Tuesday, 23 October 2007

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Reviewer: Britney sings like an inflatable robot doll

New album slated by critic

The first deflating assessment of Britney Spears's new album is in – and it compares the singer to an inflatable doll.

"She comes off like some machine that bleeps and bloops out an airy array of oohs, ahhs and groans," Jim Farber writes in the New York Daily News. "If a blowup sex doll could sing, this is what she'd sound like."

Farber adds: "In terms of studio trickery, Paris Hilton's album was practically Unplugged compared to this."

Still, maybe that's not completely a bad thing. Farber says the album, Blackout, which hits stores Oct. 30, certainly has its fun moments.

"She may no longer dance with flair, lip-sync on cue, keep her dress down, or even be judged a suitable mom, but Britney Spears can still turn up on some slammin' new songs," he writes.

The album is comprised of "wall-to-wall electro-fueled club cuts," Farber writes, and Spears "spends most of the CD in a state of erotic mania." And she does, as PEOPLE reported last week, use ex-husband Kevin Federline for lyrical inspiration on the track "Why Should I Be Sad."

The lyrics on that song include: "My friends said you would play me/but I just said they're crazy/while I was crying frantic/was it true?"

Despite his misgivings, Farber offers what sounds like a qualified endorsement of the record: "Think about this: How wonderful it is that, in the world of slick pop, even if stars can't deliver, the machine behind them still can."

By Tim Nudd