Oops...

Britney Spears - Blackout (F) It is my solemn duty to tell you that I listened to this album by mistake. That is, even with my judicious avoidance of all things Britney, I found myself in the position of being forced to listen to it. Enough of it to get an impression, anyways.

Well, what happened was my car was in the shop getting the driver's door fixed, so's the insurance company gave me a loaner for a week. I couldn't plug in my Ipod anywhere-(Curse you, Nissan!), so I was stuck listening to the radio's top-forty station all that week. Now, you may think, "Hey, stupid! There's, you know, OTHER radio stations you can listen to, Einstein!" Well, yeah, but it seemed like too much of a bother to figure out how to switch stations at the time, you know? I'd be halfway to work, a Miss B. song would come on, I'd slap my forehead and go, "Shit, I was gonna change the station before I left my parking lot, ah, fuggit." And it went on like that all week. Boy howdy, was I glad to get my car back.

Anyways, looking over the production credits on AMG, a thought occurred to me. You've got all these producers and engineers with considerable 'street credit', like Pharrel Williams and The Neptunes working on her album. So, it's got a considerable dance club hook going for it. I suspect you'll be getting various re-mix versions by various underground DJ's being released on the club circuit coming out. You know, the Paul Oakenfeld "Gimme more' remix and such.

My thought was this: So you've got all these producers and engineers holed up in a studio for three months, fourteen hour days, crafting an album that has to appeal to as wide a demographic as humanly possible. So everyone in the process is under a lot of pressure. To make things worse, an advance track's leaked onto the Internet, making it imperative that the album get released sooner than later. You've got Jive entertainment execs on the phone, increasingly agitated, tempers are running short. Perhaps Pharell and the Neptunes get into a screaming match in the studio. A bottle of mineral water is thrown, the room goes silent. Pharell storms out of the studio to calm down, maybe have a smoke. ("Man, I swore to my girl that I'd quit this shit for good!) An older producer steps in, calms things down. Work continues. After what seems like forever, the end of the road is near. Morale improves. People discuss what they're going to do on their downtime. ("Shit, I'm goin' to St. Lucia for three weeks! Bring my fuckin' laptop with me, get some work done on a white beach!") Finally, the last track is mastered, and all that's left to be done is call the armed courier service to take the master tapes to the CD manufacturer.

Just as they're about to make that call, an intern pipes up, hesitantly. "Say, um, guys? I don't hear Britney's vocals on the tapes? What's goin' on?" The producers all look at one another. Embarrassed laughs and slapped foreheads abound. A quick phone call, and Britney's on the phone, doing her vocals. The process takes about forty minutes. They'll leave a couple of junior guys in the studio to do cleanup, process her voice so it sounds good enough. Dodged THAT bullet, at least.

So as the Neptunes leave for the airport in the limo Jive rented them, one turns to the other and says, "Shit, man. That album was a lot better before that white-trash ho' went and fucked it up with her, um, singin..." "Heard that, m'man. But you know... Nigga gots to get paid!" They laugh, clink together celebratory glasses of Hennessy, and head out into the night...

...And that's the name of that tune, Jack.