is like she's just whispering in your ear. And what's cool about that is that her voice kind of becomes the production. It becomes an instrument in of itself. And that little phrase so much happens, right? Right.

You've got the get it, get it, get it. You've got little ad libs of, uh, ooh. And then almost like it's its own kind of drum filly kind of thing. And then her breath becomes the trans. transitional percussion, almost like a shaker. She went, that's cool. You'd think that at this point, you'd finally get a big hook, right? Right.

Like, where's the melody? Yeah. But no. My loneliness, sake. She's not going to give it to us. Yeah, well, you might expect the chorus to be the chance to unfurl a Whitney Houston-esque kind of divas sound. Instead, her vocals kind of dance around

the pitches. Like, the key title phrase here, I'm a slave for you. When she hits that word slave, her voice kind of like falls away when you would expect it to be rushing forward. Slame. It's like kind of doing the opposite of what you expect in a chorus.

Yeah, you hit the nail on the head because layered in her vocals, the lead is actually at even a lower pitch than the verse. Oh, that's weird. I'm a slave for you I cannot hold it I cannot control it

It's almost on the verge of whispering It's really wild Yeah it's really unusual And it's doing such a good job of continuing To hold back our expectations Like this chorus only hits A minute into the song And it's the point where you think

Well maybe I'll finally get a really strong melody But instead she's just going to slide all over her notes And she's going to whisper in your ear She's going to sing at a lower register than she was sort of sing talking in the first verse. And you're like, what is this song? It's like an anti-climactic chorus. Totally. Like, what is she doing?

This is in strong contrast to what she was doing with the Swedes. Right? And this is a transitional album for her because Max Martin and Rami, they reoccur. They have songs on this record. But it's kind of like maybe they're hedging, right? launching to I'm a slave for you totally new sound kind of an anti-hook song

and then song number two overprotected written by Max Martin and Rami and it's that same old sound that we love from album one and two New Jack Swing Beat Funk Baseline DJ elements and of course soaring diva pop

hook vocal Okay yeah I recognize that Sonic playbook at this point but it makes me want to ask like why isn't she just sticking with that sound exclusively, like it's proved very successful. Why is she introducing this new whispery dance crazed single on this album? Like, what's the talk me through the logic here? If you're a chart sleuth in the year 2000, just before Slave for you, is released, it's clear that pop is moving into a world of hip-hop beat production and R&B hooks, right? Like,

year end, Hot 100 in 2000, when her second album, comes out. Oops, I did it again. It's just number 55 on the chart. Now, this is likely due to the record company initially not releasing a CD single to encourage people to pay full price for the album, which did go to number four on the year-end album charts. Okay, that's surprising. That's good to know. CD-era marketing tactics aside. When we look at the top of the year-end charts from 2000, they teach us a lot. Topping the charts, you have Faith Hill and Santana with Rob Thomas, But more importantly, just below, you've got Destiny's Child, say my name, at number six. You've got Alia, try again at number 12.

And at number 18, Janet Jackson doesn't really matter. When you're a pop star, you need to keep moving. You've got to stay relevant, right? And I think that these three artists, Destiny's Child, Janet Jackson and Aaliyah are the key to understanding Spears evolution. Those three specific artists. Here me out. Let's start with Destiny's Child.

She'd already touched on the Destiny's Child sound before this moment. On the last album, The Track, Don't Go Knocking on My Door. It was really familiar. Maybe kind of like, bills, bills, bills. And if you want that Destiny's Child kind of sound the best way to get it, is to recruit the producer that made the song, right? Right. I'm dying to know who is that, Charlie. Rodney Jerkins, aka Darkchild, was the producer on Say My Name, mega producer,

countless hits. So he's brought on to the album Brittany on two songs. He does the production on her cover of I Love Rock and Roll, but more importantly, he does the remix of the Max Rami's song Overprotected. And I think we can hear the clearest evolution of her style when we go back to back. Here's the original. And here's the Dark Child remix. Interesting.

Much sparser, much more drum forward. Yeah, it's like you can hear the hip-hop R&B revolution of the early 2000s, like, surging into the sound of Britney Spears here. Yeah, and it's no surprise because Spears cites amazing. member of R&B pop royalty as one of her biggest influences, Janet Jackson. I remember the first time I went to her show. I was just like, oh my God, like I wanted to be her. And so when Brittany films the music video for the overprotected remix done by a Dark Child, she does it at the L.A. Millennium Biltmore and references direct shot for shot

moments of Janet Jackson's Son of a Gun, which had been very. filmed in the exact same location. And then I'm thinking the vocal in Janet Jackson's son of a gun, which Britney's referencing in her overprotected remix music video, sounds a lot like that sort of breathy, half-spoken quality that we hear in Amoslake for You. And to top this one off, do you know who Amoslade for you was originally intended for? I'm going to guess Janet Jackson. That's correct.

Wow! Okay, you pulled it off there. There was a moment where I was like, man, this is Charlie in his basement with a wall full of photographs connected by like red twine. But I think I got this. So Britney Spears, huge Janet Jackson fan, channeling that sound, channeling the music video, working with Destiny's Child veteran Rodney Dark Child Jerkins. And then there's something about Aaliyah. You're going to have to break that down for me. Right. So I think she's kind of chasing a bit of that alia sound. Timbalin, the producer on Try Again, was unavailable because at the time he was working with Britney's then boyfriend, Jess and Timberlake. That's a whole controversy we don't need to get into. She instead chooses to work with the childhood friend of Timbaland. You know who that is?

It's got to be Farrell Williams. That's right. Feral Williams is one half of the production duo of the Neptunes along with. Chad Hugo, and this is where everything changes. Britney Spears enters her Virginia Beach period. From Stockholm to Virginia Beach. Wait, Virginia Beach? I'll answer your question, Nate, in the second half. Maria, you have a podcast now and you need to start acting like it. What's the first step as a podcaster?

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Every Saturday in your audio and video feeds. So Farrell Williams and Chad Hugo, the Neptunes, produce I'm a slave for you, first for Janet Jackson, gets picked up by Britney Spears and becomes a big part of her sound. That sound has a place, and it's Virginia Beach. Virginia Beach is the home of, of course, the Neptunes, but also Timbaland and even Missy Elliott. They all grew up around each other.

There was something in the water in Virginia Beach in the late 90s, early 2000s. That's a special meeting of sound in place for sure. All of those artists have very quirky off-kilter kind of quality to the music they produce, even the way they make beats. But recruiting the Neptunes is a smart move because in the same years that Brittany is coming up, they are dramatically changing the sound of popular music. and they are making hits, like Macy's looking at me number eight in 1998. Or Mysticals, shake your ass at number 13 in 2000. Shake your ass.

You've got Jay-Z's, I just want to love you, number 11 in 2000. And of course, their biggest hit that goes number one in 2002 after I'm a slave for you. But relevant to our discussion is Nellie's hot in here. And so now when we listen to I'm a slave for you, in the context of those other songs, I think we get an idea of the Neptune sound. What I feel like doing and just listen. Listening to this, I'm hearing like three layers of Neptune's production.

One is the first thing we hear, the drums. And they are so distinctive. They're not like familiar drum patterns that everyone plays. They're kind of unique and deeply syncopated. and have their own kind of signature off-kilter rhythm. If you go one level up, there's the kind of mid-range, and usually that's anchored by some kind of synthesizer or keyboard line. That's also, like, very repetitive and angular

and using some kind of process sound that you maybe can't quite put your finger on. And then you go up one level higher, and it's like the noise canopy. There's just some, like, some weird-ass sound that's going like, or whatever. And it's just like the weird little sprinkle on top of this, this heady mixture. And somehow when I describe it, I'm like, that shouldn't sound good.

Like weird skittery drums, like harsh piano chords, and then like falling, you know, comets of sound. Like that doesn't make any sense. And yet it's so effective when you put it all together. And you know, the overall production is pretty sparse. Like you can hear each one of those. individual elements very clearly. Nothing's stepping on each other.

It's like a little jigsaw puzzle. Yeah, it is. There's one other element that I feel like they recycle over and over again. Very sort of Neptune's signature sound. Hmm, what could this be? It's in the very sparse harmonic context that they give us in their songs. Many of their songs use a harmonic motion from the root chord to a chord just a semi-tone above and then back down.

Something like that. It's very effective. It's really cool. It kind of keeps you on your toes. It's very dissonant and funky. Yeah, it's a sound that we hear maybe in some Baroque music, Middle Eastern sounds, Eastern European things. Now a lot in hip-hop because I think they've moved the sound in that direction.

