song of the day: britney spears - get naked (i got a plan) from blackout (2007)
I was genuinely surprised, even shocked, by Blackout. Not because it’s Britney, or because of its innovation, but because of its creepiness, its black hole heart.This dramatic, near-random identity switch is what suddenly made me think about “Twin Peaks”, and if there’s one song that takes Britney right into the Black Lodge it’s the album’s centrepiece, “Get Naked (I Got a Plan)”. This is a song about sex, nothing else, but the level of studio tricknology applied to it turns it claustrophobic, as frightening as it’s exhilarating.It opens with a cackle from producer Danja, and “Get Naked” is almost a duet, except that he’s subject to the same vocal gravity well Britney is and his laugh is smeared and stretched until it sounds like creaking wood. Britney contributes a series of gasps, sighs and chants while Danja sings the chorus, his voice slowed to a decaying moan. The track’s 4/4 bounce never varies but it still sounds fearfully unstable, the backing synths slipping into quicksand while other keyboard runs spiral up on a helium rush. It’s thick with chopped-up detail, Danja and Britney’s voices taking turns to distort and break up. Halfway through, after a particularly queasy downtempo shift, Danja starts speaking with a dead metallic tang: “I just want to take your hand”. Britney’s reply is - for almost the first time on the whole of Blackout— sung with perfect clarity, a desperate, front-of-the-mix “Please!”
“Get Naked”, like most of Blackout, is superb modern pop, which could probably only have been released by this star at this moment. Britney as walking catastrophe makes for great car-crash copy and her record can fit into that if you want it to. But remember that what made “Twin Peaks” so great wasn’t the central good-girl-gone-bad story, it was the strangeness that story liberated. And Britney’s off-disc life is both distraction from and enabler for this extraordinary album. - Pitchfork.
