Womanizer (Britney Spears) vs. Single Ladies (Beyonce)

i must agree that lex's list is all kinds of wrong, even tho in a way Freakshow is the most direct/most personal song on the album and the only one written by her (i think?).

they played the thing, Get Naked the other night at a bar and i got really excited. it sounded a lot better not in my office.

The producer of "Bad Girl" is Danja, who also helmed most of Britney Spears' Blackout, an album where Spears' vocal presence undergoes brutal electronic manipulation, turning her into one component of a runaway machine. Blackout is a document of a failed cyborgization: Machine grafts failing to take, turning signal into scary babble. The sheeny, erotic plasticity of Welcome to the Dollhouse sounds like a sequel, what the process was meant to produce. Britney's own follow-up, Circus, is messier-- better song-for-song than the Danity album but less compelling. "Womanizer"'s taunting stuck-disc refrain sounds like a knowing attempt to replicate the unhappy accidents of Blackout. The looping disintegrates the word's meaning, turning it into something else: a machine to produce women? The villainous producer cackles with glee born from a science gone mad! "Place her....in the womanizer!"

^^^this is so spot on, even for you guyz who've tired of the cyborg-britney comparisons (tom ewings latest poptimist thingy for pitchfork by the way)

also this:13. If Timbaland is the motherfucker at the corner of the party, playing too cool and together, understanding too much about the process to be truly involved, then Britney is the whole island of broken toys. Her work was always too human, too delicate to be truly robotic. Lonely and isolated, it’s cognitive dissonance was the exact opposite of the sleekness of JT or the self aware earnestness of Kayne, or the eroticized coldness of Beyonce (side note: Beyonce should really push to cover Grace Jones pull up to the bumper baby the studio has made so many advancements, and she could make it sound less efficient). The secret (or at least under spoken narrative about Britney is that of the machine taking over—she has become more mechanized and less human the more she has fallen apart.) That is a 20th century narrative, of the robots taking over, or being a robot instead of a human, it is the horror of technology found in Metropolis, in 2001, in Ballard’s Crash or the Atrocity Exhibition, in Summer Toys Last All Day Long, or the Terminator. Britney is no longer popular, because she is not cybernetic, because she is fearful of the robot taking over her body. The consensual merging of body and technology is nowhere to be found in her work.
14. Her first number one hit, is hit me baby one more time, processed to all hell, but human, and historically girl pop, with hints of The Crystal’s He Hit Me and It Felt Like A Kiss. Her voice is slight, but not delicate, beautiful and adolescent. It contains a short but significant piano motif, which is not bombastic, or cut apart, and is very clearly an acoustic instrument. Born to Make You Happy is a ballad about her loneliness and her sadness. Lyrically attached to Carole King, with a definite electronic beat, but which once again contrasting once again on her natural, can ignore, teenage girl voice. Oops I Did I Again, starts with space noises, and the video features a narrative from Mars, Britney makes her self an alien, literally. The first major electronic manipulation of vocals. Lucky, profoundly nostalgic, but nostalgic for a time she could not remember, self-consciously meta, and ironic, disassociate. The narrative begins to tip from the music of Britney to the consciousness of Britney. The upgrade starts. Me Against the Music—the Madonna single, who knows the pop music history, and who has flirted with becoming a robot since the mid 80s, growing into a maternal figure, the discussion becomes who will be her successor, she stages an event seemingly out of H Rider Haggard at that years MTV Video Music Awards, with Britney and her pop rival Xtina in dresses, kissing Madonna in Black Leather. That Xtina retreats into literal Burlesque, making herself over into Doris Day for the neo-retro crowd, and Britney falls deeper into madness. Madonna latter realizes her successor will be one who synthesizes better then he creates, namely JT. Toxic—avant noise, and genuinely separate from Britney’s other work, the harshness will be tamed by people like Rhianna and Beyonce, It is also one of the most profoundly self loathing songs, the self awareness, and the terror of losing control is profound. That it is now more electronic then human, and that the voice found in her earlier work is now lost, is clear. Everytime, this would be the one that would disprove my thesis, a beautiful and fluttering ballad, with a genuine piano and almost no electronic effects. But the video ends with her suicide, any attempts to be a pop star leads to destruction, the desire to be full with the pleasure of music cannot be found here. The robot is not the literal mechanical voice, the too pure production, but the ability, to, in the words of Marianne Faithful “slide through life on charm” That Britney’s last album was so chaotic, so broken, the exact opposite of the new trends for hermetic sealing of emotion into semiotic deconstructions of desire. That Britney has to name herself, that she begins the album by the almost fetishistic naming of self, is the exact opposite of the third person pseudo humility found in the works mentioned. Britney cannot upgrade this, because she is essentially human, and to upgrade is essentially anti-human.