But it's a little obscure and it's persistent. It's in looking at me. It's in Hot and Her. And it's even in. the other song that the Neptunes produced for Britney Spears, boys. For whatever reason,

I feel like I've been wanting you all my life. Yeah, that one adds even one more whole tone above, but I understand what you're saying. It's the same principle applies. Starting at the home chord, going up a little bit, going right back down. That's the Neptune's harmonic playbook.

It's dissonant. It's awkward, and it maybe works well in hip-hop when people are rapping. But here we get it in the context of Brittany, who is doing something in between singing and speaking. That's so interesting because now I'm hearing that Janet Jackson song you played earlier. I'm hearing how Brittany wants to channel that kind of spoken whispering energy of one of her music. heroes. Ah, yes. Professor Sloan. Good ear. That's really cool. But of course, this is still

Britney Spears, and she's going to bring her unique vocal style to this new kind of production. This chorus reminds me a lot of that get it, get it section from I'm a slave for you, where in between every word, there's some kind of, breath or ad lib her voice becomes an element of the production right in between each of those lyrics we've got those those percussive breaths we've got these like uh kind of Soto voce exclamations yeah the spoken voice becomes another kind of percussive texture within the tapestry of this song yeah she's responding to this virginia beach sound by superimposing her way of approaching this breathy vocal,

and she's not going to just do it one way. She's going to, as she always does, change things up and show off many personalities in one song. I did not expect jazz lounge singer Britney Spears to appear in the middle of this and then to be swept away by the breathy vocal one more time. Oh, my God. I mean, I wouldn't have first pegged that. as lounge singing, but I love that you hear it that way.

It's certainly, whatever we want to call it, you're right. It is a stark departure from everything we've encountered in that track so far. And is just, yeah, another one of those moments where we hear Britney Spears being like, listen to all the things my voice can do. Right. She still has that great vocal power that we talked about in episode one, but she's finding a new sound here that will become elemental, not just in her own, music, but in music of those that come after her.

Artist influenced by Spears and this Virginia Beach sound, but in particular, her vocal quality, this singing slash speaking, the whispering, the intimate approach to making a pop single. Okay, so who falls in that camp, do you think? There's countless that we could point to, but one that comes to mind would be like Kesha's die young. I'm buying. That's a little bit more in the sing-speak quality, but that whispered vocal thing that Brittany does. There's a whole trend

that the Guardian called Whisper Pop of the last decade. Okay. They fold in artists like Lord and Selena Gomez. And I hear an artist like FCA Twigs and of course the whispered qualities of Billy Ilish.

Many of these songs pull off an audio acoustical trick where the vocals are actually sung at a quieter quality than the loudness of the production, many approaching some sort of like dance music. And that contrast of the intimate vocal and the pounding beat

is what draws you in and wanting to listen closer. So if we accept that all the artists you just named take some degree of inspiration from Britney Spears, and we see that the origin point of that sound was a song on her third album produced by the Virginia beach duo, the Neptunes, and originally intended for Janet Jackson,

then we want to both acknowledge the influence of Brittany, but also, and this can't be said enough, the importance of Janet Jackson in this story, too, which is like a fascinating wrinkle that I was not expecting, but also makes sense when you consider that she is Spears' musical hero. She is a constantly present yet totally underappreciated force within popular music, yes. Okay, Charles, you have sufficiently convinced me of the rationale and the sonic changes that Brittany undergoes on her third album. I can hear leaving the sound of bubblegum pop behind and becoming this dance, pop, R&B artists.

But I don't think anyone could have expected what comes next. And for me, it's the song that represents the apex of Britney's career. You're going to leave me there waiting until next week, aren't you? you got to tune into part three buddy Switched on Pop is edited by Jolie Myers Engineered by Brandon McFarland Illustrations by Iris Gottlieb Community Management by Abby Barr

Our executive producers are Hanna Rosen and Ashok Kerwa Remember of the Vox Media Podcast Network And a production of Vulture You can find Switched on Pop Anywhere you catch your podcast And we're on social media at Switched on Pop Hit us up with your favorite songs In this new era of Brittany

We'll be back again next Tuesday With Nate's installment This favorite Britney song of all time And until then, thanks for listening You can't You've got your passion in a business with

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