If you believe Brendan Behan's line about all publicity being good publicity, then Britney Spears' fifth album may well be the best-promoted release in pop history. By contrast with poor old Britney, everything in Amy Winehouse's world is going just swimmingly. We'll be here all day if we go into detail, but suffice to say the salient points involve three visits to rehab in the space of five weeks, shaving her head, losing custody of her children, being ordered to undergo twice-weekly random drug testing, a disastrous comeback appearance at the MTV Awards, a raft of motoring offences and being voted the World's Worst Celebrity Role Model Parent.
Faced with a public image in freefall, an artist has two options. One involves making music that harks back to your golden, pre-tailspin days with lyrics underlining your complete normality: the hope is that the public will fall for the ruse that nothing is actually wrong. The other is to throw caution to the wind: given your waning fortunes, what's the harm in taking a few musical risks? Happily, Blackout - an unfortunate choice of title, given the nature of Spears' recent travails - opts for the latter course, unleashing a torrent of ferociously distorted synthesizers, electronically treated vocals, snapping drum samples and bovver-booted glam rock beats. The results are largely fantastic.
Single Gimme More is futuristic and thrilling, while the sound adds a genuine sense of simmering fury to Piece of Me, which rails against Spears' various detractors. With its toothsome chorus gradually smothered by waves of corrosive, atonal electronics. Heaven on Earth sounds, not inappropriately, like a school uniform-era Spears track that has spiralled completely out of control. Even when there's not much of a song on offer, there's usually some sonic trickery that snares your attention. Freakshow manipulates Spears' voice until she sounds like a man. Get Naked (I Got a Plan) features a backing vocal that wails off key, gradually slowing down as if someone has turned off the power. Only once does it all get a bit much: with its skipping beat, agonisingly squeaky call-and-response vocals and repetitive nursery-rhyme melody, Radar seems to be bending over backwards to annoy the listener. Perhaps it's a last desperate tactic to win back some privacy: she's trying to get people to leave her alone by making as irritating a noise as possible.
Aside from Piece of Me, and a kiss off to ex-husband Kevin Federline called Why Should I Be Sad? - a funny thing to sing when you've lost custody of your children and have to undergo random twice-weekly drug testing - the lyrics opt to ignore recent events in favour of relentless crotch-level bombardment. It's testament to how all-pervading her former image as the world's most famous virgin was that, even today, after two marriages, two kids and innumerable knickerless pap shots, it's faintly shocking to hear Britney Spears use the word "fuck". But use it she does. "Tick-tock, tick-tock, can you fuck me while I'm hot?" she husks on Perfect Lover, provoking a startled double take, as if you'd turned on Songs of Praise to find Aled Jones exposing his genitals to the congregation of St Bartholomew's. Clearly someone within Britney's organisation felt the same way: the volume on the track suddenly dips to preserve her modesty.
The overall lyrical bent proves something of a mixed blessing. On the one hand, an album full of songs like Piece of Me - on which Britney Spears comes to the faintly disingenuous conclusion that her spate of bad publicity is down to a global media conspiracy against working mothers - would have been hard to stomach. On the other, the songwriters might have thought twice about the vast number of lyrical references to being crazed with lust. These days, when you hear Britney Spears singing about going insane or feeling her brain spin like a hurricane, what you picture is not a woman delirious in the midst of coital ecstasy, but those photos of her, freshly scalped, attacking a paparazzo's car with an umbrella and looking as disturbed as it's possible for a human being to look without actually being strapped into a straitjacket. "I'm falling off the edge of my mind," she pants, and it's hard to stop yourself thinking: yes, so it would appear. Now put that brolly down.
And that, ultimately, may prove Blackout's big problem. It arrives alongside the latest Britney updates in the celebrity mags, variously claiming that the singer has applied for a job as a night manager in a hotel bar, been spotted "ranting incoherently" and singing Santa Claus Is Coming to Town to a dog dressed in a Christmas outfit, and been subject to an intervention by her family. It's a bold, exciting album: the question is whether anyone will be able to hear its contents over the deafening roar of tittle-tattle.