with some time, the answer is definitely womanizer. single ladies is too clunky. it's like a toy hammer.

nahh

I was a latecomer to it but I loooove Single Ladies. The production is amazing, the backing track with its minimal beats and Frogger noises bears almost no relation to the rest of the song - I can imagine Beyonce in the studio doing her standard sassy wo-oh-oh thing and getting on down to a track full of horns and pumping beats. Then at the last minute unbeknownst to her the producers switch in this oddity instead. The two only come together in the chorus when the sinister synths back up her scolding like a bunch of heavyset bodyguards.

the production strikes me as really loud and obvious :/ i can see how it would sound amazing but i think i'd have to be on crack

single ladies is gimmicky but memorable. womanizer is kind of boring.

this seems even more obviously single ladies with some time to me. i can't even remember "womanizer" now, but "if you like then you should have put a ring on it" will be in my head forever

Sur you are completely, totally wrong about this one.

no YOU

Both of Brit's followup singles are way way way WAY better than "Womanizer", which really only benefits from her being a hot biker chick for part of the video.

it's like a toy hammer.

video should've been Beyonce playing whack-a-mole to the beat imo

Both of Brit's followup singles are way way way WAY better than "Womanizer", which really only benefits from her being a hot biker chick for part of the video.

― the call of the taint (HI DERE), Tuesday, March 24, 2009 12:00 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

respectfully disagree. i thought circus was better at first, but it's more elementary. it's catchy and amazing, but sounds pretty dated.

"fuck me" i like, but still no womanizer.

single ladies is pretty horrible, including the video.

newdepechemodesingle.avi

single ladies is pretty horrible, including the video.

― FREE DOM AND ETHAN (special guest stars mark bronson), Tuesday, March 24, 2009 4:06 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

if you do not like beyonce's ass in that video, then you sir, have no soul. good day.

I agree that "Circus" is more rudimentary and rips off a lot more things than "Womanizer" but it still comes across as a better song despite being a Frankenstein-ish clone of "Lovestoned".

i know exactly what you mean by "better song" and at first i thought so too,
buttt i see the songwriting on womanizer as more mature, more intriguing, after having overplayed both songs.

I think I would be more into "Womanizer" if the chorus wasn't completely brain-dead.

see i think that's what either makes or breaks the song for ppl. i loooooove the repetition

single ladies is pretty horrible, including the video.

― FREE DOM AND ETHAN (special guest stars mark bronson), Tuesday, March 24, 2009 4:06 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

if you do not like beyonce's ass in that video, then you sir, have no soul. good day.

― Reege & Leif (M@tt He1ges0n), Tuesday, March 24, 2009 12:12 PM (7 minutes ago)

otm

yea that video is pretty much untouchable

I don't really like that video and I have to say M@tt OTM

How much of Single Ladies' success is due to that video?

only reason i ever listened to it, tbh

arrgh

Single Ladies is beyond brilliant, womaniser is kinda meh and I was rooting for Brit harder than anyone except maybe Chris Crocker.

dan did you seriously just rep for "If You Seek Amy"?

if you seek amy is fun, even tho it sounds like a polka jig

'if u seek amy' is the only circus track which really attains that druggy, lurching splurge which i loved about blackout - HA HA HEE HEE HA HA HO - most of the others try very hard to deliberately recreate it and wear that hard work heavily

"unusual you" best song on new record by a mile imo

― Socktor Duperman (k3vin k.), Sunday, January 18, 2009 4:06 PM (2 months ago)

If saying "If You Seek Amy" is better than "Womanizer" counts as repping for it, then yes.

also massive lolz at it being a single

"unusual you" best song on new record by a mile imo

― Socktor Duperman (k3vin k.), Sunday, January 18, 2009 4:06 PM (2 months ago)

― Leif ericsonned (k3vin k.), Tuesday, March 24, 2009 12:38 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this is insanity

this is easily my favorite "Single Ladies" imitation video of them all

see more slivs

i heard "single ladies" at the market the other day, and it still sounds like something you would sing on a farm

???

actual lols

what kind of farm tho? im curious

i dunno dude, the ol' mcdonald kind

"dude"

You're weird, Ramzi, but I totally get what you mean. It has that annoying major key lilt usually used to make kids "enjoy themselves." Ugh.

At least Womanizer could be a Kraftwerk song.

u get what i mean becuz i'm right. the opening lines are clearly hoaxy like a happy meal toy. it was like, intended. i just don't love it.

<3

xpost, yes, I'm agreeing with you. I loathe it.

Still fucking great!

i heard "single ladies" at the market the other day, and it still sounds like something you would sing on a farm

― surm, Tuesday, June 23, 2009 4:25 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

:D <3

Jesus this result

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TBF83drj98

^^^for surm