The aftermath of Britney Spears’ 2007 freak-out and Blackout wound up with her ceding control of her personal and professional life to her father and producers, respectively, leaving her as no more than a figurehead of an enterprise. Of course, Brit Brit had essentially been the face of a carefully calibrated pop machine for years, but every element of that contraption hinged on her persona, the songs and the sound fitting her evolution. Starting with Blackout, Britney started to slip into the background on her own records, a progression that continued unabated on Circus and finds some kind of culmination on 2011’s Femme Fatale. Essentially a cleaner, classier remake of the gaudily dark Blackout, Femme Fatale is a producer’s paradise, each cut decked out with stretched vocals, glassy keyboards, and insistent beats, all coming together in hyperactive arrangements that shift every five seconds. Sonically, it has everything except hooks, either in the rhythm or the melody; it’s all surface style, driven by sound and given shape by hypersexual lyrics Britney sings listlessly. Her name and face are on the cover but she is not at the album’s center; she is nowhere to be found amidst the clamor created by Dr. Luke, will.i.am, Bloodshy, Shellback, and Max Martin; she’s a black hole of charisma sucking everything in. Britney dutifully steps through the paces, singing enough of the words so they can be tweaked in the computer, never quite investing anything with emotion, never getting in the way of the producers, who deliver a showcase somewhat less captivating than Blackout. Surely, there are moments, sometimes stretched over a full song, that are compelling, but even these can’t erase the feeling that Britney no longer has a real, tangible personality. She’s now a reliable brand selling high-class productions designed to last not one minute longer than their season of release.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

If 2001's Britney was a transitional album, capturing Spears at the point when she wasn't a girl and not yet a woman, its 2003 follow-up, In the Zone, is where she has finally completed that journey and turned into Britney, the Adult Woman. Like her peer Christina Aguilera, Britney equates maturity with transparent sexuality and the pounding sounds of nightclubs, but since she's not as dirrty as Xtina, her spin is a little different. Where Christina comes across like a natural-born skank, Britney is the girl next door cutting loose at college, drinking and smoking and dancing and sexing just a little too recklessly, since this is the first time she can indulge herself. And that's what In the Zone is -- Britney indulging herself, desperate to prove that she's an adult. Since she's a pop diva, the record label certainly set some limits -- and, really, given her track record and taste, there was little chance that she would follow Pink's lead and write an album with a punk rocker and then draft Peaches for a cameo -- but she has been freed from her musical parent, Max Martin, who is absent for the first time from a Britney Spears album. She's chosen to play the field and work with a bunch of different collaborators, including Madonna, Moby, the Matrix, Trixster, Roy "Royality" Hamilton, Bloodshy & Avant, and R. Kelly. This laundry list of producers and co-writers reveals a combination of savvy and stupidity, reminiscent of the good ideas and bad judgment a young adult goes through in the throes of adjusting to maturity, but one thing ties it all together: her yearning to prove that she's a mature adult. Since the songs are almost exclusively about sex or dancing, with an empowerment tune and a couple of heartbreak ballads tossed in for good measure, it's a pretty limited definition of adulthood, which would be fine if Spears didn't treat it all so seriously, as if maturity were only about sex and dancing. Since she's so determined to be a woman, not a girl, she has completely shed the sugarcoated big hooks and sappy love songs that drove her stardom, concentrating on music that glides by on mellow grooves or hits hard with its hip-hop beats. It's all club-ready, but despite some hints of neo-electro and the Neptunes, it doesn't quite sound modern -- it sounds like cuts from 1993 or Madonna's Bedtime Stories and Ray of Light. Madonna, of course, duets on the album's first single, "Me Against the Music," whose title practically begs to be mocked. Unfortunately, any snarky jokes directed at the song are warranted, since it's the worst single either Britney or Madonna had yet released, a songless mess of staccato beats whose chorus weirdly recalls Oasis' "D'You Know What I Mean." Neither singer has much range, yet they usually exploit their weakness well; here, they succumb to their limitations to the point that their thin voices are indistinguishable apart from Madonna singing "Hey Britney" ad nauseam. This is not the only time on In the Zone that the music is hampered by Britney's limited vocal abilities. She may be older now, but she still sounds like a little girl, which undercuts both the glistening, sensual mid-tempo grooves that dominate the album and the big, booming up-tempo cuts that offer a change of pace. Production-wise, these tracks are not only accomplished but much more varied than any of her previous albums -- in particular, Moby's "Early Mornin'" has a sleek feel, Mark Taylor's "Breathe on Me" is alluring, and the Bloodshy & Avant productions "Showdown" and "Toxic" are irresistible ear candy -- but Britney's voice just isn't sexy enough to sell these songs; she often sounds like a girl dressing up in her big sister's clothes, whether she's murmuring seductive or delving into rap and ragga. All of this undercuts not just the songs, but the theme of the album, since it seems that she's still not yet a woman, no matter how much she protests that she is. While there are surely some good moments here and while this is surely her most ambitious, adventurous album to date, it's not a particularly successful one, since she treats her freedom as a burden, not a blessing. After all, if an album is going to be about sex, dancing, and freedom, it should at the very least sound joyous and fun. In the Zone deliberately avoids fun, which is why it's less likeable than Britney's previous albums, even if it is musically more accomplished.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Given the phenomenal success of Britney Spears' debut, ...Baby One More Time, it should come as no surprise that its sequel offers more of the same. After all, she gives away the plot with the ingenious title of her second album, Oops!...I Did It Again, essentially admitting that the record is more of the same. It has the same combination of sweetly sentimental ballads and endearingly gaudy dance-pop that made One More Time. Fortunately, she and her production team not only have a stronger overall set of songs this time, but they also occasionally get carried away with the same bewildering magpie aesthetic that made the first album's "Sodapop" -- a combination of bubblegum, urban soul, and raga -- a gonzo teen pop classic. It doesn't happen all that often -- the clenched-funk revision of the Stones' deathless "Satisfaction" is the most obvious example -- but it helps give the album character apart from the well-crafted dance-pop and ballads that serve as its heart. In the end, it's what makes this an entertaining, satisfying listen.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo