What sort of famous is Britney Spears nowadays? Are we supposed to view her as a pop star? A crumbling monument to an older sort of music industry celebrity? A cautionary example for younger would-be celebs? With the 31-year-old en route to Las Vegas and a $15 million two-year residency, what is clear is that she is no longer a pop moppet with broad cultural cachet. Amidst the white hot debate about Twerking and titillation, it was instructive that Britney, the original pig-tailed ingenue, did not merit a single mention. She is as irrelevant to the conversation about the sexualisation of pop as Miley Cyrus is to the Middle East peace process. Her new album arrives and you think, ‘Really - Britney is still doing THIS?’
The great contradiction about Spears, of course, is that, even as her profile has diminished, she has created ever more interesting music. Starting with 2007’s excellent The Blackout, a glitchy tour-de-force that provided a crystal ball vision of chart music’s EDM-mediated future, she has worked with some of pop’s most interesting producers, from Timbaland protegé Danja to Bloodshy and Avant (otherwise known as Swedish electro-rockers Miike Snow).
On Britney Jean, she hooks up with sometime Madge collaborator William Orbit, and famous just- because candidate will.iam. The former sheaths her functional robo-girl singing in electro twinkles (‘Work Bitch’, ‘Alien’), the latter conjures a luxuriant Euro-trance sheen (‘Perfume’, ‘Chillin’ With You’).
A charge often levelled at post-Blackout Britney is that she is a guest on her own albums, phoning in flat, disembodied vocals and letting her backroom boys take care of the rest. There may be some legitimacy to that argument – but, really, does it matter? Lean and strident, Britney Jean is one of the most starkly efficient pop records you will encounter all year. The fact that Britney’s TMZ persona isn’t the first thing you think about while listening to it is surely a recommendation, not a kiss of death.

Key Track: 'Perfume'